On 03/09/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
What version would new editors be editing if they found an error on a page and attempted to edit what they thought was that page?
Hmm, I think they'd be editing the current version, not the version they could see at first.
Semantically I would think they would have to update in turn from the latest available version in the database. There could quickly be problems with multiple versions of the page branching, and being hard to combine, if they were not editing the latest version.
I doubt there are any plans to support branching.
But yes, this initiative would make things easier for *regular* editors but somewhat more difficult for *casual* editors. One of the de: people involved in the initiative pointed this one out to me when I was writing the above, and so I think we can assume they are very aware of it and will be watching carefully.
Note that the above FAQ is now pretty much superfluous - there's a much more detailed one on meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits
and Jimbo has written a piece on the subject that got onto Slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/2224230
- d.