[WikiEN-l] Page freezing on "good" articles

Thu Oct 27 22:35:02 UTC 2005

Fast Fission wrote,

>There was a lot of talk not too long ago about possibilities of
>protecting certain high-profile articles which are reasonably "good",
>in order to prevent various forms of content degredation which happen
>even with well-meaning editors, much less from vandals and the
>problems which come up in problematic reverts, etc.
>
>
>Is there a designated place to discuss this sort of thing?
>
>
>In my mind, it would make sense to have some sort of "Vote for
>Freezing" page for articles of this sort. It would be almost the
>opposite of something like VfD -- an advanced form of FAC, whereby
>people would vote (and ply some attention on) as to whether an article
>was good enough to qualify it for this sort of enshrinement. "This
>article is good enough that it doesn't need people to be able to edit
>it constantly without discussing changes first," the status of
>"frozen" would imply. Some standards would need to be developed (a FA
>which has already run on the main page, another round of peer review,
>no major rewrites in the past two months, etc.) but it could work out
>(hopefully). Requests for Unfreezing could be done as well for those
>who think that an article was problematically frozen in a state which
>would require more than just the sorts of line edits one can do from a
>talk page.
>
>
>So anyway, I'm not caught up on the latest status of this debate, but
>I think something of this sort might be a good idea, and prevent the
>sort of incoherence that sneaks into even good articles over a long
>period of time.
>
>
>(And before anyone points out that this would make it hard for new
>users to edit such articles -- that would be the *point* of such a
>policy, not an unintended consequence. And it would, ideally, focus
>users away from such articles and onto the legions which still need
>basic work).
>
>
>FF

The only thing I can imagine is this: when a page has reached this state it 
is usually through the hard work of a few editors (and I am not trying to 
deny the contributions of countless other people).  I suggest those editors 
save that version of the article as sub-pages to their user pages.  If 
there is ever major vandalism of the article, or if it seriously degrades 
over a long period of time, those editors have a point of reference 
(without having to go back through the edit history) of when they thought 
of it as "done."

(consider this a supplement to providing links to pages you are proud of, 
on your user page)

I understand if those editors have left wikipedia in the meantime, such 
saved pages may go with them.  I do not consider this a tragic loss as far 
as the articles go, since there always is the edit history (although if 
this happens a lot it would be worth thinking about why contributors to 
great articles are leaving).

But let's assume most don't go away.  What constitutes a great version of 
an article is subjective; my suggestion allows versions that are great from 
at least one person's point of view to be preserved, without in anyway 
undermining the wikiness of the article itself.  By the way, I think some 
users already do this or something like this anyway.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701