[WikiEN-l] About the reliability of the Wikipedia process and content

[Bryan Derksen]

At 04:55 PM 11/16/2004 -0800, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > Versioning will help that.
>
>Am not so sure.
>
>Imagine I am Anonip the Egyptian, and I go to the article "Jerusalem"
>and get dropped into Revision 20040807:45. I read it, it's a lovely
>article, and I get all warm and fuzzy inside.
>
>Then I decide to add something to it... Alas, we are now on version
>20041116:398, the bastardized spawn of Hades, mangled to death by
>edit warriors, pov pushers, and a veritable army of sock puppets
>(would that be a drawerful?). I recoil in horror and decide to not
>edit, since, well, it's frankly quite depressing.

Would you prefer that Anonip never see Reversion 20040807:45 at all? With 
the current system, version 20041116:398 would be the first version he'd 
see and the only way he'd be able to see 20040807:45 would be to manually 
dig through the article's history with no indication that any such "nice" 
version even exists to find, let alone where it might be.

>So the average man, in constant fear of the marauding trolls and
>hordes of vandals, steers clear of the bleeding sword-edge version
>and stays within the clearly marked path of the Official and Right
>Version of Safety.
>
>Yet, down this path the common man no longer contributes to the W.
>Only the hardcore groups of ultra-perfectionists and extremists will
>remain to edit, polarize, and ultimately destroy the W.
>
>Do I have a solution? No.

I do, I suggested it last time this discussion came up.

Have the default version that all people see when they first go to an 
article be the _current_ version. If there's a "reviewer-approved" version 
in the article's history, have a "view most recent verified version" link 
in the sidebar that takes you straight there. Unless one actively goes out 
of one's way to view "approved" versions in this scenario, Wikipedia will 
continue to function exactly the same as before.