[Wikipedia-l] pitching an idea

[Alex Regh]

Hi!

Besides all the objections already raised, I also don't see how that would
practically work:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:39:26 -0400, Steve Lefevre wrote:

>A PGP sign-off system will keep track of who wrote what, and who agrees 
>with it. Authors who have had a lot of people sign off on their word 
>will get bonus scores on their texts, and articles that well-reputed 
>authors sign off on will get also get bonus scores.

See, if there was a decent article A from say, 1. January which gets lots of
votes. Now somebody significantly improves that article on 1. February (A2).
Also on 1. February somebody writes another article with a significantly
different POV (A3). Lots of people who agree with that POV vote for A3, but on
1. March A2 has not gained many votes, because most people just read the
high-rated January article A -- I mean, why read a new one when there is a
high-rated only slightly older one. 

So what people get, if they go by votes, is a decent article A and one with an
entirely different POV, A3. They might consider the latter as the better,
since it is at newer, and might never get to see A2. 

And if A3 is one of those whose POV is, let's say, very POV (given that I have
lots of gay and transgender articles on my watchlist, imagine what I get to
see ...) well, we would hardly be able to fulfil our goal of informing people,
would we? Because, you know, people are quite often perfectly satisfied if
they read what confirms what they already know, and never bother to find out
whether there is more, if they have to make an effort to do just that.

In other words, the idea seems to be rather counter-productive to me.

Alex
-- 
If you don't go over the top, 
you can't see what's on the other side. 
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de