[Wikipedia-l] wikipedia is too much open

[Magnus Manske]

Pablo De Nápoli wrote:

>I've contributed with some articles. I'm rather disapointed, though. For 
>example, I've rewriten the article on Lebesgue integration in the English 
>wikipedia, since I find that the article explained the tenichal difficulties 
>of Riemman integral, but it does not define the notion of Lebesgue integral
>(perhaps I had to tell you that I'm a mathematician, I work at the mathematics 
>department of Buenos Aires University, Argentina).
>
>After that, looking at the history of the page, I find that some rather old 
>previous versions where much better, but they had been deleted since a
>user consider them "too advanced". Needless to say, Lebesgue integration is 
>indeed an advanced topic in mathematics, so that any article on this subject 
>is necesarilly advanced (or does not covered the topic).
>  
>
I see your point there, but consider this: An encyclopedia should 
explain what "Lebesgue integration" is and what it does, in a way that 
an average reader can understand it. It would be no problem to add 
mathematical details *after* such an introduction, but a degree in 
mathematics should *not* be required to understand the introduction itself.

If you like to elaborate on mathematical topics in detail, wikibooks.org 
might be a good place. I've written some biochemistry pages there myself.

>It seems to me that the model of  wikipedia is too much open, so that open 
>that anyone can annonymously edit any page. That I think is to much.that at 
>least one should have to register and log in in order to modify a page, one 
>has to take a responsability for what is saying (specially for deleting some 
>one else work). In the current model, we don't know who write what
>(even though, most civilizated wiikipedians do log in, but I think this should 
>be mandatory)
>  
>
Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

>Another idea that comes to my mind is that there could be some teams for 
>especific topics, that  manage the pages in some section (say mathematics, 
>geogrpahy, 
>economics or whatever). This does not mean that any user from outside the team 
>could not submit modifications. But without a team of core developers or 
>a project leader for each section how can you assure a minimum of
>quality of wikipedia?
>(this is more or less the model in all free software projects, no project 
>grants write access to cvs to everyone anonymously, say)
>  
>
There are WikiProjects for starters, but if you want to recruit a "math 
team", go ahead :-)
Also, we have (rather vague) plans for a "wikipedia 1.0", which will 
contain only selected, proof-read article versions from wikipedia. This 
will have to wait until the current server crisis is solved, though.

Magnus