[WikiEN-l] Page freezing on "good" articles

[Puddl Duk]

On 10/27/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of
> protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good",
> in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen
> even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the
> problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
>
> Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
>
> In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for
> Freezing" page for articles of this sort.

I'm not a fan of freezing articles. The ability for everyone to edit
is one of the best things about Wikipedia, and even our best articles
can be improved and will need to be updated over time.

However, a revision system is being perpetually discussed. The
classical revision system in engineering is to make a release that
your customer uses (in our case this would be an article identified as
high quality). While the released version is served up to our
customers, new editing takes place on a 'work in progress' page.
Eventually, when the 'work in progress' is better than the 'released
version', the article is updated and the cycle repeats.

This (or any similar) mechanism will theoretically allow continuous
article improvement while blocking vandalism and degeneration. Only
improvements are allowed to pass. I think something like this only
makes sense for very mature articles.

Prerequisite to any 'released' version is the ability to pass judgment
on an article's quality.