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@nupedia.com [mailto:wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Robert Bihlmeyer Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11:36 AM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's scope
lsanger@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