[WikiEN-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

[David Gerard]

On 03/09/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:

> What version would new editors be editing if they found an error on a
> page and attempted to edit what they thought was that page?


Hmm, I think they'd be editing the current version, not the version
they could see at first.


> Semantically I would think they would have to update in turn from the
> latest available version in the database. There could quickly be
> problems with multiple versions of the page branching, and being hard
> to combine, if they were not editing the latest version.


I doubt there are any plans to support branching.

But yes, this initiative would make things easier for *regular*
editors but somewhat more difficult for *casual* editors. One of the
de: people involved in the initiative pointed this one out to me when
I was writing the above, and so I think we can assume they are very
aware of it and will be watching carefully.

Note that the above FAQ is now pretty much superfluous - there's a
much more detailed one on meta:

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2006_proposed_approval_for_anonymous_edits

and Jimbo has written a piece on the subject that got onto Slashdot:

    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/2224230


- d.