dresese

How to fix Wikipedia

Wikipedia has problems. Big problems, even acknowledged by it's founder, Jimmy Wales. The problem is that Wikipedia styles itself as an encylopedia, but it's articles are of questionable accuracy, and are often badly put together.

The strength of Wikipedia is that anyone can add content. This is a nice way to get a lot of different content, with a lot of different perspectives. However, it is not a nice way to get a coherent and valuable article.

Wikipedia needs to have, first of all, a reputation system. Wikipedia makes no effort to distinguish between valuable contributers, and contributers who do nothing really worthwhile. Sure, vandals might be banned, but everyone else is equal. Also, reputation has to mirror real-life reputation. If you are writing an article about the Marvel Comics, the input of Stan Lee is just more valuable then the input of your average Wikipedia user. But note that in this case the reputation is constrained to a particular topic. I trust Stan Lee to help create an article about Marvel Comics, but not to help create an article about differential equations. Similarly, some posters might create value in a particular topic, but have a negative effect in another topic.

So, the first element in my proposal is a reputation system where each user has a reputation in a particular topic area.

With this reputation system, you could have three levels of content for each article. The first is the content as it exists today, which is the level-playing field free-for-all. I call this content level the "low level content". Users of high enough reputation (which should be just a handful of users) get a brand new article in which they can build up, using new content, or content from the lower level of content. This content level is the "medium level content". Finally, what should be just two or three users with the highest reputation should edit a "high level content", drawing from the lower two levels.

Each level provides ready-made text which to edit to the level above, and since each successive level is contributed by fewer people, the editing should be tighter, and the site more stable.

Notice how this solution is different than the solution proposed by Wales, which is "branching" content that has reached a level of acceptability to a sort of "release branch Wikipedia". That solution results in a static release branch, which is not very internet-appopriate because it is static. Also, it assumes that content can get to a releasable quality with the current system. That is almost certainly a false assumption. My system lets Wikipedia be Wikipedia, but also provides for additional layers of quality that are less and less Wikipedia-like, and have more and more quality. All the levels can feed off each other, and I think the entire process has something for everyone.

The question I have not answered is how to do a reputation system, especially a reputation system that is context-sensitive. It's a difficult question, but I'll try and write another article about it soon. I have to figure it out first, though.