[WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

[Gordon Joly]

At 07:51 -0400 28/8/06, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>On 8/28/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>>  I have another reason to speak against this. As an editor, I
>>  sometimes create an article that is very small, a few words. At the
>>  point, I discover a few pages that link to this article and so I know
>>  that article has some importance.
>>
>>  Also, stubs are great for attracting attention(!). Sometimes, stubs
>>  attract a request for deletion, but in fact the article will grow a
>>  reasonable state (see reference below). If deleted, nobody will see
>>  it. If hidden from general view, then it will only be seen by the
>>  upper class of editors, who may not be aware of the (potential)
>>  significance of the article.
>
>This seems to be entirely a question of implementation.  Consider, for
>example, this approach:
>
>When a non-logged-in reader requests a page:
>
>A. If a revision in the article's history has a "not-vandalism" flag
>set, show that revision as the default (with an option to see the
>current revision)
>
>B. Otherwise, show the current revision.
>
>In this variation, stubs/new articles/obscure articles that a few
>people read each year all get shown at the latest version, because
>nobody will have bothered to mark a particular revision with the flag;
>it's only on higher-traffic pages -- which, for the most part, would
>be the ones where vandalism is more prevalent -- that the use of the
>flag would come into play.
>
>(This quite aside from the fact that de: hasn't yet decided how the
>ability to set this flag would be assigned; but one of the options
>Kurt mentioned at Wikimania would be something like the current
>semi-protection limit on the account's age.  The vast majority of
>active contributors would, in such a scenario, be able to simply set
>the flag -- perhaps automatically -- on any article they work on.)
>
>--
>Kirill Lokshin


Automatically set the flag? OK. I can see that.

Gordo

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