[Wikipedia-l] Regards marking article revisions as stable

[Virgil Ierubino]

I agree with what's been said. There's a "stable" revision - not vandalised,
not being warred over, etc. - which we can trust most users to select - but
much more interesting would be the ability to mark out "fact checked"
revisions - ones without errors. It's that issue which I'm getting to.

I think it makes a lot of sense to put the two systems together - really,
the ability to reach the fact-checked revision needs to be integrated into
the software. There can be no academic citation of "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....&oldid=324234&curid=234234&blah" - this
URL is of precisely the same form as any NON-fact-checked revision. People
will, however, be able to cite something more like
http://en.wikipedia.org/stable/Biology (as opposed to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology) - the former URL presents the
falsifiable credibility required.

No I agree, things on Wikipedia are definitely going well. But this kind of
article verification will definitely be needed at some point in the future,
if Wikipedia ever hopes to be useful to anyone other than the leisurely
reader.