Sometimes it’s useful to be able to take a look at something and work out how it could be improved. It’s one of those intellectual challenges that helps keep the mind fresh. For me, it’s as rewarding as a crossword puzzle or game of sudoku.

As to the ideas themselves, perhaps they’ll end up on Wikipedia. I suspect though that they’ll be introduced by a separate consultant brought in by the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than being picked up on here. That said though, it probably won’t matter anyway. If someone else uses these ideas to build something better than Wikipedia, I’m comfortable with that.

You see, Wikipedia’s greatest asset (apart from brand name) is it’s contributors. While some of them are fans of Wikipedia as an environment, I suspect that a fair chunk are purely involved with the idea of sharing knowledge freely. The content cannot be described as an asset – anyone else can take a copy of it for whatever purpose. The platform isn’t really an asset either – it’s an out-of-date open source project that has suffered from a lack of vision and strategy for a long time

The greatest risk to the project isn’t in lack of funding or IT resources, it’s in lack of contributors. If these ideas manage to demonstrate how a team of people can produce a better quality product than Wikipedia with fewer contributors, the Wikimedia Foundation is at risk. if it’s possible to demonstrate this while still maintaining the “anyone can edit” mantra, I’d suggest that the WMF could have substantial problems.