Article validation
I'm honestly here because I want to be convinced that article validation is a tractable problem. The problem is not so much technical as sociotechnical; we can't solve the social problems of finding trusted reviewers, creating a process, and so forth, such that we'll never get to the point where we agree on how to change the MediaWiki software (and it will require massive changes) to support the process.
Some guy from World Book (why is World Book represented at Wikimania panels? "We were tired of all the publicity Britannica was getting") is describing what they do to validate articles, which gets in to genuinely interesting things like validation expiration (every article in the World Book is on a timer and gets a full review every time its timer expires), explicit vs. systemic bias, and the difference between fact checking and substantive editorial process.
I'm still a skeptic now, at the end, but am less convinced that the 1.0 team is off its collective rocker; there may be something to this validation thing. But the cost in MW features is going to be pretty high.
(I should say, now that it is far too late, that I never actually intended to liveblog Wikimania and thus spam all y'all's friends pages, but it just sort of happened. I'm finding it quite fun and worthwhile. Apologies for the spam, however.)
ETA: Jeebus! We just had our first "It's Nupedia and thus it won't work" argument, an hour into the panel (with fairly constant questioning throughout.) Everybody else in the room must be as tired as I am. Noda Blast Radius Effect?
Some guy from World Book (why is World Book represented at Wikimania panels? "We were tired of all the publicity Britannica was getting") is describing what they do to validate articles, which gets in to genuinely interesting things like validation expiration (every article in the World Book is on a timer and gets a full review every time its timer expires), explicit vs. systemic bias, and the difference between fact checking and substantive editorial process.
I'm still a skeptic now, at the end, but am less convinced that the 1.0 team is off its collective rocker; there may be something to this validation thing. But the cost in MW features is going to be pretty high.
(I should say, now that it is far too late, that I never actually intended to liveblog Wikimania and thus spam all y'all's friends pages, but it just sort of happened. I'm finding it quite fun and worthwhile. Apologies for the spam, however.)
ETA: Jeebus! We just had our first "It's Nupedia and thus it won't work" argument, an hour into the panel (with fairly constant questioning throughout.) Everybody else in the room must be as tired as I am. Noda Blast Radius Effect?