Bryan Derksen wrote: <snip>
I really think the best solution is just better education for passers-by of how Wikipedia works - more obvious disclaimers, "this is a work in progress" banners, etc. Ideally, stuff that would entice them to contribute themselves when they see problems.
I agree. Looking at the traffic on helpdesk-l (and ignoring the spam/misguided "can I enrol in your university"/"where can I buy XYZ" stuff), the types of enquiries have been shifting from "your site has been hacked!" to "this article has been vandalised but I don't know what to do" (and sadly, "If you don't take down my copyrighted material I WILL SUE YOU IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY").
A number of solutions come to mind:
1. Change the bit of [[Mediawiki:]] text to say "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (as someone did a few weeks ago)
2. Have stable versions displaying by default
3. I'm out of ideas.
The "stable versions" point brings me to something else: people have been complaining "The article has been vandalised but it looks OK on the edit page". Is anon caching making us look worse than we really are?