[Wikipedia-l] road to stability, formatted. last kick-off posting.

Tue Dec 6 10:17:35 UTC 2005

Thanks to Brion, who pointed out the matter of readabilty to me. 
Accordingly, please allow me another, nicely formatted and more to the 
point, posting:

It has been said that Wikipedia is „work in progress“ and will probably 
continue to do so. On the other hand it ails from the fact that at no 
given point in time you can be certain to have a simultaneously

   1.

      consistent (with respect to various articles on a similar topic)

   2.

      unvandalized and

   3.

      correct (with respect to a single article) throughout Wikipedia

 From my point of view, compared to those three points the shortcoming 
of the non-completeness of WP dwindles to almost nothing.

Let me draw your attention to the fact that the construction plans for 
roads to stability – or at least local optima – have long been laid out 
by physics. Heat a dynamic system quickly then let it cool down in a 
slower and controlled fashion, allowing less and less dramatic changes 
to take place as time passes. Simulated annealing 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing) is the magic spell 
that might work for wikixyzs in a way similar to that in the real world.

The rationale behind my suggestion is of course that articles that have 
matured over time are - statistically speaking - less likely to improve 
when large modifications are made than relatively new ones. Some of the 
articles have reached a stage where well-meant editing effectively mucks 
up the inner structure and logic.

What I think reasonable is to lift the threshold for substantial edits, 
maybe not by limiting access but by asking for more substantial 
background information from the authors (references, printed, 
electronic,...) than the simple comment line. There is too much unproven 
and partially unprovable information in the WP. That could have been 
prevented long ago by obliging the authors to give references for their 
information. Besides, this task would make it successively harder to 
simply put established statements upside down. Whereas scientific 
journals have peer review to prevent superfluous or erroneous 
contributions, WP only offers the weak weapons of discussion pages (for 
everyone) and reverts (mostly by admins, who can't always claim 
erudition in all the domains they are watching, I guess).

So why not confer a little bit more of responsibility to the authors!? 
He/she could be aided by predefined lists, checkboxes, comboboxes (for 
ref.type, etc.). Asking a little more information from authors could be 
a substantial part of the rising editing threshold necessary for 
"cooling down" WP a bit.

I find myself increasingly involved in hunting down vandals and their 
work – partly due to the ease of use WP offers for non-serious edits, 
too, and I can‘t help feeling that a larger and larger part of WP keeps 
a larger and larger part of the community busy with just keeping up the 
existing standard. We mustn't be sure of still finding enthusiatic 
acclaim in the years to come when WP becomes a battlefield in a fight 
against distracting, redundant or plain wrong infobits.

Comments from both the user/admin and developer side welcome.

Best,

kai (kku)