> FWIW I think the formula to beat wikipedia is obvious: mirror it, get rid of notability, get rid of anonymity and hire the most prolific editors.
I would mirror the 100,000 most important articles. I'd then fact check them vigorously. Emphasis would be on truth, not verifiability. I'd keep anonymity, but I'd throw out the Wiki - editing would be done by paid employees from "suggested improvements" made by visitors. I'd pay people to create excellent quality diagrams, and include plenty of them. I'm a fan of translating STEM information into Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
There's no reason the ideas aren't compatible. I'm all for having different editing standards for the top X articles (senior edits can freely edit, edits from plebes have to wait Y hours or be ok'd) and the less notable articles.
If you wanted to run with the FB idea you could even have special privileges for the "confirmed user" for certain parts of their own bio page. If I don't know you and go to your page I see a wiki bio and whatever anyone has added. If we're wiki-friends I see all that plus your anything in your wikifriends area (pictures, whatever).
My theory on getting rid of notability is you'd have say Z million people come and make webpages for themselves and their friends and family. They'd learn the edit tools and process. And so you'd get an organic growth effect in both natural users and editors.
And of course the big incentive is that we're cutting good editors in on some adsense sharing, idk base it on some function of how substantive an edit is, how long it lasts and how popular the page is.
Encarta, Britannica and Citizendium have already proved many other approaches and/or management styles substandard.
Getting rid of notability: Are you talking about something like Wikia? Currently the largest network of gaming sites (30M unique views/mo.), but overall progress has been surprisingly slow since the start in 2004. Jimmy Wales as a founder and 11M raised less than a year ago.
I would mirror the 100,000 most important articles. I'd then fact check them vigorously. Emphasis would be on truth, not verifiability. I'd keep anonymity, but I'd throw out the Wiki - editing would be done by paid employees from "suggested improvements" made by visitors. I'd pay people to create excellent quality diagrams, and include plenty of them. I'm a fan of translating STEM information into Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
Again, this would require lots of cash.