I understand what you're saying, Charlie, but one problem I see is with this proposed "vetting" process. Yes, no doubt some professors and "experts" would be willing to volunteer their time. However, this will (a) create a bottleneck and (b) impose a top-down hierarchy. I hope that Jimmy Wales will never lose sight of the importance of eschewing that kind of control. Its absence is what makes Wikipedia great. Perfection = Completed = Decomposing Matter.

Wikipedia already has a top-down hierarchy. Pages get locked which are very controversial. Who makes those decisions? There are also other decisions made about the community. The "absence" you describe is illusionary.

Also, there does not have to be a hierarchy in this process. Some kind of community moderation system could accomplish the same. Wikipedia users could vote on whether or not a page is ready for feature freeze. Then another vote on whether the page was deeemed stable. Once the vote count reached some predetermined threshold, it would move to the next stage.

I had thought about what the voting idea. It might be hard to implement. I keep thinking of how tightly kernel development is regulated--I don't think that's a good model for a public encyclopedia. But you're right, of course, there are already many techniques in place to deal with administration. Vandals are IP-blocked, for instance. Whatever administrative techniques the 'pedia brings to the table, I hope they will empower the community to police itself rather than establish a hierarchy.

Think of the two versions in this way. The stable version becomes the fixed version to satisfy everyone that is very concerned about accuracy. However, like most open source projects, many people would use the unstable version just as they use Wikipedia now. The stable version would be tightly controlled, but not the unstable.

So the idea is to add in a stable version and let the current version continue on its merry way for the most part :)

"Thus, to avoid future problems, Wales plans to bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. That change will go into effect Monday, he said, adding that anonymous users will still be able to edit existing entries."

Growing pains for Wikipedia

I like my solution better :)

There is another possibility. Someone could open up their own, tightly-controlled wikipedia alternative. What's to stop some third party from copying wikipedia articles, locking them down, and hiring folks to occasionally watch wikipedia for intelligent changes? That kind of use is fully allowed under the GNU Public Documentation License that covers the wikipedia. Granted, it probably wouldn't be as popular as the REAL wikipedia...

I'd be concerned that this edition would fork from Wikipedia that would eventually move away from keeping up with Wikipedia updates if it was not a Wikipedia sponsored project. Nevertheless, this is definitely a real possibility except for the fact that GNU Public Documentation License is kind of a pain to work with.

I've heard you make that claim before. What's so painful about it? It's not as well-publicized as CC, but I don't find it confusing or ambiguous.

I'm sure you've read through all of the requirements. It's not nearly as simple as CC. It was specifically designed for Stallman's view on documentation writing. It imposes too many contraints on formatting.

I was reading about some of the problems here at the Wikipedia. I can see where Stallman was going with these "problematic" lines, but maybe we'll see some patches in a new version.

That will probably not help Wikipedia. See the "10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE" of the GFDL used by Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is stuck with the version they are using unless the idea is from the notice on the bottom of each page that they are not version specific.