Michael Snow wrote:
Stable versions that feed into development versions,
with the latter
clearly identified as such (in David Gerard's words, 1995-style yellow
and black "Under Construction" GIFs), would do quite a bit to defuse
these problems, I think. In particular, I don't think the urge to
delete would be nearly as strong, and the concern about harm to
Wikipedia's image from be minimized. The time to provide stable
versions has come.
Copyediting myself: "The concern about harm to Wikipedia's image from
bad articles would be minimized."
--Michael Snow