Maru Dubshinki wrote:
And you don't seem to realize how adversarial and prejudicial the idea of stable versions is - "Oh, we have an up to date version, but we don't dare show it as the default displayed article because our up to date articles are apparently so crappy that they need to be specially cleared by our editors."
Or, you could try something new and use NPOV: "This is a stable version of this article, which has been checked by an editor. You can see and a edit newer, unchecked, work-in-progress version of this article [[here]]". Not so hard, is it? :-)
Not to mention the simple effect of making the current revision even harder to find- the more work a reader has to do to get to something, the less they will read it!
"Even harder"? Currently, the current version is the first page to see. Not so hard, now is it? (I keep repeating that phrase to you - there might be a pattern).
Under the proposed system, anons would have to (gasp!) click on a link, an action of unheard difficulty on the web. If they plan to hand around longer or regularly, they will usually create a user account, where you can turn that off altogether. Good ol' times at last!
For an example: the New York times is only, I would estimate, about half again as hard to read as USA Today (for an equivalent amount of text); yet the NY Times has 1,136,433 ( http://www.nytco.com/investors-nyt-circulation.html) readers, as opposed to
more than 2.25 million readers for USA Today. One is easier, and the other is not.
I pride myself of my rather active imagination, but I can not figure out what the writing style of the NY Times has to do with stable versions on wikipedia. And I sincerely doubt that is my fault.
Apologies if I sound too mocking, but * I really don't see what the fuss is about (didn't read a good argument against it yet) * as I wrote in another mail to this list, I don't really insist on making the stable version the default. Wasn't even my idea, but it made sense to me.
Magnus