There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a talk page.
So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long period of time.
(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need basic work).
FF
That's not exactly in the spirit of wiki
On 10/27/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a talk page.
So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long period of time.
(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need basic work).
FF _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N.
Why not? It's not as if people couldn't request to edit it, unprotect it, or suggest needed changes. The goal of Wikipedia is to produce good, reliable content, if I recall.
Anyway, I was thinking of it after reading something that Jimbo himself had written (http://www.ladlass.com/ice/archives/009846.html) so I don't think saying it's not in the spirit of wiki (as if wiki had a single spirit, anyway) is really quite going to cut it by itself.
FF
On 10/27/05, Ilya N. ilyanep@gmail.com wrote:
That's not exactly in the spirit of wiki
On 10/27/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a talk page.
So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long period of time.
(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need basic work).
FF _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/28/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Anyway, I was thinking of it after reading something that Jimbo himself had written (http://www.ladlass.com/ice/archives/009846.html) so I don't think saying it's not in the spirit of wiki (as if wiki had a single spirit, anyway) is really quite going to cut it by itself.
That link reflects something which was widely misquoted in the press. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements_August_2005#August_5 :
"Numerous news outlets are quoting a Reuters report that Jimmy Wales has stated that there will be a "freeze" on editing. Jimbo says that statements about methods for achieving the widely-discussed stable "Wikipedia 1.0" were misinterpreted as implying a project-wide lockdown. Wikipedia's open editing will continue for the forseeable future, and any potential stabilized version would exist alongside the current system. Jimbo was last seen looking for the 'edit this page' link on the Reuters article."
Angela.
On 27 Oct 2005, at 17:16, Fastfission wrote:
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a talk page.
Show me an article so good that it cant be improved.
And reverting can be used to do this if you really want.
Justinc
Obviously anything "can" be improved. But when articles hit a state where most of their edits are incremental additions of misc. information, rather than real contributions of encyclopedic content, I think it's worth asking whether or not that's helping anything.
FF
On 10/27/05, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
On 27 Oct 2005, at 17:16, Fastfission wrote:
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a talk page.
Show me an article so good that it cant be improved.
And reverting can be used to do this if you really want.
Justinc
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Fastfission wrote:
Obviously anything "can" be improved. But when articles hit a state where most of their edits are incremental additions of misc. information, rather than real contributions of encyclopedic content, I think it's worth asking whether or not that's helping anything.
I am reminded of a comment that Ward Cunningham who invented the Wikiwiki software, is alleged to have said to Jimbo, way back when Wikipedia was but a few weeks old. He observed that a Wiki is nothing more than an ongoing conversation (kinda like what happens between academics with their specialized journals & conferences), but which never can be brought to an end -- unlike anything written for publication.
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Geoff
On 10/27/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote: --snip--
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Hogwash. Unless you intend to stop the flow of time and the recording of history, there will be no "end" to the work needed at Wikipedia.
Oh, but eventually the sciences will be covered! Or will they? Our pace of scientific discovery hasn't been slowing, it's been accelerating.
Not only that, but new insight is always coming to the surface. I can't think of a single article on any topic that could reach a state where it should never need to be tweaked or adjusted over the next two hundred years. Imagine for a moment, had Wikipedia been started a hundred years ago. What would the [[Thomas Jefferson]] article look like then? While I'd love to have a hundred years of edit history on Thomas Jefferson to examine, I know we wouldn't accept any hundred year old version as the "best it could be".
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Michael Turley wrote:
On 10/27/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote: --snip--
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Hogwash. Unless you intend to stop the flow of time and the recording of history, there will be no "end" to the work needed at Wikipedia.
Oh, but eventually the sciences will be covered! Or will they? Our pace of scientific discovery hasn't been slowing, it's been accelerating.
I was talking about the act of writing. While rewriting is a vital part of writing, the author eventually reaches a final draft. Unless you enjoy struggling through an endless cycle of rough drafts covered with interlinear insertions & corrections -- which Wikipedia often resembles -- you will eventually come to an end point in your writing.
I have *no* idea how you came up with your interpretation of what I said; I never claimed to say what you are ranting against. I can only assume you have confused my email for someone else's.
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote:
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Britannica has been editing and rewriting and adding to their encyclopedia for two hundred and thirty-seven years now, with no sign that they're planning to stop changing stuff and publish the "Final Encyclopedia" any time soon. Why do you think Wikipedia is likely to start reaching an "endpoint" any time in the forseeable future? I think a version-rating method is probably vital in the near future to prevent our best articles from backsliding, we've become good enough in many areas that IMO this is a real concern. But we're nowhere near "done," and since the corpus of human knowledge is itself constantly changing I doubt we ever will be.
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Bryan Derksen wrote:
Geoff Burling wrote:
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Britannica has been editing and rewriting and adding to their encyclopedia for two hundred and thirty-seven years now, with no sign that they're planning to stop changing stuff and publish the "Final Encyclopedia" any time soon. Why do you think Wikipedia is likely to start reaching an "endpoint" any time in the forseeable future? I think a version-rating method is probably vital in the near future to prevent our best articles from backsliding, we've become good enough in many areas that IMO this is a real concern. But we're nowhere near "done," and since the corpus of human knowledge is itself constantly changing I doubt we ever will be.
If you compare Britannica's articles on some "old dead dude" from the 1911 version and the 2005 version I think you would find that they really haven't changed.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
Sure, but I'm not arguing for permanence. I'm saying, make it so that people have to discuss changes first. That's all. Which is considerably less barriers than EB puts up to editing their articles.
And if an article is, at some point, thought to require some extensive editing, then unfreeze it. Simple as that.
Anyway, it's just an idea I thought I would throw out, see if anything interesting stirred up out of it. So far I'm not convinced of the arguments against it, which seem to be based on the idea that all edits to all articles lead them to better places than they currently are. I think experience tells us this is not true and that without a team of dedicated editors knowledgeable about that particular article, articles stagnate in unpleasant and unreliable ways. I haven't seen a solid suggestion to stop this, though (I'm still unsure how an article rating system would really work to end this effect).
FF
On 10/28/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Geoff Burling wrote:
The continuing arguments around VfD/AfD suggests that some of the community does not understand -- or believe -- that there is a goal to this project, a place where our Wiki will eventually end. I suspect that FF has found another end point to our Wiki.
Britannica has been editing and rewriting and adding to their encyclopedia for two hundred and thirty-seven years now, with no sign that they're planning to stop changing stuff and publish the "Final Encyclopedia" any time soon. Why do you think Wikipedia is likely to start reaching an "endpoint" any time in the forseeable future? I think a version-rating method is probably vital in the near future to prevent our best articles from backsliding, we've become good enough in many areas that IMO this is a real concern. But we're nowhere near "done," and since the corpus of human knowledge is itself constantly changing I doubt we ever will be. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/28/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
No designated place, but this is a proposal is similar not in protecting articles, but having a "marker" to signal a stable or last agreed upon version.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_marker_feature
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 10/27/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort.
I'm not a fan of freezing articles. The ability for everyone to edit is one of the best things about Wikipedia, and even our best articles can be improved and will need to be updated over time.
However, a revision system is being perpetually discussed. The classical revision system in engineering is to make a release that your customer uses (in our case this would be an article identified as high quality). While the released version is served up to our customers, new editing takes place on a 'work in progress' page. Eventually, when the 'work in progress' is better than the 'released version', the article is updated and the cycle repeats.
This (or any similar) mechanism will theoretically allow continuous article improvement while blocking vandalism and degeneration. Only improvements are allowed to pass. I think something like this only makes sense for very mature articles.
Prerequisite to any 'released' version is the ability to pass judgment on an article's quality.
Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good", in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which >happen even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, >whereby people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an >article was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of "frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed >(a FA which has already run on the main page, another round of peer >review, no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out (hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from >a talk page.
So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, >but I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long period of time.
(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need basic work).
VFF ______________________________________________
Or maybe use the FA process itself to choose articles that meet a high standard and flag that version, but let editing continue.
-Searches/Random Article would return the flagged version of an article if it exists. The most recent version would display if there is no featured version.
-If editors felt another version be a better they can run it through that version FAC again.
As time goes by more and more articles would have tagged versions without any editing restrictions.
Just thinking.....this might make sense?