[Foundation-l] Question about Mediawiki versions on Wikipedia

[Jeff V. Merkey]

I noticed that Mediawiki 1.6.7. has some issues with current content 
with Infoboxes and Cite.php references when citing books and websites.   
I also read that 1.7 is what's running on Wikipedia.  Is there a good 
reason why XML dumps are kept broken and Wikipedia is always using 
unreleased versions as opposed to the other way around.  Most folks run 
production websites on a stable release and leave the experimental 
releases for developers -- here this is reversed.

It's a little frustrating to run down continual problems with the dumps.

Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

Jeff