Wikipedia is a successful project. You can read mostly well-written summaries of nearly every single area of human knowledge, and for the most part it's accurate and accessible with nice diagrams etc.
I assume, you being an intelligent human being, assumed a “...for me” behind every sentence. Because else they don’t make sense. Since you can’t possibly know this for all the >6.5 billion people on the planet. ;)
And this again is the exact same problem that I meant in my above comment. Everything on Wikipedia is by definition hearsay from untrustworthy sources. We only accept it, because it fits our inner model. But most of that, let’s face it, is also based on hearsay. That’s how our society works, and it’s usually good, except for when it’s not.
but when I think about it I know that I wouldn't want to deal with ridiculous one-off articles like malamanteau just because people are having fun dicking around.
That’s the nice thing about my approach. See, the conflict is that 1. you want to decide what you want to see without effort, but 2. you do not EVER have the right to decide what others want to see. (Otherwise, point 1 would either fall, or make you a dictator [like Wikipedia now].)
And my approach is the following: Cascading trust relationships.
Imagine there being N versions of X articles. Now Jimmy Wales could choose specific versions of a specific set of articles, and call it “Wikipedia”. BUT: So could everybody else. AND: Your set could build on other sets, extending them. Including rules of priority. Like: General base from Wikipedia, quantum physics from HawKing, politics from StewBeef, and these couple of articles should be that version. Or generically:
myWiki = articleVersionSet(100% trusted,EMPTY_SET)
where articleVersionSet($trust,$partialSet) = $newPartialSet ++ articleVersionSet($trust-1,$newPartialSet)
where $newPartialSet = $partialSet ++ (articleVersionSet
from (the one
of $trustworthyPersons
with $priorityOfTrustworthiness[$thatPerson] >= $trust
)
for $trustedTopics[$thatPerson]
if (not already in $partialSet))
)
As you can see, this means only a tiny set of decisions (min=1) is required, to get your individual Wikipedia. Without telling anybody else what to do. With maximum possible freedom (100%). The key factor is your network of trust. As in real life. Who’da thunka that? ^^
People could dick as much around as they wanted. If nobody trusts them in the first place, nobody will notice. If somebody does, either your friend will lost trust in him, or you will lose trust in your friend. Which counters *any* kind of abuse nicely. :)
