Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Brion Vibber <brion(a)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)