User talk:Jimbo Wales

Jimbo Wales on "stable" articles

I have previously addressed this matter as a factor in editorial dissatisfaction and sense of futility. Working on articles where our good faith efforts get trashed is very disheartening:

"Until we start adding some level of stability and protection to GA and FA, we can't make this claim. Editing to those articles should be under semi-protection control: only experienced editors making direct edits, and controversial edits by everyone must be discussed before installation. Unstable content can never be considered reliable." 18:26, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales has also proposed a similar idea:

"Wales also plans to introduce a ‘stable’ version of each entry. Once an article reaches a specific quality threshold it will be tagged as stable. Further edits will be made to a separate ‘live’ version that would replace the stable version when deemed to be a significant improvement. One method for determining that threshold, where users rate article quality, will be trialled early next year." Source: Internet encyclopaedias go head to head, Nature, by Jim Giles, 14 December 2005. "UPDATE 2 (28 March 2006)."

When can this be effectuated? Once an article has reached GA, and especially FA, status, increasingly stringent efforts should be made to limit amateurish and destructive edits. If there was ever a place where WP:PRESERVE should be strictly applied, it's on these articles. We need an increasingly growing number of "stable articles" which are truly reliable.

Wales's suggestion is excellent, and I'd sure like to know if anything ever happened to this idea. This would be a radical quantum spring in the right direction. We should be able to make the claim that certain content is truly reliable, and the world needs to know that. Press coverage of such a move would be welcome and notable. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 22:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged revisions. Stephen 23:23, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

User:SandyGeorgia mentioned something along thhese lines recently. From memory, she proposed a level of protection for FAs as well as a link at the top of the FA to a diff showing the reader how the article has evolved since it passed FA. Have I got that right, Sandy? We do have a problem when writers with an interest in a topic take an article through FA and then move on from Wikipedia, leaving the article to languish in the hands of uninterested, uninformed or agenda-driven editors. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Not quite, Anthonyhcole. I wanted an explicit medical disclaimer on medical articles because they are so often so dangerously bad.

Semi-protection of FAs would be a good thing. But I do not support stable versions of FAs, because most of our FAs ... are not-- what do we protect? And these days, with the decline in editing, I am not sure what being promoted FA (on three supports) means-- I've seen plenty that aren't, and would not suggest the promoted version should be considered stable. Featured article review has been moribund since Raul654 was run off; because FAs are being promoted on increasingly less support, but not subjected to regular review and demotion when they fall below standard, my guess is that at least one-third of our current FAs do not meet standard. And possibly even half. If the main authors of an FA move along or lose interest, they tend to fall out of date. Protecting a "stable" version of outdated info would not be a good thing, IMO, and we cannot necessarily consider the promoted version as being maintained to standard.

A worse problem is that we have some really poor medical FAs that are being maintained by good editors, and they are STILL outdated! It might be good to get some outside help

As to GAs, I don't think there is anything stable or worthy of protection, because GA has little meaning; they are one editor's review.

As to seeing a diff of changes since promotion, the promoted version is accessed by clicking on the date in the Article milestones template on the talk page.

In short, per BullRangifer's suggestion, I don't believe our content, even right out of FA, is "truly" anything that the world needs to know about. Most of our readers have no idea if they are reading an FA, GA or stub ... they don't know how to access that info. What we need is a prominent disclaimer about how dangerously bad our medical info is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:05, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I understand the intent, but this sounds uncomfortably similar to Citizendium's "approved articles" which turned out to be a colossal failure. User:HaeB pointed out that the approval process had the unintended effect of locking in errors and not just locking out vandalism and dodgy edits. We might be able to do better because we have so many more editors, and we have Citizendium's experience to learn from. But we'll need to be careful. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Just a clarification. Neither Jimbo's nor my suggestions involve locking an article or no more editing. Not at all. Real improvement, corrections, and updating can still happen. Currently articles just churn through constant changes and edit warring, with good content being deleted and constantly being replaced. Often no real progress happens for years. It's like watching the clothes churning in the washer; no real and lasting progress.

PRESERVE is generally ignored. If it were respected, we'd be building content, rather than trashing and replacing in an endless cycle toward a different, but not necessarily better, version. When one sees that happening year after year, one begins to realize that much of one's efforts are just wasted time. Editors leave for that reason. The fringe editors are winning this. They wear us down. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 05:45, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Maybe you should focus on articles such as Scarf or Farm, which don't have that problem. Perennial battleground articles are perennial battlegrounds for a reason, bureaucracy is not going to solve that. power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

For once in my life I agree with power~enwiki! Wikipedia is full of articles on smaller "basic" topics with highish views that have barely changed their text in years, despite ranging in quality from downright terrible to merely mediocre. The edit histories tend to be very misleading; when you look in detail the many edits are all messing with formatting, links and so on, with few or none actually altering the text in a significant way. Johnbod (talk) 13:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Very true. Some things are just facts. Once they are defined and described, the article is pretty much finished, unless some event or change in knowledge impacts it, and then we need to update it. That can always happen, even if it's a semi-protected "stable" article. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 14:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't mean that at all. We have tons of articles on classic encyclopaedic subjects that are very poor and have been completely neglected for years, and are not in the least bit "finished". But very few WP editors look to improve that sort of article. Even at better quality levels few GAs should really be "preserved" in their current state. Johnbod (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

My current thinking is that such a scheme would be a very bad idea indeed. I am a supporter of some form of Wikipedia:Flagged revisions but for slightly different reasons. The idea that most new edits to article that have achieved GA or FA status are, on average, destructive, is not backed up by any actual evidence, and in my view is probably false. Thoughtful openness to further improvements is essential, even if it is sometimes unsettling to those who have a stake in the status quo.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting. FYI, "most" new edits is not a concern, at least not mine. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 22:36, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Jimbo, can we safely assume you have abandoned, or radically simplified, your original proposal? It sounds that way. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 22:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't know. The interview with Jim Giles was in 2005 - 12 years ago. I have read how he reports on the idea back then, but I don't recall at this time precisely what I was thinking nor precisely what I said. I think that my general outlook has not changed, certainly not regarding the goal of Wikipedia, but it's important to remember that back then there was still a common idea that we would be working towards a "Wikipedia 1.0" which might be printed or similar. That never really happened, and unless you're going to print, the need for "stability" is a bit lower.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

The WP1.0 and similar curated collections were used for offline media and several generations of stand-alone hardware readers. 174.16.98.178 (talk) 16:44, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Think there is some sense of having historical time versions of WP. For instance. In engineering, the practice goes back many decades. When the first Spitfire fighter aircraft was ready to go into production the engineering drawrings stamped as 'frozen'. Meaning that no alteration could be added. That was for the Spitfire Mark (designation) One. Subsuquent improvments created Mark 2. Then those drawings were 'frozen' and so on. Every Mark/version being better than the last. We/and the World now have a downloadable WP. If the software geeks can find a way to enable us to 'freeze' good articles for download, yet at the same time alow the 'live' versions to get further improved (or trashed). We are more than halfway there already– many talk pages have templates indicating the importance and quality etc of the article on that date. Think this debate should go on further to gain the wisdom of the crowds rather than resting on our laurels. For we don't want to go down in history, in a hundred years time, to be viewed as a quick flash in the pan. Organisations that blossom quickly, often die quickly. Something I think JW appreciates, as he is adding 'fat' to the WMF for any lean times ahead. Although we are not a print encyclopedia it may be worth concidering if we could benifit from clearly declaring 'editions'. Aspro (talk) 16:46, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't forget about Template:Stable_version everyone. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:32, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Thankyou Emir of Wikipedia for making us aware of this template. This maybe the way to go. However, as I have not been aware of this template before I guess that many others are not either. Can this be married up with Wikipedia:Good articles ? Many 'good articles' listed there have been subsaquently delisted ( maby becuse of trashing). Yet, their is no suggestion nor guidance on Wikipedia:Good articles that these can be noted as Stable Versions. Can anybody think of a way to build upon what we have already and inform all editors that Template:Stable version exists. I spend more of my time now wading through a mulitued of policy to help out new editors, than doing any editing myself and yet I didn't know of Template:Stable version. There has to be a simple way of informing all editors that grade the quality of articles on thier specialst subjects, that they also have the option of declaring a Stable Version. Aspro (talk) 16:41, 25 April 2018 (UTC)