An open letter to Wikipedia

Wikipedia to launch page controls, BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm

Granted the 'control' period is a two month trial, and it is too early to speculate on the outcome. Anyone can predict some fallout or some success with the measures undertaken.

I however, would like to state the obvious and exclaim that this really undermines what Wikipedia is all about. For the people, written by the people.

When you see it for what it is, then yeah, there will be speling misteaks. There will be some unwarranted opinions. Some random speculation. There will be vandals. Gossip. Some "facts" will be questionable. Some essays will be of the highest scholarly level, others will look more at home on a napkin. Some articles will be more popular than others.

Well that is society in a nutshell. There will be jerks. There will be gossipers. We all gravitate to what's hot. Some of us take a measured approach to sharing info, others just want to get the word out.

And if you can grasp what Wikipedia set out to be, and also understand the populace it relies upon, were you expecting anything different? I certainly wasn't. It always was and always will be flawed.

Instead of going to the nth degee to 'perfect' Wikipedia, there should be a reminder or an alert to those who view or contribute articles: "Wikipedia is an evolving REFERENCE site that relies on contributions from anyone, including you. This is NOT a news source. This is not a place for speculation or opinion. The content contained herein should be seen as evolving and not resolute."   

You can only go so far to educate the masses on the purpose of a wiki. There will always be those who just won't grasp the concept.

Education and stating the obvious can only go so far. A few gaming-inspired solutions to help give back the Wiki to the people, without having to police their entries:

1. Colour-code the article: Black text for the portions that have stood the test of time. Green text for new additions. After a length of time, green turns to black. It not only announces how new the content is, but also invites being edited by readers.

2. Craigslist flagging: Perhaps after new additions, a pop-up would be available. I could flag from one of the drop-down options, citing vandalism, opinions, speculation, irrelevant, etc etc. Like Craigslist flagging, this would be dependant on multiple IP addresses to concur and remove the posting.

3. Expandable subsections: Here the cutting room floor of entries could reside. This is where the 'irrelevant' but related content could live, such as Trivia. Perhaps even long-winded entries could be contained here, leaving the cliff notes version in the main body. Yes it would be like stuffing the National Enquirer into Encyclopedia Brittanica, but there's no fighting this-- just grant it a provisional section that is not immediately accessible (like the discussion page).

4. News Feed: Perhaps a content-related Google news feed that at the bottom of the article. This offers some validity to actual/recent news events. However this may prescribe C-list celebrities to break laws to get attention.

5. Activity Metres: To indicate article popularity, edits, and activity. For example, if I saw at a glance that an article was averaging 300,000 views a day and was being edited 200 times an hour, and endured 3000 acts of vandalism this past week, then I'll have some indication of how popular/controversial the subject matter is, and I can infer it may be prone to vandals-- I'll read about Sarah Palin with a grain of salt.

In closing, I hope Wikipedia returns to what made it so appealing to begin with. I also implore Wikipedia to better exclaim what it is all about, and perhaps utilize more intuitive measures that make for more transparent safeguards.    

Accuracy and reader dependancy will take care of itself.