Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
There is something that you don't seem to understand. By making the stable version default to the majority of readers, then Wikipedia's instant editability becomes compromised. I'll give you an example - say a stable version has been created for an article about the Romanian economy. Monthly, stats change, and I'd also like update some prose about the role of ICT in the Romanian economy. So, as an editor, I go to the editable version and change it, and - bang - as you said, it's instantly there.
BUT, and this is the big but, my edits would not be instantly displayed on the default version. People coming into the Romanian economy article would see the old stable version, and only *if* they choose to see the updated version, which people won't do for lack of verifiability, would they see the new data. Now, you're going to say to me - aah, but the stable version can always be updated. Yes, I concede that, but the proposal states that for a stable version to be approved, it must go through a lot of consensus (otherwise, what's the point?).
Well, if there's a page that is updated regularly, and you want people to always see the latest, probably vandalized, version, then *don't set any version of it as stable*! Or, you could ask someone who has "the power" to check your latest version for becoming stable. This could be easily done though my Tasks feature :-) Finally, on the stable version, /there's a text with link at the very top of it/, pointing you to the current, latest version.
The difference between the current state of wikipedia and wikipedia with stable versions is this: With the former, readers get a wiki to see; with the latter, they get an encyclopedia.
What perpetually protected pages?
Picking one example, I think [[en:Geroge W. Bush]] has been protected since before the last election, which was a year ago. This is due to repeated vandalism. There are several more, though. This could be fixed through stable versions.
Magnus