David Geerard wrote:
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 ;-)
Right, David. Don't think fork; think Add-on. And don't think
editorial committee; think reputation/rating system. And always keep
dilettantism at the front of your cogitations.
To those considering forking Wikipedia, I say why not simply start an
add-on site where users can register, build reputation, and rate article
versions. All their edits originating from the Add-on site
(
credipedia.org or
respectipedia.org) go straight into the main
Wikipedia database, and the add-on site sifts articles for presentation
to anonymous users according to its added features of user and article
rating. Any successful feature are sure to find their way back into
MediaWiki.
Tom Haws