Having "stable" versions of articles requires the ability to "lock"
pages,
which requires new or adapted software. If the wiki software is changed
anyway, I'd suggest a "namespace" mechanism. I already mentioned that
somewhere, I just forgot where;). So, here again, my proposal:
- Enable article names that have a namespace at the beginning, separated by
a ':'
- A blank namespace, like ':HomePage', leads to the "normal", current
wikipedia
- If no namespace is given ('HomePage'), the link is within the current
namespace. So, once you view an article with a namespace, it will link to
destinations within that namespace unless stated otherwise.
- The current namespace is displayed at the top of the page.
- Other namespaces that have an article with the same name are displayed as
links to these articles.
That would enable the following scenario:
- Article "xyz" is developed as usual
- Some authorized person decides that this article is great, and cpoies it
to "stable:xyz"
- The article "xyz" can be developed further as usual
- The article "stable:xyz" is for view only, unless you have special
authorization, and can be linked to or cited
- Links in "stable:xyz" would, without changes, automatically go to other
"stable:" articles, while the same article in the ":" namespace would
link
to normal wikipedia articles
- A link within the "stable:" namespace that leads to a blank page could
automatically lead to the normal wikipedia, or display a page "no stable
version, see the normal one", or something similar.
There could also be a "talk" namespace, for example, to get rid of these
ugly "/Talk" pages ;)
Or a "data" namespace, to store, say, famous texts that are in the PD now.
I don't see a problem implementing such a mechanism, and it won't hinder
wikipedians in any way, it just adds an option.
Magnus
-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin(a)nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Robert Bihlmeyer
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11:36 AM
To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's scope
<lsanger(a)nupedia.com> writes:
The other disadvantage mentioned, that references
might lead to personal
embarrassment, doesn't strike me as a terribly huge disadvantage. Who,
after all, is going to *cite* a Wikipedia article? Nobody, or at least,
nobody before we have "stable versions" of articles (if we
*ever* do)
that
are given a stamp of approval (perhaps by Nupedia
review groups).
That's what I meant.
But the reliability problem, if it is one, can creep up inside
Wikipedia as well. Just now, I wrote on [[i386]]:
See [[Intel]] for a comprehensive list of all CPUs produced by
that company.
This is correct now, but actually I find the big list on [[Intel]] a
bit too much information without proper presentation. I'll not do
anything about that yet, but other Wikipedians may have the same
feeling, and, say, put the list on one or more other pages.
One feature missing is finding all reference to a page. I don't think
the new search supports that yet.
But I think we probably will, in the distant (how
distant, who knows)
future, have an official approval process (that is kept
carefully separate
from the article-generation process). It would
make sense to
save copies
of the exact article that was approved, for
citation purposes, or to
populate a database of "approved articles."
I don't know whether you imply that, but I am against keeping the
approved pages separate from the "main" Wikipedia.
One can already link to stable version like
<URL:http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=browse&id=Pentagon&r
evision=3>
the only problem being that older revisions are cleaned out. The
easiest solution is keeping all revisions, or keeping them longer. But
I don't know how this would influence disk space requirements, and,
more important, I'm not the one shelling out $$ for it ...
Approval comes to the rescue: Why not a few weeks worth of revisions,
as we do now, AND approved revisions going back 5 years?
I.e. what I'm proposing is that when some approval authority decides
that revision X is good, nothing more than a "approved" bit is
flipped. All approved revisions are marked in the "View other
revisions" page of an article, they have a longer expire period, and
one is able to instruct the wiki.cgi to hand out the latest approved
version. Nothing more changes.
It should also be possible to get a diff between the last approved and
any newer revision. That makes re-approval easier as well.
That is largely similar to the "stable" and "development" branches
used in many software products.
And, at this stage anyway, the best way to keep a
lot of people
working on it is by keeping it completely free.
If you meant free-from-restrictions, "at this stage anyway" is
misleading. I don't know of a feasible legal way to change the
Wikipedia license apart from starting from scratch.
If you meant for-free, that can certainly change. But I suspect that
there will always be parties willing to sponsor the costs for hosting
Wikipedia.
--
Robbe