On 4/22/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/04/07, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
Personally, I think that once stable versions are
finally implemented
many of the major deletionism issues that have been going on for years
will fade away. That's the change I'd really like to see, it'll make
Wikipedia safer for work-in-progress again.
HELL YES.
Man, that's going to be a showdown of epic proportions. I'll again idly
note that there's some significant opposition to the idea of article
stability, and nothing appears to be happening to address that.
I'm hoping that stable versions won't increase _article_ stability, and
in fact I think it'll actually make articles easier to change.
My own feeling on the matter is that this is probably wishful thinking.
As an example, I've been involved in a bit of a
dispute over at
[[Transhumanism]] where an editor who's done a lot of work on the
article has now declared it to be "finished", and has been rather
aggressive in reverting further changes because he believes new
additions that aren't up to the same standards as existing material
reduce the overall quality of the article. With stable version flagging,
we could mark the version that got FA status and then people could work
freely on the article without fear of disruption until a new and
improved FA-quality version ensued.
To use your example to explain my feeling on the matter, we *already*
can mark the version that got FA status. In fact, it's already
marked. If you click on [show] next to the featured article message,
you can see quite plainly that
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transhumanism&oldid=53177243
is when the article received FA status.
Could we show by default the featured article and make people click
through to the work in progress? Yes, although I'm sure it's
debatable whether or not we should. If we did that, would this
appease the person who's agressive in reverting changes which s/he
feels is making the article worse? Probably not. Even if so, are
there that many featured articles in the first place? No, so then
you've gotta have good articles, and semi-good articles, and
non-vandalised articles, etc. Could this be implemented well?
Probably, though it would take an awful lot of time and energy to
maintain even after the technical parts are implemented. Will it be
implemented well? I doubt it.
Anthony