Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
On 12/21/05, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Articles are continuously edited over time. As time goes on, ever-newer versions will be marked as the stable version which is first shown to the public.
Yes, but only after lengthened amounts of consensus...
If that means "no-one could edit them", then we already have that model! You can't change a given revision on Wikipedia; you can only make a new revision based on it.
But even worse, today when we freeze an article to show a stable revision, *nobody* can edit it except an elite cabal of sysops. Is that "open"? Is that "free"?
I haven't yet heard of anyone freezing an article to create a stable version. The concept of a stable version doesn't yet exist.
If you read Brion's message carefully, you will realize that the concept of stable versions he refers to in the present system are commonly called "protected pages". I trust you have heard of those.
--Michael Snow
If you read Brion's message carefully, you will realize that the concept of stable versions he refers to in the present system are commonly called "protected pages". I trust you have heard of those.
--Michael Snow
One thing I don't like is people trying to ram new policies down our throats in the pretext that "they're already there" or "they won't cause significant change". There is currently nothing like stable versions at all on Wikipedia. What's commonly called protected pages are pages which are protected for vandalism, etc. I have never so far seen a page protected just because it is a complete article. That is, protected pages are not a article quality tool, but rather an anti-vandalism structure. And they should be kept that way.
Sure, stable versions would use the same system as protected pages - the problem I have is with their function, with the concept of protecting "completed articles", not with the way in which the software is coded for them.
Ronline
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