Wikipedia 2.0, Now With Trust?
Slashdot -54 minutes ago
USB EVDO writes "The online encyclopedia is set to trial two systems aimed at boosting readers' confidence in its accuracy. Over the past few years, ...


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Stable versions, Wikipedia's holy grail. What I really don't get is why, if stable versions really are going to 'fix' all the problems they have with BLPs, they don't just delete/permanently semiprotect the articles of contention until stable versions is released. Surely that would be the courteous thing to do.

And stable versions just don't make sense. They have two options:

1) Reviewing every article on the wiki and marking a stable version

and

2) Only making stable versions of frequently vandalised articles

The problem with 1) is that it just won't scale - they'd end up with a massive backlog of revisions that need to be checked and the problem with 2) - well, all the vandalism is going to spread to lesser watched parts of the wiki, isn't it?

I am extremely skeptical of this update.

The problem with stable versions is that they require community decision that are...you know...the product of a dysfunctional social networking community. It's like playing wack-a-mole. You can shift the location of the bad decision making but the bad decision making just pops up somewhere else.

If an article is contentious and much-edited, it's probably because there are conflicting POVs and the winners (those with the Cabal or at least several admins on their side) will impose their POV.

You might enjoy my comment about that article. It links to Wikipedia Review.