[Wikipedia-l] road to stability, formatted. last kick-off posting.

Tue Dec 6 22:29:10 UTC 2005

--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > People would need to log in and change their
> > preferences to see stable versions by default (the other way around would hide vandalism in
> > the development version; besides, the most recent/up-to-date version should be on top anyway).

> 
> IMHO the opposite needs to be true; reviewed, stable versions need to be right
> on top, as what the public sees by default.

And when they read something that needs to be fixed or added, they will be reading an older
version. Clicking 'edit' at that point would produce a confusing result; an article that would
likely have the fix or fact they wanted to added. Principle of least astonishment should rule
here. Also, the most up to date version should be, well, on top. Everything else is part of the
revision history. That just makes more intuitive sense to me. 

> Sure, there'll be a big fat message showing that 78573 more edits have been made
> to [[George W. Bush]] since this reviewed version, with a handy link to go right
> to it and see the changes, but they're gonna see the stable copy first.

That would only *start* to make sense when more than a small fraction of articles are part of the
stable version. Otherwise there would be a confusing mix of stable and development versions
displayed to readers depending on if the article has a stable version or not.

We also still want to encourage further growth and improvement of articles that have stable
versions, no? Hiding the most recent version takes away the immediacy and instant self
gratification one gets when editing. It is a major hook to attract new editors (and until we get
our high turnover rate in check, we need to still encourage lots of new users to join). 

This would also harm an area we are pretty good at: updating articles whose subject is in the
news. If stable versions were displayed by default, then any updates that reflect current events
would not be displayed until a new stable version is selected. That would either mean that we
would need to have very low standards on the selection of stable versions in order to keep up with
updates, or it would kill much of the motivation to update those articles in the first place (a
more rigorous selection process - which is what we want, right? - would be too slow to keep up). 

> We've spent so much time hyping Wikipedia that it's become quite popular at its
> present location; a separate or hidden click-through stable set will basically
> never be seen and can't reasonably answer the (totally valid) criticisms that a
> reference site needs to be a little bit conservative on its public face.

The public face of Wikipedia has always been a work in progress. True, right now I think the
pendulum is too far to the openness and development side. But presenting stable versions by
default would fundamentally change the whole character of the project and swing the pendulum too
far in the other direction, IMO. At the very least we should start this the way I have set out:
Prominent links to the stable versions when they exist. We could also put ‘under construction: you
can help!’ icons on all the development versions. 

In short: We should make it more obvious that development versions are just that *and* we should
give people the option to use stable versions (even the option to see those by default where they
exist or even to *only* see those versions). Adding to what we do now is what we need. Making
fundamental changes to what we now have, which has been rather successful, would, IMO, be a
mistake. 

The goose that laid the golden egg does not need a sex change operation; she just needs a new set
of clothes and some additional tools to help in egg care. 

> Most of those visitors *aren't* participating editors, and on a relatively
> mature site like en.wikipedia we need to recognize this and act accordingly to
> meet their requirements as well as those of visitors who start participating.

A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
severely restrict that stream. 

-- mav

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