Bryan Derksen wrote:
Arg. This solution is exactly what I've been arguing _against_. :) I like the idea of stable versions but I hate the idea of stable versions being shown by default. I think showing stable versions by default will cut off much of the influx of new editors since the "working" Wikipedia will be hidden from view, and it's something that is better done by our multitudinous mirrors anyway.
That's *not* done better by mirrors. It's not done *at all* by mirrors. Mirrors are totally irrelevant; what we need is to keep the random penises, libel, etc off of the front page.
The front page, for the most part, is going to be whatever article people arrived at from a search engine, as visible on http://*.wikipedia.org.
Mirrors are their own affair; we've got our own butts to cover. Unless you want us to take *.wikipedia.org out of the web's search engines (a simple change to robots.txt can do this), we need to recognize that we serve the public and provide an appropriate initial view for random visitors.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)