Imagine for a moment that an independent agency could assess and rank all of Wikipedia's top 2,000 Main-space editors, by virtue of how "good intentioned" they were in building an accurate and true encyclopedia.

Then, imagine you took the highest-ranking 100 of them -- the toppermost 5%, and gave them an entire fork of Wikipedia to play with. They could delete what they wanted, keep what they wanted, change what they wanted, add what they wanted, and even protect what they wanted. But, the community would only and forever be limited to those 100 editors, and them alone. You, or I, or Somey, or Awbrey, or SlimVirgin, would not be allowed to edit there (unless Awbrey or SlimVirgin made the Top 100 list, of course).

Couple of questions:

1. Do you think those people would work willingly for free to improve this fork, or would they prefer to stay at Wikipedia?

2. Do you think the Chosen 100 would soon descend into the bureaucratic drama that currently exists on Wikipedia, or would their annointed status as "good intentioned" people help keep them pure to the new cause?

3. If we think that this could work, why don't we do it?

4. How is Citizendium different than this concept?

5. Would the Chosen 100 consider ad-support for the new site, where they would share 90% of the ad revenue, and the Committee that chose them shares the other 10%?

I truly look forward to comments. Parse the thread, if necessary, mods!

Greg

Citizendum has its limits. I browse it and can trace various mistakes some articles are even worst than those on Wikipedia. (that's probably because they miss the advantage of having many people providing the sources and knowledge which Wikipedia has)

The solution is a merging of both concepts, leave the everyone can edit on the talkpages, which will help on the gathering of sources. Citizendum is limited there, because many don't want to disclose their names but still want to contribute. The really joyful part is in the exchange of sources. Then you leave the writting of the articles to those who are fit for the task. They should disclose their names, credentials, where they work and what they do as work etc.

This is what it really takes, this way people can still do propositions and keep their anonymity, but the last word will be the one of those who have judgement and take responsability of that they write.

Just this alone would fix many issues, then obviously no scrappy and stupid arbitration systems which are worthless anyway. No administrators, more like moderators in talkpages who also should disclose all their informations.

No craps like checkusers, report incidences and other such BS. On the talkpage, you simply make your point, provide the sources and then you provide scans if they're not from the web. As simple as that.

Just plain simple.

...or just not placing any faith in "encyclopedias" organized by rank amateurs, and instead promoting the concept of a free encyclopedia / resource complied by professionals who know what they are doing -- sponsored by advertising / donations / grants etc.

Fair enough... And it's probably also fair to say that I've begun to "go soft on them" by thinking that reform is actually possible, though I'd qualify that by saying that it's only possible within specific, limited contexts - in other words, a case-by-case basis, people being helped out here and there, and so on. Things are well past the point where any one person, or even a group of like-minded people, could take a new broom to the whole mess and radically change the culture. And as you're suggesting, you'd still have all sorts fundamental flaws in the whole concept to deal with.

There was an interesting post on wikback.com recently, written by Tony Sidaway of all people, in which he suggests that the prevalence of maintenance-phase editing behavior (i.e., fewer additions of actual content, more reverts, etc.) is attributable to the site's "getting over the post-December 2005 boom in new editors." In other words, he correctly identifies December 2005 as the high-water mark for growth in participation, and understands that this was too much too soon, and that the premature peak in itself resulted in serious problems in many areas. But like most old-guard WP'ers he sees this as some sort of "blip" that took some time to "get over," and now that they're supposedly over it, everything is just fine and dandy now.

But that's only a further indication of what we already know, which is that many of the old guard WP crowd have little or no sense of perspective (despite many of them having a decent amount of intellect and even some ability to spot trends and understand statistics). The harsh reality is that they're going to keep at it, perhaps indefinitely, ignoring all indications of the net-negative effect they're having on the web, and on world culture in general, because they simply have nothing better to do. And we can talk all we want about Wikipedia being a failed project, doomed to a continued erosion of quality and credibility, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists, and that people are still going to read stuff in it even if it's thoroughly discredited as a source of accurate and/or unbiased information.

In the end, it may wind up just being a sociological curiosity, but the content will still be with us - and in many cases plaguing us, spamming us, in multiple forms and locations, for quite a long time. To me, that's the real harm, and the real tragedy, of it all.

I feel the same about The Eagles.

There are well over a million articles. How long would it take 100 people to check all of them? What if among these 100 there was nobody with sufficient competence in say organic chemistry, bondage techniques, London tube stations or mediaeval Hebrew manuscripts to check some of the articles?

Thanks for the "split", mods.

I think a dedicated, motivated, financially-rewarded uber-editor could probably adequately examine 25 articles a day -- with the overall mission of deleting the 5 or 10 that are complete crap or utterly trivial (I'm thinking obscure asteroids here, but maybe they can stay since they're doing no harm), marking the 5 that need the utmost attention, and leaving the other 10-15 alone. That would mean 2,500 articles per day would be given the "initial review" by the Chosen 100. Working 300 days a year, that would mean they could get through 750,000 articles in the first year.

Of course, once they discover the nest of obscure asteroid / recording "studios" founded by red-linked 20-year-olds / New Zealand footballers with 2 sentences to their name articles, they could just delete all of those in quick succession, so you might find that 1,000,000 articles get the initial review in the first year.

There might be a rule of thumb that only 1 article per day per Chosen 100 gets any sort of "quality improvement" time. For example, "Folks, I'm going to do my Daily 25, then work on getting the stink of SlimVirgin out of [[factory farming]]." "Okay, good luck with that, but don't spend more than a day on it."

After a year, word would begin to spread that there's this "reliable" version of Wikipedia that 100 of the best former Wikipedia editors and admins are working on. It would get more traffic than Veropedia (less than 6,000 articles now), because there'd still be more than a million articles, resident on Chosen100pedia.com, rather than redirecting back to Wikipedia (like Veropedia currently does). And since it would be "closed", the Chosen could really go to town with their editing, unmolested.

This is a fantasy, isn't it? Which mod named this thread that?



Greg

The two questions I would most like discussed at first are:

1. Do you think those Chosen 100 people would work willingly for free to improve this fork, or would they prefer to stay at Wikipedia? What if they got a pro-rated share of 90% of the AdSense revenue?

2. Do you think the Chosen 100 would soon descend into the bureaucratic drama that currently exists on Wikipedia, or would their annointed status as "good intentioned" people help keep them pure to the new cause?

Let's just talk about those two questions for a day, please?

Greg

Mea culpa.

We can't know for sure if we don't try. I admit the ''working for free'' is a little bit problematic. Fund raising could help them a little bit.

Some might do it for free, some might do it if there's cash involved, some might do it regardless. I have a feeling that the "Chosen 100" would be the types who are either a) grossly uninterested in the messy side, or B) only really annoyed by content issues. Thus, if they're doing it for free now, to be able to do it for free in a place that actively caters to their needs as an editor (specifically the "Leave me alone and let me improve things" need) would probably be beneficial to them if they can be convinced that it's not a loser fork like Citizendium or Veropedia.



I think the two ideas are mostly exclusive. In the event that there's overlap - let's use myself as an example - the question would be whether the bureaucratic drama was due to a need to engage in it or an interest in improving the situation. I'd like to think that, for the most part, my "bureaucratic drama" was mostly in the realm of strong disagreements regarding the best way to build the encyclopedia, as opposed to secret lists and badsites and what have you (but I'm hardly an unbiased source, either). Obviously, the "Chosen 100" would be vetted in that context - for instance, if I made the shortlist to be whittled down, I'd fully expect my inclusionist record to be a topic of discussion.

I mean, look at it another way - there's no chance a Tony Sidaway or JzG or Cyde would make this cut - the question would be more as to whether a Mongo would.

ETA: I really need to shut off emoticons.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but neither Veropedia nor (especially) Citizendium are true "forks" of Wikipedia. Veropedia redirects to Wikipedia when you encounter an "unVerofied" article, and Citizendium simply wholesale scrapped the entire idea of importing Wikipedia content. Right?

So, by definition, it couldn't be construed as a loser fork, since it would be a more unique fork, more like Answers.com, without the silly WikiAnswers clutter being answered by anonymous idiots.

The idea of the sheer marketing power of having a "Chosen 100" is starting to grow on me. It could be a "guild" in perpetuity -- as members retire (or croak), the remaining members would induct new apprentices into the guild. Indeed, the site could adopt the Jack Welch model and every year, jetison the bottom 10% of members (after they're paid), in terms of quality, quantity, and harmony of production (as voted by the guild), and replace them with 10 new editors.

Another note -- obviously, real-world identity would be required (at least for the site owner's records) so that advertising revenues could be distributed to real names and real addresses. Those who wished to continue pseudonymous editing would forfeit their right of payment.

Next post -- how much money could be expected...

Then it becomes WikInfo with a gimmick. A decent gimmick, mind you, but still a gimmick.

Wikimedia sites claim about 7 billion page views per month. I think I'm about correct to say that the English Wikipedia accounts for about 25% of those, so let's say 1.75 billion.

How much market share might Chosen100pedia steal from Wikipedia? Optimistically, perhaps in 2 years' time, let's imagine 3% of the English Wikipedia's traffic, as it becomes a more "reliable" source for schools and journalists to reference as a source.

That would equate to about 50 million page views per month, or 600 million per year.

Google AdSense might get about 0.5% click-through rates, or 3,000,000 click-throughs per year. At an average of 30 cents per click (that's my experience, anyway), that would be $900,000 per year. The site owner team would keep 10% ($90,000), and distribute the rest on a pro-rated basis to the Chosen 100 -- $8,100 per editor.

Sure, there will be server and hosting costs -- but these could be covered by "special" custom advertising on the Main Page, above and beyond the Google AdSense ads.

How many of those wacky, free-labor, Wikipedian slaves would whole-heartedly jump wiki-ships for $8,100 a year? What if the Chosen100pedia could steal 6% of Wikipedia's traffic, doubling the annual payday to over $16,000?

Is this idea crazy, or brilliant? Both?

Greg

I'd say both, don't forget there are people who already edit for free. There could be fund raising each years.