User:VeryVerily/Proposed policy changes

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This page lists various ideas I have for changes in handling and policy of Wikipedia based on my long experience as a contributor here.

[edit] Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages

This advice should be gotten rid of or greatly abridged. It may have been true when Wikipedia was a small community and hurting for articles and material that new user shyness would only inhibit growth, but that is no longer the case.

In fact, I've seen many new users invest a lot of time into editing and updating pages, only to have their edits immediately erased because of problems they couldn't foresee: the article was good enough before, the points in question had been discussed in the past, and so on. Such new users may decide that work here is a waste of time and quit.

Much more productive would be encouraging them to contribute new material. That will provide a better experience than updating articles, which often is like wandering blind into a minefield.

[edit] Stable versions

Occasionally the matter comes up of wanting to find and keep stable versions of pages. There are various reasons for this:

• A CD or paper copy of Wikipedia. Which versions of articles will we use? A few vandalized ones will invariably slip through, and many will be in some shellshocked or half-done state.

• Effort wasted. Users often put a lot of time into streamlining text, crafting flow, organizing facts, and so on. The next editor, however well-intentioned, can muck all this up.

• POV editing. Articles which are POV magnets often stand unguarded. While the community looks away an article may be invisibly ruined. High profile examples such as George W. Bush aren't the problem; minor ones such as Kazakhstan or Porsche might inspire passions in a tiny minority of editors.

• Controversial issues. Often an issue is the subject of endless conflict and edit wars. Only after considerable intervention and effort is some delicate, careful compromise reached which makes all sides if not happy then content. But the next editor will show up, toss in their POV, and it all has to happen again.

The solutions I have seen proposed for this all fall short.

• Restricting who can edit; ban IPs, require certification for users, and so on. But this risks scaring off curious newbies, stunting our growth, and losing all those minor fixes. Also, interwiki links might be much harder to maintain.

• Declaring articles done. It must be the rare article which will never need updating, never be susceptible to improvement. Current events and discoveries too often deserve note. Like the last proposal, this is too un-Wiki.

• Clipped versions, i.e., have some version be "paperclipped" as the last stable version, which can then be linked to prominently. But who decides? And, also, minor fixes are often made which are uncontroversial and improve the article, yet which wouldn't be clipped without another "certification" process.

Here's my proposal:

An article (or part of an article, like a section) will have a "state" associated with it. That state will describe what stage of development the article is in, and then anyone that tries to edit it will be given a suitable message for that state. Major edits to an article in an advanced state without good prior justification would be subject to quick reverting, but the editor would be warned of this. To illustrate, here are some possible states:

• Outline. The article is fairly new, only broadly outlined, and very incomplete. Substantial new additions and reorganizations are very welcome.

• Mature. The article is well put together and has most important information. But it could no doubt use further improvement, restructuring, NPOVing, etc.

• Stable. The article is basically done. It's been written up, gone over by several editors, streamlined, formatted, and copyedited. There may be bits of information missing and inaccurate, but one should tread carefully when disturbing existing text, and justify any serious changes in Talk and probably solicit responses before making them.

• Superstable. The article (or hopefully just part of it) was the site of much contention. Its present state represents the endpoint of a long process of negotiation among strong POVs. Disturbing it is quite risky, and anything that might break the balance could be justifiably immediately reverted.

Okay, the questions now. Who determines the article's state? We could require an outside impartial observer, but also we could do it the wiki way: someone could declare something stable (or whatever), and if they're clearly wrong, another would change it back. This shouldn't be too troublesome as it should generally be clear what its state is (and "state wars" if they existed would likely only be proxies for edit wars which would happen anyway).

How to implement? There could be a software solution, where articles or sections carry a tag, and the edit screen carries the warning. Or it could just be a Wiki directive in the text: [[state:Superstable]]. Or it could even be implemented in a low-tech fashion, say with embedded <!-- comments --!>, perhaps created with {{subst:mature}}, that would cause the relevant warning message to appear in the edit box.

This by itself does not address the one issue of vandalism in the paper copy, nor does it give how stable articles would be watched. For that, perhaps a warning system that flagged edits to stable or superstable articles could exist alongside Recentchanges and be patrolled. The paper copy would take these articles which are verified undamaged.

[edit] Comments?

Please direct comments to the talk page.