Erik Moeller wrote:
Well, here's the thing. Our Main Page is
protected. Our Main Page links to
the Brilliant Prose page, which would also be protected. The Brilliant
Prose page would only link to verified revisions of articles. A user can
choose this path
Main Page->Brilliant prose->Article
And they will never see an "unstable" article -- these pages would always
be in a reasonable state. It is the same thing as a separate site, but
happens entirely within Wikipedia.
My first reaction is to be against this; I don't like the idea of locking
down pages in general, and Brilliant Prose is something I think
everyone should be able to add to. But, I'm reserving judgement
until there's more discussion.
Three things off the top of my head:
1. Who can add to brilliant prose? Sysops? What makes me (for
example) more qualified to judge brilliant prose about the spectrum
of human knowledge?
2. One of the great things about Wikipedia is that readers quickly
become writers. If we were to use particular versions from article
histories as stable articles, we'll need some way to allow readers
to easily move into editing mode, i.e. an "Edit the current version of
this article" link.
3. The synthesis of the first two concerns: what happens when
there are errors in the stable version? Mistakes can be corrected in
the current version, but only sysops will be able to change which
version is listed on the locked Brilliant Prose page. Thus, it's
possible that the "stable" version could have more errors than the
"development" version of a given article.
Stephen G.
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