[WikiEN-l] Re: The heart of the deletion problem

Mon Dec 12 19:29:54 UTC 2005

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> And it's very easy to give people the wrong idea when we don't have a 
>> final or even a stable version of anything. Considering that 
>> Wikipedia has been going for five years, I think we're ready to 
>> start. Stable versions, even more than article ratings, are a feature 
>> we need. In fact, I think setting up article ratings before stable 
>> versions is completely backwards, because it's the stable versions we 
>> should be asking people to rate. 
>
>
> I generally agree with your comments, although this one strikes me as 
> backwards.  I see ratings as a way of determining whether an article 
> is in fact stable.  If an article must first be judged stable what 
> would be the mechanism for making that decision?

I mostly agree with this view, but I see them as somewhat interrelated.  
If we have some good ratings on at least a few recent versions, it'll be 
easier to figure out how stable it is.  For example, if I know version 
[x] is good, and someone makes a minor edit that just fixes a typo, then 
I know that version [x+1] is also good.  What we really want are 
versions that are both stable *and* relatively good, with some 
indication to the end-user of how good it is (perhaps on a 
range)---making versions stable in the trivial sense is easy by just 
protecting the page.

-Mark