Displaying vandalism instantaneously is the real problem and better work flow management
will help
to mitigate that problem a great deal. Delayed edits for anons and new users will also
help; even
going so far as preventing any edit by an anon or new user from being saved (and thus
displayed)
until a trusted user has checked it for obvious vandalism. Many things can be used to
minimize the
risk of showing obscene vandalism to readers. Let's at least *try* those before doing
something
that will fundamentally change the character of the project.
We also need to make sure that live versions are clearly marked as the latest but
unreviewed
version of articles. That readers need to be extra careful with those versions but at the
same
time should not regard stable versions as infallible either.
If the stable designations is to mean anything, then the amount of review needed to get it
will
ensure that stable versions will be, on average, significantly less current than the live
version.
So showing stable versions by default will *kill* one of the best aspects of Wikipedia;
its
ability to record history as it happens. It will also encourage needless forking of
articles with
stable versions whenever its subject is in the news. Not because doing that is best for
covering
the subject, but *only* to be able to report on the current events (no stable version =
live
version is displayed).
For these reasons and others, I am **EXTREMELY** against hiding the live version behind
stable
ones on Wikipedia. If that is what they want, then there will be plenty of mirrors that
will only
display stable versions of our articles. Or they could simply choose to view stable
versions by
default; either by clicking on a 'View stable version of this article' link for
selected articles
or logging in and setting their preferences for that.
Hiding the live version behind a stable one is like cutting your nose off to spite your
face. It
tries to solve a problem that does not exist; the Nature article showed that we are on the
right
track with our current methods. We just need better ways to prevent the display of
obvious
vandalism at any time (even a few seconds is unacceptable since a reader may have loaded
the
article during that time). We *DO NOT* need to also hide all the other valid edits that go
on.
Hiding those just to prevent the display of vandalism is a blunt tool that *will* cause
more harm
than good. We need to focus on our real problems and surgically target solutions to combat
them.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for having a stable article system in the mold of the
old sifter idea.
It will be very useful as part of workflow management and attaining our goal to have print
and
CD/DVD versions of our content. It will also be useful on the website since it gives
readers the
option to cite slightly more trustworthy versions if they value that over having the most
up-to-date version that has only been checked to make sure there is no obvious vandalism.
Prominent links to the stable version should be provided along with easy ways for readers
to
choose to only view those by default if they want. But the
wikipedia.org website is where
the
development of the content goes on. So that needs to be the focus. We just need better
workflow
management to ensure we don't display obvious vandalism to readers.
Again, being current and up to date is our most lauded characteristic. Hiding the live
version
behind stable ones kills that *unless* the 'stable' label is diluted and
bastardized to only mean
'no obvious vandalism'.
-- mav
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