arstechnica.com — Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told CNET in an interview that the Germans are coming?and they have a plan to save Wikipedia. The German-language version of Wikipedia will get an experimental overhaul in the next few weeks designed to cut down on vandalism, edit wars, and misinformation. How will it work? Through the magical power of trust.
Aug 23, 2006 View in Crawl 4
deltaphiAug 23, 2006
haha. but who can? (speak "high-german" without dialect?)
Closed AccountAug 23, 2006
People from North Rhine-Westphalia can, for example ;)
tomwilliamsAug 24, 2006
What surprises me is that it's taken so long for them to come up with this. There is this elephant in the living room mentality with some community websites that don't want to acknowledge the obvious point that not all users are equal. I think all User Generated Content sites should include weighting the contributor as part of posting new content.
Closed AccountAug 24, 2006
"The Germans are coming"Hide your precious beer.
luvkitAug 24, 2006
Why not simply highlight recent edits in red (or some other color) indicating that a recent change to the article had been made. Articles that don't get as many views could have the highlights longer than ones viewed more often.The idea would be to show readers that this material has not been 'peer reviewed' yet, and that it is potentially vandalism. Blatant vandalism could not only be disregarded by the readers, but easily identified by the 'experts.'
brad3378Aug 24, 2006
Out of curiosity, Does Wikipedia have the legal right to file a lawsuit against Colbert?Maybe this is legally considered sabotage, vandalism, or even somehow fall under a technicality of the Homeland Security act? (it should be obvious that I'm not a lawyer :-)Would it be a good or bad idea for Wikipedia to get the lawyers involved? On one hand, it might prevent similar future occurrences if a crime has been committed, but on the other hand, if contributors risk potential legal action for posting inaccurate information, many people may not contribute at all.Thoughts?
vuzmanAug 24, 2006
I didn't say we should throw the other languages (and cultural differences) away. I just wish there was we could all understand each other; as in we are able to communicate easily, but this is the first step to deeper understanding of each other's cultures.The reason I want English to be standard is because it's (relatively) easy, has the largest vocabulary of any language, and is the most widespread in the world, it's actually a de facto second language for most of the world's population. These are also the reasons why I'm not suggesting Esperanto.Btw, I'm not a lazy bum, English is actually my third language...
xofcAug 25, 2006
Here's an idea:Keep wikipedia the way it is, but add a parallel 'fully peer reviewed' side to wikipedia that has undergone such scrutiny. This would be similar to the wiki 1.0 idea, but not nearly as static. For those that want the latest on rapidly changing events, there's the original wikipedia. For people who want fully peer reviewed articles, as proposed in the German wikipedia, there's the other system.Why not have both at once?
vuzmanAug 26, 2006
I both agree and disagree. English is very culturally tainted, but since English is so widespread it has been tainted by several different cultures. The influence of the internet on English for the past 10+ years has made this even more true. Today, English is, to a far bigger degree than any other language, the most multi-culturally tainted language, making it also the most neutral language (apart from maybe Esperanto, which has only been tainted by the 30 people who actually know it).