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

Wed Dec 7 02:33:49 UTC 2005

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> If you were to dive into the editing world, you'd first be taken to the current
>> development version. Principal of least astonishment, after all!
> 
> The version they dive into edit would *not* be the version they first came upon and read. I fail
> to see how that would not be at least a little confusing.
>  
>> We've not stepped up to our responsibilities to be clear
>> about what we are and what we provide; either we need to put a big "Bug off!" on
>> every page and tell everyone to go away while we play around for another five
>> years, or we need to get serious about being a public resource.
> 
> Making the distinction between development and stable versions and linking to stable versions
> serves both purposes. 

It might be a start, but it still leaves us with unreviewed crap by default.

>> The time is past that we can pretend we're just a few geeks editing for fun. To
>> serve the public -- and that *is* the point of an encyclopedia -- we need
>> public-facing pages that have been reviewed.
> 
> And my idea of having stable versions linked from development versions does not serve that?

No, it doesn't. It keeps the crap out in front, leaving us with a permanent
reputation as unreliable and dangerous.

> There
> are hundreds of other websites out there that provide static mirrors of our content. So Wikipedia
> does not need to concentrate on that. 

If we don't want to concentrate on it, then we need to make a serious effort to
keep people *off* of Wikipedia and divert them to those "static mirrors". This
means backpedaling on the last couple years of publicity and going out of our
way to:

* Prevent linking to articles at *.wikipedia.org
* Keep pages at *.wikipedia.org out of search engines, or very lowly ranked
* Get rid of any "citation" features that encourage people to reference pages at
our site.

> When we get a critical mass of stable articles, the mirrors almost certainly will choose to only
> host those. If readers what to use Wikipedia to view stable articles by default, then they just
> need to create an account and set their preferences.

If you keep putting something else out in front, that's what mirrors are going
to want. (It's also what the crappy leech-mirrors are going to get by default.)

> But *WIKIPEDIA IS WHERE THE DEVELOPMENT HAPPENS* And we are far, far, from being a comprehensive
> source of human knowledge. Let's not pretend that our current article count is at all adequate to
> serve our goals. It is not.

Our "article count" is, if anything, too high. Article count is meaningless at
this point; pretending a growth in article count is helpful is not going to get
us anything but big numbers to toss around press releases and look impressive.

>> Explosive growth is *not* our primary concern today. We already have way too
>> many articles; we need to concentrate on quality. Concentrating on "growth" will
>> just keep us in the death spiral we're in now.
> 
> And concentrating on stagnation is the key? I don't think so. We need to balance growth with
> quality. Under my plan, editors will still be highly motivated to get articles to the point where
> a reviewer can mark a version as stable. Hiding the development version by default effectively
> means we don't much care about further improvement to the article. It also means less motivation
> to editors (who have all their work hidden away until a reviewer finds time to review it).

Concentrating on "growth" leaves us in a stagnating rut where we never have
anything that's safe to show in public. Why bother improving it if it's going to
have a penis picture on it whenever anyone goes to look at it?

>>> 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
>> Something which is necessary!
> 
> Why? We have come very far with our current model. Let's *add* to it instead of replace it. We
> should we consider fundamental *only* if adding to our current methods does not work. Otherwise we
> risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm recommending we add to it, not replace it. Why do you think otherwise?

>>> A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
>>> severely restrict that stream. 
>> That'll be a good thing.
> 
> Hiding development versions and greatly reducing new recruitment  will result in development
> versions that, on average, deteriorate with time, instead of improve. 

I believe this to be false. Making it *visible* that development is happening by
having a clear distinction, a visible marker of progress from the last stable
revision, and a review process that is interactive, should *encourage*
improvement in quality.

> Sunshine is the best medicine. Development versions need more sunshine than stable versions do.
> Just make it very clear to the reader what is what and that they can log-in to view stable
> versions by default. 

If you want sunshine, then let us have stable reviewed versions up front so
there's light at the end of the tunnel!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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