[WikiEN-l] A proposal to improve war-prone pages.

Mon Jan 12 12:04:13 UTC 2004

I want to make a serious proposal about the handling
of problem pages.
As we all know, there are some pages which appear to
be destined to
be battlegrounds forever.  Many of the Middle-Eastern
pages are in this
category.  Contrary to what we would like, such pages
do NOT eventually
settle into an acceptable state.  What actually
happens is that the
current set of contestants get tired then the article
remains dormant
(often in a fairly appalling state) for a while until
a new set of
contestants come along and start the war up again.  In
this process,
excellent portions of the article inevitably become
lost or distorted and
there is nearly always some arrant nonsense present. 
The article does
NOT steadily get better over time but just oscillates
between several
degrees of poverty.

What I'm saying is that our current model DOES NOT
WORK AND WILL NEVER
WORK for some types of pages.  Therefore, we have to
change the model.

I propose that for particularly problematic topics
there are two versions.
One is the "official version" which is
write-protected.  The official
version is what readers get when they click on links. 
The other is the
"draft version", which can be editted.  Then there is
some standard
procedure (a committee?) by which the draft version
can be copied to
the official version.

This is better than the present system of page
protection because it
does not freeze page development.  It allows additions
and variations
to be tried out and fought over off-line, then draft
editions achieving
some amount of consensus can be made official.  The
average quality
of the article as seen by outsiders would be greatly
improved.

Anyway, please consider it or improve on it.

Zero.

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