My
understanding is that "stable" is simply that. Not right, not
approved, but... stable. A non-vandalised version of the current
consensus on the article - you'll see the revisions from before
someone vandalised it, or before a violent edit war kicked off, as the
stable version, but it doesn't mean they need to have been
individually factchecked.
That's exactly my understanding too. It would be good if using the
same system an article could be marked as "fact checked". We could
come up with a system for experts in the field to read the article and
agree that it is factually correct. I think we should implement such a
system for featured articles (existing ones, not candidates - this
isn't intended as another hoop to jump through to become a FA) at the
very least. It doesn't need to wait for the software to know how to do
it, a system using templates should be fine.
Most discussion about "stable" versions has indeed been in the
anti-vandalism context, but I would personally like to see the feature
work a lot harder than that. As the saying goes, "You must learn to
walk before you can run," so I will be happy to see anything functional
in this area. Hopefully it can be taken further after that. Getting
something like this going would be a great substitute for the rude
behaviour that one often encounters.
Ec