Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

A solution is to be a bit like Slashdot and do things by 
vote.  My schema (which I'm not particularly attached to and 
which can serve as a jumping-off point) involves ranking 
articles depending on how well "moderated" it is, and how 
good the people ranking the article have been in the past.

So 
- Article WikiBlah Bug is entered by Person A.

- It is made available immendiately with a big 
red "UNVERIFIED" label across the top.

- Immediately, it is also put in the list for moderation

- Anyone who logs in and has indicated that they will 
moderate, will be informed that the article is available for 
review.

- A formula should be used to select whom an article should 
be shown to.  For instance, the next "experts"  to log in 
after the article is posted should be asked to score the 
article and this stopped once the target of (say) six experts 
is reached.  Similarly, it should also be offered to six (or 
however many is found to work best) non-experts for scoring.

- If a person's indicated area of expertise matches the 
classification the article was placed under, their vote 
carries a slight weighting.  These are "experts" and their 
expertise is rated by how many articles they are in 
concordance with their peers in.

- a person also has the option of selecting a "don't know" 
button - their "expertise" in the particular subject is then 
reduced accordingly.

- If this person has a history of consensus with their peers 
in this subject, (i.e. they seem to be getting it right more 
than they're getting it wrong,) their vote carries an 
additional weighting and they are considered an expert, or a 
negative weighting in the case of repeated non-consensus.  
The more positive this rating the more expert a reviewer is.

- Both the "specialist rating" and "general rating" scores of 
the article are indicated and the "UNVERIFIED" label removed 
once the required number of scores have been received and 
averaged.  Until those review scores are reached, readers 
should be able to see both the label and the scores.

- Specialist scores (someone who knows that particular 
subject well as indicated by their positive weighting in that 
subject) are the major component of the article score.

- Should a reviewer feel the article has been miscategorised, 
they may suggest a different category.  The article can then 
be split into two articles, one in each category, and the 
fittest of the two, after a certain threshold is reached, 
will survive while the other is removed.

This way, you will collect statistics about your pool of 
experts, contributors, and articles.  

I think this would improve wikipedia tremendously, as you 
have human peer review.  After a while you will have a huge 
list of subjects that a reviewer is "expert" in, and if they 
submit an article on a subject of their expertise, it could 
get a provisional rating immediately.

Social animal homo erectus being what it is, you will soon 
have a pool of experts on most topics, and therefore a 
possibility of expanding into an "ask the experts" forum as 
well.  Apply the same rating system to forum responses and 
you have another fine resource of wikipedia articles, 
the "vox populi articles" perhaps... 

Articles could also be distributed for review and scoring by 
email to the required number of reviewers, or else made 
available much as the Distributed Proofreading Project is.

I for one would find this to be a great confidence booster, 
I'm sure others would too.  Also, it ensures that the 
practical grassroots experts are found in each subject.  A 
database of email addresses of experts in many fields will be 
the result.  Important to note:  You don't NEED to know if 
the person answering all the questions on radium is Mme 
Curie - what's important is that the person is right.  Their 
ranking in the wikipedia expert system is their correct title 
as long as they produce the right information...

Awww ain't that all starry-eyed and idealistic...  But 
honestly, you could become the largest knowledge exchange in 
the world by doing this.