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
You should note that before I left the project, I started this with
[[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]]. This was designed to have no noticable
disruptionn of the main article (I directly linked to a proposed
revision, this was done on a subpage that hangs off the article. The
discussion of the revision is done on the talk page.) It was my hope
this could allow for a "stamped" version of a FA page that we could
proudly state is the most reliable version and guaranteed not to be
vandalised.
Regrettably, it looks like my idea has fallen through. I hope that
Wikipedia can find a credible alternative.
TBSDY