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)