[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia subset proposal

Sun Nov 3 15:52:02 UTC 2002

Larry's Wikipedia subset proposal is an elegant solution to the problem 
of "freezing" a clean cut of the wikipedia.

Sign me up (I have Ph.D. Civil Engineering and teach transportation 
engineering, planning, and policy)

It should not go under the name nupedia, nor should it go under the 
name wikipedia, but something else. According to network solutions 
metapedia.com is owned, but metapedia.org and metapedia.net are 
available.  Hyperpedia.org is also a good name and available.

We might want to think about an updating protocol, as wikipedia 
articles evolve past the frozen versions, some sort of flagging would 
be in order of articles that diverged significantly from frozen 
articles and the "liquid" wikipedia open to edits.

We might also want to think about allowing multiple groups be able to 
"publish"  "frozen" versions at the touch of a button (sort of 
combination of Larry and Ed's idea).  Any individual/group, once 
registered, would be able to touch a button and establish a flag on a 
wikipedia article.  Thus in Frozen version A, the academics might have 
a tight standard and only review/update once in a blue moon, but 
another group B could freeze a different version and update more 
frequently.  Since these are only article flags on particular versions 
(all of which are stored in a single database), there would not be 
forking as such.  However someone could search only for group A.  Group 
A would have their own web interface (own name, own address).  If 
someone else didn't like group A's cut (too small, too elite, too 
whatever), they could publish their own take on the encyclopedia.

It would allow someone potentially to be using wikipedia to publish a 
non-NPOV encyclopedia, since versions in the middle of edit wars would 
be freezable by a particular group - but as long as that was somehow 
acknowledged, and the lines between liquid wikipedia and frozen 
wikipedia (versions A, B, ...) were established, I think it could be 
tolerated.

The issues of interlinking - linking to a "liquid" article would need 
to be addressed either by identifying it as external link, removing 
that link in the "frozen" version, or as some third kind of link.  
However, this raises questions of self-containment.

David Levinson
levin031 at tc.umn.edu