[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia hits the big time

Wed Mar 16 15:19:18 UTC 2005

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> The question is, where do we go from here? Larry Sanger left the project
> for a mix of reasons, but SOME of them made sense (at least to me). We
> never resolved the tension between:
> A) Anyone can edit any article, any time; and,
> B) People can count on every article to be accurate and fair.
> Not enough people were interested in Larry's "Sifter Project". I don't
> know if anyone is using Magnus Manke's "tagging" software.

At the moment Magnus says it isn't prime time, and there appear to be no
developers on hand to work on it.

 > Do we need to
> fork?
> I was approached by the director of a foundation (with a multi-million
> dollar budget) to create a fork of Wikipedia leading to a print edition
> to be published no later than 2008. If I do this, maybe it will get me
> out of your hair? (The Cunctator wrote, "Rinse, wash, repeat.") But I
> worry whether a fork is the best approach, or even necessary at all.

Nah. A massively distributed rating system seems the only workable idea
to me, because it will harness dilettantism. Editorial committees aren't
the sort of thing that scales.

And I think a ratings system should be worth a try, on the assumption that
most of the ratings will be good faith. 'Cos if we can't assume that, then
we can't assume good faith for the project in general. And I think we can.

If their money can be directed that way, get them to hire a PHP developer
for a while to get the rating feature polished up ;-)

- d.