[Foundation-l] A notice on external links to old revisions, thoughts.

[michael_irwin at verizon.net]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Right now it is possible for someone to criticize Wikipedia for
>mistakes and vandalism in ancient versions... perhaps mistakes they
>inserted themselves which were reverted later.  Although I think it is
>important that our readers understand the nature of Wiki and that such
>things can happen, the ability for external sites to deep link our old
>revisions at will when combined with our relaxed presentation of old
>content makes it quite easy to misrepresent the situation and creates
>a greater risk that users will be directed to stale and incorrect
>content which we've since corrected.
>
>I'd like to know what people think of the following proposal.
>
>When a non-logged in user visits an old Wikipedia revision via a link
>from a third party website, we first display a notice that on enwiki
>might say something like:
>
>'''Please note:'''  You have requested an old version of the article
>{{{PAGENAME}}} from {{{rev timestamp}}}. A more current version of the
>article is [[{{cur}}|available here]]. You may also [[{{{diff
>page}}|view the differences]] between the version you requested and
>the current version, or [[{{{hist page}}}|view the entire history]] of
>this article.    The old revision is available [[{{{old
>revision}}}|here]].
>
>We could decide to display this notice either to people who followed a
>link from another site only, or those users plus ones who directly
>typed in or followed a bookmark to the old revision.   Since logged in
>users are far more likely to understand Wikipedia, we could probably
>skip the notice for them.
>
>Thoughts?
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>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
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>
>
>  
>
This seems well worth experimenting with to me.  Perhaps all older pages 
could have a message at the top  "This page is obsolete and kept for 
historical archival and reference purposes.  The current articile is 
available at   ..... link to front page.  Other revision levels are 
available via the article history tab here ... link to the diff history 
page.

I like your emphasis on avoiding confusing new users.  As a onetime 
regular who now only tweaks occasionally while doing research,  I still 
find the diff utilities or history page an easy place to get lost.

Sincerely,
Lazyquasar