Assignment 11 -- Adam Towne

I read the Wikipedia page on Fusion Power. The first thing that I want to note is that I initially searched for Controlled Fusion, which is actually a German band. I obviously didn't want that, and since the page did not have a link to Fusion Power, I was forced to type in another search term, Fusion Energy. This effectively redirected me to Fusion Power. This was unnecessarily difficult.

On the subject of collaboration, it was clear there were two ways of working on the content of the Fusion Power page: adding content and correcting user content. Users tended to do one or the other. One user, Repku, tended to insult users whose things he had corrected, and interesting dichotomy since Repku's reputation is on the line. It was also interesting to note that corrections were generally done in spurts, where people corrected several things over a fifteen minute period, while adding material took longer.

Repku does bring up the point that idiots can and do edit pages, and Fusion is a very complicated topic. Some people say that this is the problem with Wikipedia. Anyone can make an entry. I would say that can have bad results, the fact that anyone can edit a page can lead to good results.

I think that what would really help this process is some sort of certification system. My idea is very complicated, and I don't know how it all would work. But say a user has a PhD in Physics that he received while working on a fusion project. That person should have some sort of status option that reveals that they have extensive knowledge of fusion, and should increase their repuatation accordingly. For something as complicated as fusion, it is unclear whether the masses would know about it, and maybe some higher form of deciding who can edit what should be implemented. Knowing that experienced users would be editing certain topics would make collaboration easier. It is hard to expand knowledge while constantly nitpicking about the mistakes of less knowledgable people.