[Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

Wed Nov 30 13:34:09 UTC 2005

Fred Bauder wrote:

> What if he had never found it?
>
> We need more fact checking.

The validation system will, no doubt, suffer from two "flaws" in the
regard of offering reliability:
1. Anyone (at least, anyone with a username, if we turn off anons) can
"validate"
2. Validations will have to be interpreted to simplify them to a
good/suspicious/bad rating

There is a radical alternative, which I have begun to code a few weeks
ago. It alters a MediaWiki installation to "import-only", replacing
editing with an import function for an article version from wikipedia.
As the imported articles are not editable at all, they do not represent
a fork, merely a static wikipedia snapshot, alas per article and not for
the whole wikipedia. Such a system would allow imports only for
logged-in users, and be invite-only.

I am aware that this is the complete opposite of the wiki principle. But
maybe this is what is needed here - a counterweight, to balance that
dreadful freedom of the wiki ;-)

Individuals could then chose which "issue" to read, and mirrors could
decide if they want to go for "slow quality" or "fast unreliability"...

Yes, a few people (compared to Wikipedia editors) will take a long time
to check/fix/import all Wikipedia articles. Also, the imported versions
will soon be outdated compared to Wikipedia. So what? This site will be
for reliability; Wikipedia is for development and current events coverage.

I would see such a site working in parallel to the validation feature.
Some might argue that this would "split out forces", with some people
validating and some importing. OTOH, a little friendly compedition might
do good for motivation.

Lastly, there is one major reason to deploy such a site: Because it will
undoubtedly be deployed, by someone, sooner or later; I'd rather it's us
doing it than some company.

Magnus