[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia hits the big time

Fri Mar 18 18:12:42 UTC 2005

On 3/16/05 10:04 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> 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.

My comment was as much about the enabling behavior of the Wikipedia
community was it was about Ed's.

That aside: one of the obvious baby steps that should be taken in regards to
questions of reliability, tagging versions, etc., is to give people a
permanent link to the current version of an article. Ideally in a relatively
succinct format.

This does not exist--you can link without fear of change to historical
revisions, but not to the most recent revision.

Not only should this functionality exist, it should be relatively obvious.

That would eliminate a *lot* of worries from the academic world--yes, the
reliability of the information would still be questionable, but at least
they'd know that the reference they make now will be identical at any time
in the future.

And yes, I know this is difficult in the current code, but it's an important
need.