Now, visually, Wikipedia could show, for each article:

A) The most recent contributor’s signature, and her group, if any

B) The top three most active contributors in volume.

C) Next to every name and group name, a colour blob and/or percentage indicating that contributor’s rating, i.e. trustworthiness.

This way, not only individuals, but also editing teams can make themselves a name for being trustworthy. My thought is that an editing team can make itself a name as dependable as a newspaper’s brand.

In this “trial” against 205.240.227.15 is entitled:
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/205.240.227.15

The charges (in my view spurious) are:
1: Section blanking.
2: Anti Castro POV (point of view) and/or fabrications.
3: Lying about content of source
4: Vandalism (attack on other editors)

What you say has much merit. However, the function of the mechanism of mass action that you describe applies only to individual input; group input, as you mention in passing, especially from organized government groups (e.g. Chinese censorship apparatus) which have almost unlimited manpower, is entirely another kettle of fish.

There’s a couple of things going on here to pay attention to. In a broader sense, it’s a darwinistic approach to an encyclopedia, relying on the numbers to correct the mistakes and inaccuracies. As a very, very minor-league Wikipedian, I can say that the “sofixit” response is indeed the best, only, and most successful one. It relies on no centralized control, but instead on *us*. That’s one of the basic premises of Wikipedia — harnessing the network of users across the globe, instead of a central hierarchal editor pyramid. If you don’t like open source, then don’t use Wikipedia, because that is the very heart of its concept. Go use Britanica.

“Sofixit” is, in fact, the only reason I started posting to Wikipedia — I spotted some articles in fields I am knowledgeable in that were egregiously wrong, and corrected them. It was either that, or complain about inaccuracies — I put my money where my mouth was. Why is this too much to ask of, well, in this case, the entire World?

Now on a case by case basis of your suggestions:

1.) Reliability. Having more people to police the articles would be great. Of course, the difficulty will remain of having enough of them. It’s like having many hundreds of managing editors. I have no idea how the higher end of Wikipedia works, or if any of it’s staff get paid, but if it’s anything like the other internet communities I have participated in/administered/ran, it’s probably a primarily volunteer effort. If Wikipedia became a paying concern as part of, say, an expanding Google empire, maybe that could change. But otherwise? That’s a lot of pain to ask for no compensation.

2.) Real names. I’d have no problem with this, and I think this is the strongest case that you can make. Restricting membership, revealing true identities, and even providing credentials would greatly contribute to a less fast-and-loose method of handling material on the site. Apparently it is a tradition that many on Wikipedia do not log in or use their real names, and certainly, track record can help legitimize a poster. But real names may just be an inevitable development.

For those needing anonymity, it would be easy enough to arrange such with the Wikipedia admins, with a decent reason why. Just the same as anonymity is conferred in special circumstances in the dead tree media, it can be in new media as well.

3.) References. There is now a field, when editing, for the “reason” for the edits; the custom tends to be that the editor will place some kind of reference to what he changed and why there, in a very general sense.

Adding more fields? That would require reworking the database to include another field, and if realized for *every* edit on the page, that could be a *lot* of fields. Example: in one case, I rewrote an article to the extent that 30% of the finished article was rewritten with the correct facts, and 60% was entirely new. With a total of 90% of the finished work being essentially a “change”, can you imagine how many notes would be required? Far more than the article itself, in word count. Lets add to that the heavy lifting in rewriting the software engine to include the additional fields. I don’t envy working with that size of database.

4.) Citations. Actually, it’s part of Wikipedia’s policy to require references. However, enforcement is not always consistent, and some articles have few references. They are, however, already supposed to have them, bibliography style at the ends of the articles. So this is an enforcement, not requirement, issue.

5.) Rating. Umm. No. A thousand times no. Having been in quite a few internet communities, I can definitively say that ratings are a dangerous, deceptive, misleading, pointless tool. Personal disputes, politics, and other external influences almost *always* motivate ratings. Unlike in eBay where you have a financial motivation, and eBay policing you, all you’ve got is a user based system, just as “open source” as the content you want to solidify the basis of. Only this time, people reading can’t read for themselves why a certain user has good or bad votes, and many quickly tire of reading the reasons and figuring out the history. It is very easy to slander someone with a rating system, and there is little recourse. The best rating system is the proof in the pudding — the contributor’s work, which can, if contributed by a registered user, be found without great difficulty.

And besides, if users were to use real names, ratings would be entirely irrelevant.

6.) Review prior to publication. Again, the problem is, you’re proposing to change the engine. Now the wiki editor has to await a moderator’s approval before taking change, slowing down the data entry process by large factors. It also means yet more stress being placed on the backs of a more hierarchal staff. More admin, more mods, and still thankless and for free. Would you do the work of an associate editor at a large newspaper for no pay? I wouldn’t. Hierarchy and “open source” rarely mix well if at all; being reciprocals, they often end up paralyzing an effort, rather than making it more successful.

In closing, a lot of good points. It’s interesting to see commentary on Wikipedia in a more “established” media outlet on the web at last. It promises to be a very interesting project as the decades wear on, and perhaps some of the suggestions which are now impractical will be less so in the future. But if you want “your father’s Oldsmobile” — i.e. a true 19th century style omnibus of solidity — Wikipedia will never be that. It’s a practical, pragmatic, workingman’s encyclopedia, not a scientific journal.

A last food for thought — how is Wikipedia all that less secure than, well, OJR? Anyone want to bet me I can’t register a false name here and post innaccurate commentary? That’s right — you rely on the peer review of other users to “call out” a troll for being a troll.

Just like Wikipedia. Only smaller.

It’s not a system that can’t be outwitted, but outwitting it is almost always more trouble than it’s worth. For example, someone could register multiple user accounts with different “personalities”, but unless they spent all their time editing, each account would have fewer edits credited to it, diminishing its credibility. (This leaves aside the challenge of making acceptable-to-wikipedia edits in different “accents”, as it were, and other difficulties our potential astroturfer would face.)

This is the advantage of relying on *people* — sheer huge numbers of people — as a counterweight to abuse, rather than automated systems. Even the most complex automated system (reputation system, for example) is simpler than any human, and can therefore be gamed pretty easily. A group of humans can be gamed, too, but with much greater difficulty.

I was hoping to have a Wikipedean here. Thanks, also, for clarifying the usage policy for anonymous users.

I’m glad you brought up the “sofixit” response. As Wikipedia grows and attracts more users who want to use it for serious research, I don’t think this response will get very far.

Wikipedia is a volunteer effort, but sometimes making suggestions as a user is the best contribution we can make.

The project leadership, because they have established “Britannica or better accuracy” as a goal, will need to find or allocate the resources to do so. I made these suggestions because I believe that they would help establish a stronger baseline of reliability from a user’s perspective.

If there are too many articles to fix these problems already then I’m afraid in the minds of Wikipedia’s harshest critics the project will never be useful. That’s too bad, because those critics, if converted, could be Wikipedia’s strongest allies.

Finally, with regard to the ebay user rating system: eBay transactions are atomic by nature. When it’s finished, that’s it. All necessary credentials are verified by eBay itself and that’s what makes the system work.

On Wikipedia however, users are truly anonymous. In journalism and research a person’s name and reputation are everything. There is no credit card or bank account to verify a writer’s credibility, nor is there an organization or an editor who can stand behind the writer’s work.