[WikiEN-l] Re: Reliable, selectable content

Thu Apr 7 16:06:23 UTC 2005

> 2.  We would need to label article *versions*.  This means that if an 
> anon comes along and edits a page or changes an image, the 
> labels revert 
> to non-labelled (no ICRA meta tag) until replaced.  And this 
> is the same 
> way our validation/quality labels need to work.  We can't rate the 
> quality or label the content of a fluid article.
> 
> Tom Haws

Quality labels, as used for filtering, will be useful only when "stable
versions" start to dominate. If anyone can change any article any time,
and this deletes the labels, then a deliberate campaign to sabotage
filters would be hard to thwart.

After 3.5 years helping to write Wikipedia articles, I'm losing interest
in constantly seeing the latest version when I look something up. I'm
more interested know in seeing articles that someone I trust, like
maveric149, has checked for simple vandalism, or that Vicki Rosenzweig
has copy-edited (spelling, punctuation, grammar).

And for articles subject to edit wars (or having NPOV issues), I'm more
interested in seeing the consensus (stable) version. Or at least "the
most recent version which doesn't have a {{NPOV}} dispute tag". I'm sure
Magnus can provide a notice and/or a link, which informs us of any later
versions and gives us an easy way to see them.

Larry Sanger had the idea for a "sifter" project, and I'm about to get
involved in a 2.5 year effort to sift the cream of Wikipedia into a
Unification Encyclopedia which aims at accumulating "truth". For all but
the controversial articles, i.e. 99.9% of Wikipedia, the latest version
is not merely neutral but is, actually, "true". 

The U-pedia will not be a fork in the road (as in Robert Frost's "Two
roads diverged in a wood" poem). The branching of articles will be quite
minor, affecting only the one-in-a-thousand which are stalled due to
edit wars. (There will also be a few thousand brand new articles; I'm
not sure at this point whether these will be open-sourced, i.e.,
released under GFDL. Give me a few more weeks to find that out, please.)

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed