Skyring said:
"Here is Wikipedia's article on Our Lord, Jesus Christ," the Reverend
Hardmind might say, opening up the article and showing that the
Messiah is bending over to receive the divine blessing of twelve
disciples, their robes around their ankles and their smiles around
their ears.
Never mind that the image was inserted only minutes previously. The
damage has been done.
That will happen and it's only a matter of time. Okay, I know this sounds
like Chicken Licken, but I think it's inevitable.
If schools and parents like Wikipedia's content we should provide it, but
not in raw Wiki form. Then when the good reverend fulminates against
Wikipedia's editing engine we can just turn around and say that's just the
workfloor, not the version schoolkids see. We come clean, we admit that
a full-blown Wiki is not a suitable environment for teaching and it's no
place to leave your kids unattended.
It should be possible to scan Wikipedia for about 5000 articles that would
be useful to K12, choose a reasonably stable version and check it for
suitability. Remove sections if necessary. Then store that in a
MediaWiki running with editing turned off and you have the start of a
school Wikipedia.
We could rely on the pride of individual editors to perform the task of
reviewing and copy-editing their own copies of candidate articles in
userspace and submitting for the school wiki. Use an appointed standards
committee of trusted editors to vet the content.