A quest for thinking

Well, it took a bit, but Lanier finally brought up something from the internet's early days that I agree should be brought back. His description of ThinkQuest as a replacement for the spot that Wikipedia holds on the internet is a great one. I think that the transition would have to be slow, with the established judges for each topic considering the merits of the pre-existing Wikipedia pages. This would make it expensive, but could be made cheaper by appealing to academics in the name of having possibly greatest research tool in the history of mankind actually be acceptable as a source. Since this part alone would take years, there would need to be even more judges ready to examine incoming submissions of new topics or revisions. I think that timed deadlines for new submissions of articles would also be a good idea, as that would allow judges to only be needed for a certain amount of time, barring major occurences happening that would require immediate updates. There should therefore be a panel of general judges ready at all times for these emergency updates that could be reviewed further once the situation had been adressed.

Basically, my main drive behind this is to address the legitimacy of the most widely available information resource. Having it reviewed by experts to determine the authenticity of the information while also creating competition for the information to be presented in the best way would be immensely helpful to the world at large.

One further revision that I would like to see would be a few levels of the site for different education levels. Let younger kids have access to some topics discussed at their level which they can, with a parent's help, advance to a higher level if they find the information too basic for them. This would allow for children that may not be able to learn something due to an unfortunate situation being able to learn about an area that they are interested in.