Jurriann brings up a good point, and no doubt many (myself too) have
thought the same -- instead of hand-modifying everything, why not more
structure, metadata, templates or automated changes.
In software engineering parlance, this implies implementation of
consistency and automation -- a system that checks to make sure a change
keeps content consistent with other content, and ripples forward
necessary modifications through the database. Certainly this sounds
great -- the system does lots of the grunt work.
The problem is it is inherently non-Wiki. My hunch is that it would
severely affect the nature of Wikipedia. The beauty of Wikipedia and
wikis is that humans and the evolving community are in control. Not a
process and not some imposed database template. (Clay Shirky has an
excellent view on this.) If someone creating an article wants to do
tables in a particular way, or wants a different disambiguation message,
or a unique take on doing a timeline, s/he's completely open to it.
Jiang and Tannin can battle over which way to write up Australia, and in
the end they agree, and a better template comes out. I'm nearly
convinced it's why 1) people feel empowered by Wikis, 2) people stay
around in the community and 3) good ideas evolve so quickly.
I say I'm nearly convinced, because in the end, it seems that something
beyond hand-editing everything *has* to evolve. But does it? I'm not
sure. When does this merry go round stop? :) Perhaps that's what's so
challenging about the "1.0" project. I'd love to hear ideas on this.
Clay Shirky says, "The software makes no attempt to add 'process' in
order to keep people from doing stupid things. Instead, it provides more
flexibility, a crazy amount of flexibility, and intoxicating amount of
flexibility, allowing massive amounts of stupidity and intentional
damage to be done, at will, by roving and anonymous posters."
(
http://www.corante.com/many/20030801.shtml#50187)
-Andrew Lih/Fuzheado