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At what point can any article be trusted to be "completed" and thus publication-worthy? Who then would we trust to update it? violet/riga (t) 14:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
It's not clear: is this the same idea as having a "stable" vs "development" version of an article, or are you instead arguing that once a page becomes published, no version is then available for editing on Wikipedia? — Matt Crypto 15:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of having articles reach "publication" status; it could be considered the end of the line for article development. However, I do not entirely agree to the concept of page protection, as it is the concept of Wikipedia to quickly fix something when something changes. For example, if all the apples of the world were to spontaneously turn purple, we can be the first to say so. However, you have a point. My idea is that a subpage of the same article could be made, where people can freely edit the content. Whenever it's important to update the main article (like my purple apple example above), we can move over the content to the main article. — MESSEDROCKER ( talk) 18:05, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
If a published article would have no editable version, then I strongly oppose this. Though something as described by Messedrocker above is more workable, I'd like to see it implemented on a test project - or at least described clearly.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:46, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the word "publication" is a bit of a misnomer, as, at least in the scheme proposed, "published" articles would be available on Wikipedia just the same as "unpublished articles". Both types are published on the web, and not in print. — Matt Crypto 18:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Why not do it yourself? Make your own encyclopaedia website, made up of Wikipedia articles that you think are good enough. I believe the information is free to copy, right? If we protect a page then the article is never going to improve, things change with time. Even Britannica has mistakes! Gerard Foley 01:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Emphatic no!!!!! Lock pages? Then Wikipedia would have failed. What a horrible idea! User:Zoe| (talk) 03:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Never going to improve? Did you fully read the project page? The proposed system is an extension of the existing system and will not compromise it. The locked pages are on the side, a different namespace called "Published" or "Publication". If the new system is in place, you would hardly feel anything has been different, as all articles are continued to be freely editable. -- Zondor 06:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Over my dead body. It's a joke to go asking if the authors of articles want them to be "published" when there's not the vaguest sign of consensus to go ahead with this at all. Ambi 22:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I did read the project page. Never was probably the wrong word, but it will make it harder to fix small mistakes. I like the idea of a reliable version of Wikipedia, but this is not it. Gerard Foley 17:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know what you're all excited about. Please don't have a knee-jerk reaction or take it out of context when someone mentions protection or locked pages. There is an editable version - it is there. -- Zondor 17:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC) look at it this way, the protected pages being introduced is not a wiki whatsoever so you don't need to be so cliched and stamp it Meta:Anti-wiki. let's call it something else like static pages for publishing wiki pages -- Zondor 02:17, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
No I actually didn't read the proposal fully, I was thinking of something else (I don't know what). I was also a bit drunk when I wrote the original response. Talk of this has been going on for years, see Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 started by Jimbo Wales 2 years ago. Gerard Foley 06:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the fact that it is harder to fix small mistakes, it would be harder because publications are a different beast to wikis. Wikipedia's and yours would be put on the on the line. Published versions are thus favourable because it has benefits of being reliable. -- Zondor 02:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
There could even be a wikipedia.org/published/ as opposed to wikipedia.org/wiki/. - Fredrik | t c 12:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
All these ideas are interesting, but who's doing the publishing, what kind of distribution will it have? There are already Reader projects, in which individuals on Wikipedia publish articles. This page "looks" like somthing official (ie. there is money being spent by the wiki non-profit), but is there accutual official monetary support behind it, or is this just a volunter "project"? -- Stbalbach 23:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I think this proposal would require new features in the MediaWiki software. A new namespace is unlikely to be sufficient. Let me describe what I have in mind, and I hope you'll see why this would be awkward to implement on top of the existing infrastructure.
Suppose Wikipedia was divided into two zones: the published/frozen/1.0 etc. zone, and the editable/hot/development zone (the latter corresponding to the current system).
If you're in the frozen zone and you follow a wiki link, you should be taken to another frozen zone article if one exist, and if there is none yet, you should be taken to the corresponding development zone article. I.e., some sort of fall-back mechanism should be in place.(This can only be done in the current system by keeping an explicit inventory of published articles and updating links that point to published/frozen pages.)
The two zones should be visually distinct, perhaps by using different style sheets.
Arguably the frozen zone wouldn't need talk pages or user pages, and consist only of a subset of the namespaces (main/article, image, portal, category). Categories would be problematic, because they are created dynamically. If a given frozen category contains only articles from the frozen zone, it might end up looking quite empty. But if categories are shared among the two zones, this could easily lead to confusion and/or inconsistencies (e.g. what if a frozen article is in category C and its corresponding development version is not?).
The main reason why talk pages shouldn't exist in the frozen zone is for everyone's sanity: we don't want to treat the frozen version as a branch/fork with separate development. (It's doable in theory, but can be quite messy and confusing in practice.)
Each page in the frozen zone should point to the corresponding development version of the article, perhaps even to the exact revision that got frozen/published. This would require different instructions, and "edit this page" would get a bit more complicated.
I think we should work out a few concrete use cases for this proposal and then ask for developer assistance. To a large extent it's a technical challenge. -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 01:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I dont think its necessary to do this, as information keeps changing. For instance if you protected say the article on United States of America how do you update it when there is a new president etc.? If you want something from which to cite, use the Permanent Link over there at the bottom of the lefthand column which gives the link to each version of a page. Maybe a list of permanent links which are seen as the 'best' versions of a page would work? Astrokey44 02:40, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not so sure of I like the name "publication" for what is essentially a "frozen" version. However, I like the idea. Some version of an article could be declared "good" and then be moved to the protected "frozen" version, while the standard version continues to change and be updated. The "frozen" version should only be updated every couple of months, or when something important happens (e.g. government changes), and changes from the standard page be incorporated. Note that an endorsement of specific version similar to a freeze already seems to exist for spoken articles (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia). It might be useful to ask there how the version to be recorded is chosen. Kusma (talk) 02:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me. -- JK the unwise 15:39, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
IMHO, there's no need for any drastic measures to accomplish what you want, especially not freezing pages. All you need to do is to make a template which basically says "This article has a version we think is good, click here to see it." which would appear on those articles that have them. Watching the changes to the tag will be as hard as watching any other category, but a list of links to good versions and a bot should probably manage.
But the question is, do we really want this at this point? Who will decide when it's good enough? A committee of experts appointed in some way? Do we have the required infrastructure for checking credentials? Or do we just duplicate FA procedures and go on to publish articles which we claim can be held up to standards of professionaly reviewed encyclopedias and hope for the best? If we get just a few wrong, we'll be ridiculed for years. It's not that they don't make mistakes, but we're still the underdog here and more vulnerable to damage from gaffes. Zocky 16:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
This is a shockingly bad idea. Trollderella 20:48, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
How about tagging a stable revision with a link on the page to that revision. e.g. "This revision has been certified by X" ? The main article page is still editable but there is a revision that people can look at if they feel the need to read a certified version? Or am I bringing my experience with software development into an entirely different field? - FrancisTyers 16:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
While my initial opinion was that this is a good proposal, if people keep spamming talk pages with requests to "publish", especially talk pages of non-featured articles and while this proposal is still being discussed, I for one will turn into an ardent opponent. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:58, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Before becoming too enthusiastic about how well the Featured Article program works, maybe we should review a sample of the articles and see whether they were really all up to scratch.
For example, list of countries with nuclear weapons became a featured list while listing Australia as a state formerly possessing nuclear weapons or programs. The entry describing Australia was also inaccurate on several details, all of them apparently from the same political source, see Talk:List of countries with nuclear weapons. The current entry is still misleading. Australia has never had a weapons program! Andrewa 18:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
In addition many FA's became so before the standards were higher and have remained part of the FA cannon but would never pass if nominated today. Granted there are steps to de-list a FA, but it's not fun or easy to do, many weak articles remain. -- Stbalbach 18:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I support this effort, but appearently for reasons not stated on the project page: I'm hoping it'll discourage vandals and POV pushers. Mathematics is perhaps a poor example: it has a lot of peple watching it, and has a lively talk page; objectionable edits are quickly reverted. A more appropriate example might be an obscure example, such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is an adequate article that has seen nothing but frequent vandalism since approximtely forever. As its talk page will attest, at least one editor left on account of this.
At least part of my interest in publication would be eliminated if WP had more reliable, more robust ways in which a group of editors could share the burden of reviewing watchlists. For example, some very fast/simple collective voting mechanism by which a regular pool of editors could note that they reviewed & agree with any given recent article change. Since "publication" would be governed by some voting process, some discusion of streamlined voting proceedures might not be inappropriate.
But perhaps this is the wrong forum in which to discuss these issues. linas 22:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Those of us who edit the George W. Bush article have been frustrated about the high rate of vandalism. It's probably the most frequently vandalized page on Wikipedia. From time to time some admin reacts to the problem by protecting the article, which I personally consider a bad move.
Aside from the nuisance factor, there's a concern that many readers who visit that article will access it while it's in a vandalized state. One possible solution presented at Wikipedia:Experimental vandalism protection and discussed on Wikipedia talk:Experimental vandalism protection is similar to the "publication" idea but much more limited. Once a week or so, an admin who never edits the article for substance would identify the most recent unvandalized version and save it as " George W. Bush - scrutinized" or some such. The main article would remain open for editing by anyone, even anons, just as it is now. The difference would be that it would have a note at the top mentioning that it's frequently vandalized, and that a recent nonvandalized version can be found here (wikilinking to the "scrutinized" version, which would be protected).
I favor starting with a "scrutinized" version only of George W. Bush, a highly visible article that's often vandalized. We might consider expanding it in the future.
Unlike the "publication" proposal, establishing a "scrutinized" version wouldn't address article quality issues other than vandalism. I mention it here because some people interested in Zondor's proposal might also be interested in the other one. JamesMLane 02:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Previous marker idea: Meta:Article marker feature -- Zondor 17:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I've renamed this proposal "Stable versions", rather than "Requests for publication". As argued above, the "publication" terminology is simply incorrect. A) this proposal isn't particularly about any new form of publishing (e.g. print), and B) all Wikipedia articles are published on the Web, and this proposal doesn't change that. I suggest the "stable" versus "development" terminology — but there could be better. — Matt Crypto 12:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I know this is at a very early stage, but I think there would need to be a massive amount of interest from the community in order for this to work properly. I see it as a poor relation to FA status, and know how the FAC process can sometimes draw too little attention. The intention is good, but I personally don't think that this solution will work in practical terms. violet/riga (t) 12:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
perhaps its best to put these published/stable versions on a new language site (and be protected?) in order to work seamlessly with existing languages. --
Zondor 14:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC) --
Zondor
17:17, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that maintaining a stable wikipedia is a worthwhile goal, but I don't think that this process would really scale to the job. If we lowered the standards to a version of an article that has no vandalism, is referenced and someone has done a quick check of its references and allow this to stand as the stable version. This could then be compared with the 'live' version every month/week/day, depending on how busy the article is, and someone (admins, regsitered users, somewhere in between?) could update the stable version accordingly and set this as the new live version. I think this would get through a lot more work than putting the whole thing to a committee and seems to perform more or less the same function. Comments, anyone? -- Cherry blossom tree 23:51, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Here is a half-baked idea seeking bakers. Large parts of Wikipedia have been very stable. High quality sentences, paragraphs, sections, and occasionally whole articles go untouched for long periods of time. In some cases this is due to lack of interest, but in other cases it is due to stability, i.e. consensus among editors. The idea is that the older text is, the harder it should be to change. The half-baked part of it is that there needs to be a continuously variable stickiness operator that prevents radical changes. The only thing I can think of to handle it might be a tree of edits that propagate upward. People could surf Wikipedia seeing the most stable content by default, or see any level of the tree. Leaf nodes on the tree would work their way up the tree into the article of they stand the test of time. So a leaf sentence about G W Bush's parentage, that might be constantly changed by vandals, would never rise up the tree and would never make up to the topmost level, i.e. never modify the stable article that almost all people would see. On the other hand, a paragraph in an article about some aspect of the French Revolution might be modified by an expert and then reviewed by dozens of editors. As time goes by and it rises in the tree, it would be scrutinized by more and more eyeballs. The longer it passes muster, the greater distance between it and any sudden vandalism which would become a new leaf. The longer it passes muster, also, the closer it would get to being part of the stable article. Part of the baking needed for this idea is a way to make articles responsive to edits, especially current events, or highly verifiable info such as fresh census data. Your thoughts, please. Hu 02:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I've unblanked the CUPS page and put it back on the stable versions page. I've done this mainly so we can play around with it to see what people come up with. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
What the heck is the CUPS page ?? linas 18:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Trying a few things I feel we need for a stable article in the subarticle:
What do people think? Can anyone think of better sections? Feel free to play with the subarticle. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
My hope for "Stable versions" is that we'll have a simple, lightweight process. The actual criteria as to whether a version is "stable" is left up to those who are making the actual decision. I beleive that trusting the good intentions of the folks voting to declare a stable version is sufficient. Thus objections about neutralty, accuracy, etc. should be sufficient to block the declaration of a stable version. However, if no objections are raised, then an aricle may be declared stable (even if it is known to be lacking in various ways). I'm proposing something subtle here: that objections about POV are enough to stop declaration of stability. This is different from the laborius, intensive process required to vet an article to be truly, absolutely free from POV. linas 18:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
At what point can any article be trusted to be "completed" and thus publication-worthy? Who then would we trust to update it? violet/riga (t) 14:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
It's not clear: is this the same idea as having a "stable" vs "development" version of an article, or are you instead arguing that once a page becomes published, no version is then available for editing on Wikipedia? — Matt Crypto 15:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of having articles reach "publication" status; it could be considered the end of the line for article development. However, I do not entirely agree to the concept of page protection, as it is the concept of Wikipedia to quickly fix something when something changes. For example, if all the apples of the world were to spontaneously turn purple, we can be the first to say so. However, you have a point. My idea is that a subpage of the same article could be made, where people can freely edit the content. Whenever it's important to update the main article (like my purple apple example above), we can move over the content to the main article. — MESSEDROCKER ( talk) 18:05, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
If a published article would have no editable version, then I strongly oppose this. Though something as described by Messedrocker above is more workable, I'd like to see it implemented on a test project - or at least described clearly.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:46, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the word "publication" is a bit of a misnomer, as, at least in the scheme proposed, "published" articles would be available on Wikipedia just the same as "unpublished articles". Both types are published on the web, and not in print. — Matt Crypto 18:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Why not do it yourself? Make your own encyclopaedia website, made up of Wikipedia articles that you think are good enough. I believe the information is free to copy, right? If we protect a page then the article is never going to improve, things change with time. Even Britannica has mistakes! Gerard Foley 01:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Emphatic no!!!!! Lock pages? Then Wikipedia would have failed. What a horrible idea! User:Zoe| (talk) 03:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Never going to improve? Did you fully read the project page? The proposed system is an extension of the existing system and will not compromise it. The locked pages are on the side, a different namespace called "Published" or "Publication". If the new system is in place, you would hardly feel anything has been different, as all articles are continued to be freely editable. -- Zondor 06:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Over my dead body. It's a joke to go asking if the authors of articles want them to be "published" when there's not the vaguest sign of consensus to go ahead with this at all. Ambi 22:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I did read the project page. Never was probably the wrong word, but it will make it harder to fix small mistakes. I like the idea of a reliable version of Wikipedia, but this is not it. Gerard Foley 17:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know what you're all excited about. Please don't have a knee-jerk reaction or take it out of context when someone mentions protection or locked pages. There is an editable version - it is there. -- Zondor 17:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC) look at it this way, the protected pages being introduced is not a wiki whatsoever so you don't need to be so cliched and stamp it Meta:Anti-wiki. let's call it something else like static pages for publishing wiki pages -- Zondor 02:17, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
No I actually didn't read the proposal fully, I was thinking of something else (I don't know what). I was also a bit drunk when I wrote the original response. Talk of this has been going on for years, see Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 started by Jimbo Wales 2 years ago. Gerard Foley 06:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the fact that it is harder to fix small mistakes, it would be harder because publications are a different beast to wikis. Wikipedia's and yours would be put on the on the line. Published versions are thus favourable because it has benefits of being reliable. -- Zondor 02:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
There could even be a wikipedia.org/published/ as opposed to wikipedia.org/wiki/. - Fredrik | t c 12:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
All these ideas are interesting, but who's doing the publishing, what kind of distribution will it have? There are already Reader projects, in which individuals on Wikipedia publish articles. This page "looks" like somthing official (ie. there is money being spent by the wiki non-profit), but is there accutual official monetary support behind it, or is this just a volunter "project"? -- Stbalbach 23:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I think this proposal would require new features in the MediaWiki software. A new namespace is unlikely to be sufficient. Let me describe what I have in mind, and I hope you'll see why this would be awkward to implement on top of the existing infrastructure.
Suppose Wikipedia was divided into two zones: the published/frozen/1.0 etc. zone, and the editable/hot/development zone (the latter corresponding to the current system).
If you're in the frozen zone and you follow a wiki link, you should be taken to another frozen zone article if one exist, and if there is none yet, you should be taken to the corresponding development zone article. I.e., some sort of fall-back mechanism should be in place.(This can only be done in the current system by keeping an explicit inventory of published articles and updating links that point to published/frozen pages.)
The two zones should be visually distinct, perhaps by using different style sheets.
Arguably the frozen zone wouldn't need talk pages or user pages, and consist only of a subset of the namespaces (main/article, image, portal, category). Categories would be problematic, because they are created dynamically. If a given frozen category contains only articles from the frozen zone, it might end up looking quite empty. But if categories are shared among the two zones, this could easily lead to confusion and/or inconsistencies (e.g. what if a frozen article is in category C and its corresponding development version is not?).
The main reason why talk pages shouldn't exist in the frozen zone is for everyone's sanity: we don't want to treat the frozen version as a branch/fork with separate development. (It's doable in theory, but can be quite messy and confusing in practice.)
Each page in the frozen zone should point to the corresponding development version of the article, perhaps even to the exact revision that got frozen/published. This would require different instructions, and "edit this page" would get a bit more complicated.
I think we should work out a few concrete use cases for this proposal and then ask for developer assistance. To a large extent it's a technical challenge. -- MarkSweep (call me collect) 01:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I dont think its necessary to do this, as information keeps changing. For instance if you protected say the article on United States of America how do you update it when there is a new president etc.? If you want something from which to cite, use the Permanent Link over there at the bottom of the lefthand column which gives the link to each version of a page. Maybe a list of permanent links which are seen as the 'best' versions of a page would work? Astrokey44 02:40, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not so sure of I like the name "publication" for what is essentially a "frozen" version. However, I like the idea. Some version of an article could be declared "good" and then be moved to the protected "frozen" version, while the standard version continues to change and be updated. The "frozen" version should only be updated every couple of months, or when something important happens (e.g. government changes), and changes from the standard page be incorporated. Note that an endorsement of specific version similar to a freeze already seems to exist for spoken articles (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia). It might be useful to ask there how the version to be recorded is chosen. Kusma (talk) 02:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me. -- JK the unwise 15:39, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
IMHO, there's no need for any drastic measures to accomplish what you want, especially not freezing pages. All you need to do is to make a template which basically says "This article has a version we think is good, click here to see it." which would appear on those articles that have them. Watching the changes to the tag will be as hard as watching any other category, but a list of links to good versions and a bot should probably manage.
But the question is, do we really want this at this point? Who will decide when it's good enough? A committee of experts appointed in some way? Do we have the required infrastructure for checking credentials? Or do we just duplicate FA procedures and go on to publish articles which we claim can be held up to standards of professionaly reviewed encyclopedias and hope for the best? If we get just a few wrong, we'll be ridiculed for years. It's not that they don't make mistakes, but we're still the underdog here and more vulnerable to damage from gaffes. Zocky 16:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
This is a shockingly bad idea. Trollderella 20:48, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
How about tagging a stable revision with a link on the page to that revision. e.g. "This revision has been certified by X" ? The main article page is still editable but there is a revision that people can look at if they feel the need to read a certified version? Or am I bringing my experience with software development into an entirely different field? - FrancisTyers 16:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
While my initial opinion was that this is a good proposal, if people keep spamming talk pages with requests to "publish", especially talk pages of non-featured articles and while this proposal is still being discussed, I for one will turn into an ardent opponent. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:58, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Before becoming too enthusiastic about how well the Featured Article program works, maybe we should review a sample of the articles and see whether they were really all up to scratch.
For example, list of countries with nuclear weapons became a featured list while listing Australia as a state formerly possessing nuclear weapons or programs. The entry describing Australia was also inaccurate on several details, all of them apparently from the same political source, see Talk:List of countries with nuclear weapons. The current entry is still misleading. Australia has never had a weapons program! Andrewa 18:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
In addition many FA's became so before the standards were higher and have remained part of the FA cannon but would never pass if nominated today. Granted there are steps to de-list a FA, but it's not fun or easy to do, many weak articles remain. -- Stbalbach 18:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I support this effort, but appearently for reasons not stated on the project page: I'm hoping it'll discourage vandals and POV pushers. Mathematics is perhaps a poor example: it has a lot of peple watching it, and has a lively talk page; objectionable edits are quickly reverted. A more appropriate example might be an obscure example, such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is an adequate article that has seen nothing but frequent vandalism since approximtely forever. As its talk page will attest, at least one editor left on account of this.
At least part of my interest in publication would be eliminated if WP had more reliable, more robust ways in which a group of editors could share the burden of reviewing watchlists. For example, some very fast/simple collective voting mechanism by which a regular pool of editors could note that they reviewed & agree with any given recent article change. Since "publication" would be governed by some voting process, some discusion of streamlined voting proceedures might not be inappropriate.
But perhaps this is the wrong forum in which to discuss these issues. linas 22:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Those of us who edit the George W. Bush article have been frustrated about the high rate of vandalism. It's probably the most frequently vandalized page on Wikipedia. From time to time some admin reacts to the problem by protecting the article, which I personally consider a bad move.
Aside from the nuisance factor, there's a concern that many readers who visit that article will access it while it's in a vandalized state. One possible solution presented at Wikipedia:Experimental vandalism protection and discussed on Wikipedia talk:Experimental vandalism protection is similar to the "publication" idea but much more limited. Once a week or so, an admin who never edits the article for substance would identify the most recent unvandalized version and save it as " George W. Bush - scrutinized" or some such. The main article would remain open for editing by anyone, even anons, just as it is now. The difference would be that it would have a note at the top mentioning that it's frequently vandalized, and that a recent nonvandalized version can be found here (wikilinking to the "scrutinized" version, which would be protected).
I favor starting with a "scrutinized" version only of George W. Bush, a highly visible article that's often vandalized. We might consider expanding it in the future.
Unlike the "publication" proposal, establishing a "scrutinized" version wouldn't address article quality issues other than vandalism. I mention it here because some people interested in Zondor's proposal might also be interested in the other one. JamesMLane 02:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Previous marker idea: Meta:Article marker feature -- Zondor 17:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I've renamed this proposal "Stable versions", rather than "Requests for publication". As argued above, the "publication" terminology is simply incorrect. A) this proposal isn't particularly about any new form of publishing (e.g. print), and B) all Wikipedia articles are published on the Web, and this proposal doesn't change that. I suggest the "stable" versus "development" terminology — but there could be better. — Matt Crypto 12:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I know this is at a very early stage, but I think there would need to be a massive amount of interest from the community in order for this to work properly. I see it as a poor relation to FA status, and know how the FAC process can sometimes draw too little attention. The intention is good, but I personally don't think that this solution will work in practical terms. violet/riga (t) 12:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
perhaps its best to put these published/stable versions on a new language site (and be protected?) in order to work seamlessly with existing languages. --
Zondor 14:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC) --
Zondor
17:17, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that maintaining a stable wikipedia is a worthwhile goal, but I don't think that this process would really scale to the job. If we lowered the standards to a version of an article that has no vandalism, is referenced and someone has done a quick check of its references and allow this to stand as the stable version. This could then be compared with the 'live' version every month/week/day, depending on how busy the article is, and someone (admins, regsitered users, somewhere in between?) could update the stable version accordingly and set this as the new live version. I think this would get through a lot more work than putting the whole thing to a committee and seems to perform more or less the same function. Comments, anyone? -- Cherry blossom tree 23:51, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Here is a half-baked idea seeking bakers. Large parts of Wikipedia have been very stable. High quality sentences, paragraphs, sections, and occasionally whole articles go untouched for long periods of time. In some cases this is due to lack of interest, but in other cases it is due to stability, i.e. consensus among editors. The idea is that the older text is, the harder it should be to change. The half-baked part of it is that there needs to be a continuously variable stickiness operator that prevents radical changes. The only thing I can think of to handle it might be a tree of edits that propagate upward. People could surf Wikipedia seeing the most stable content by default, or see any level of the tree. Leaf nodes on the tree would work their way up the tree into the article of they stand the test of time. So a leaf sentence about G W Bush's parentage, that might be constantly changed by vandals, would never rise up the tree and would never make up to the topmost level, i.e. never modify the stable article that almost all people would see. On the other hand, a paragraph in an article about some aspect of the French Revolution might be modified by an expert and then reviewed by dozens of editors. As time goes by and it rises in the tree, it would be scrutinized by more and more eyeballs. The longer it passes muster, the greater distance between it and any sudden vandalism which would become a new leaf. The longer it passes muster, also, the closer it would get to being part of the stable article. Part of the baking needed for this idea is a way to make articles responsive to edits, especially current events, or highly verifiable info such as fresh census data. Your thoughts, please. Hu 02:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I've unblanked the CUPS page and put it back on the stable versions page. I've done this mainly so we can play around with it to see what people come up with. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
What the heck is the CUPS page ?? linas 18:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Trying a few things I feel we need for a stable article in the subarticle:
What do people think? Can anyone think of better sections? Feel free to play with the subarticle. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
My hope for "Stable versions" is that we'll have a simple, lightweight process. The actual criteria as to whether a version is "stable" is left up to those who are making the actual decision. I beleive that trusting the good intentions of the folks voting to declare a stable version is sufficient. Thus objections about neutralty, accuracy, etc. should be sufficient to block the declaration of a stable version. However, if no objections are raised, then an aricle may be declared stable (even if it is known to be lacking in various ways). I'm proposing something subtle here: that objections about POV are enough to stop declaration of stability. This is different from the laborius, intensive process required to vet an article to be truly, absolutely free from POV. linas 18:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)