Wikipedia talk:Stable versions now/Archive 4

Then, what about this?
I'll pick five articles at semi-random, none of which will be most vandalized pages, but none will be unedited Rambot articles, either. What's the consensus on doing something like this as a test? Ral315 (talk) 03:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, first, that this claims that it is a tool for protecting already-good articles that don't get edited a lot. Not for protecting against vandalism (this is the purpose of the rollback, block and protect buttons, in that order). So Rambot articles would be the right place to start. But why? I don't see the motivation for this. -Splash - tk 03:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with a test of 5 articles each to both verions, Jdoorjam version and the orginal version. Jaranda wat's sup 04:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I testing Jdoorjam version with Selena/Stable version, I'm not sure how to work this though :/ Jaranda wat's sup 04:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

To get the ball rolling, I've picked five wildly diverse articles: Saudi Arabia, Yahoo!, War of 1812, Calculus, and Jeopardy!. The reasoning behind these five are that they're all reasonably long articles, and all have mild editing (~100 edits since June). If this is successful, perhaps some oft-edited articles might be considered next. Ral315 (talk) 04:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think Jeopardy is actually stable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeopardy%21&oldid=67181717   hoopydink  Conas tá tú? 04:39, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That was not the way I wanted to present that diff, so I'll elaborate. I successfully edited the article (I just dropped the infobox down a line), ergo it can't be stable.   hoopydink  Conas tá tú? 04:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Right, fixed. Ral315 (talk) 04:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer to use 5 FAs instead though Jaranda wat's sup 04:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not use FA's as they're more likely to be frequently edited  hoopydink  Conas tá tú? 04:39, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Acually not really the case, they get normal editing unless it's in the main page, Jeopardy! is not an article in high quality nither so I prefer to try it out in another article. Jaranda wat's sup 04:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It actually is the case if you look at the FA you brought up, Selena, which has been edited 100 times since July 12.  hoopydink  Conas tá tú? 04:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, my intent was that an FA would be reverted at this point, and a variety of articles, both high and low quality, should be tried. Ral315 (talk) 04:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that it's probably a good idea to try to stable versions out on a variety of articles.  hoopydink  Conas tá tú? 04:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * (Apologies for disappearing for two weeks from this discussion.) Except both methods can't be used simultaneously on the same articles.  My method makes the dynamic version the default with a prominent link to the stable one.  Because it'd be easy to find the version that was made "Featured", I'd recommend running my method with five articles that were very recently made into Featured Articles.  JDoorj a m     Talk 04:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Alright, alright, I'm going to now get off my lazy bum and actually write out my proposal. While I do please god somebody tell me that Dr. Colbert left us alone tonight (It hasn't aired here yet). JDoorj a m     Talk 04:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * He did. Ral315 (talk) 04:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It might have been a wise move to have made some mention of the implementation of a proposed guideline on the talk pages of the articles moved before doing it. The guideline as written even states that the first step is to "Place the stablenotice template on the talk page and begin a discussion." This did not happen, and I'm all of a sudden seeing Calculus moved to Calculus/development without any prior discussion and no attempt to garner any consensus on the matter. siafu 05:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure as to whether that step's necessary as long as we're developing the idea still; regardless, I should have left a talk page message, and I apologize. Ral315 (talk) 05:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it happens to be late at night here in the United States, so I imagine the true reaction is only going to come out in the next 8-12 hours, either in the form of cranky objectors or enthusiastic supporters. However, the surprise nature of it I fear will cause more of the former than the latter simply from knee-jerk.  I wasn't trying to elicit an apology, just comment on how this was a misstep for the process. siafu 05:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback for my proposal on this page but would like to get some "go for it"s (on the talk page for my proposal, perhaps) before picking five to go with on this. JDoorj a m    Talk 06:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Ral315, I've reversed you. You signally failed to seek consensus for your test for more than a few hours, you signally failed to bother to actually follow the process you are supposedly testing thus making the test null, and you 'stabilised' articles that were being actively edited well inside the last 24 hours. In those cases currently linked from Template:Stablenotice, examining the talk pages shows almost nothing but opposition when the process is followed, and so you cannot claim to just be able to stuff this down everyone's throat because you fancy it.

Furthermore, JDoorjam has offered an alternative that you appear to have ignored entirely in deciding that this experiment was to go ahead - consensus, process, agreement or no.

Do it properly, or don't do it at all. You just discredit the process by wilfully circumventing it and the lack of consensus surrounding it. -Splash - tk 12:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that it was a mistake not to solicit opinions on the talk pages of the articles concerned. However, JDoorjam's proposal seems to be only about featured articles, which are of a very limited number. As I'm still interested in seeing the current proposal tested, I placed a notice on Talk:Calculus to solicit opinions. I hope that the editors that work on that article will be allowed to take the decision on whether to test "Stable versions now". -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:18, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Not really. The active editors of an article don't get to vote themselves an exemption from the Foundation issues, nor to decree that people shall not edit their article. The correct way to go about this is, for the umpteenth time, to go and build a workable, accepted proposal somewhere and then test to see if it works. It is wrong on many levels to take a proposal, the talk page for which is littered with objections, ruminations, alternatives, proposals and everything else and say "right then, let's have some of that". You're doing it backwards, in the same way that these so-called 'test' earlier were backwards. Oppose, and object to the implication that only those who edit there should have anything to say. -Splash - tk 16:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Jitse, I think it would be reasonable to expand my proposal to Good articles as well. There are currently 1324 such articles, and that number is growing faster than the number of Featured Articles. It'd still be a limited number, but honestly, if an article isn't good enough to be declared a "Good" article, why are we stabilizing it in the first place? JDoorj a m     Talk 18:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem with this suggestion as described.
For what my opinion is worth, here's what I see as the most serious problem with this suggestion, at least as it is currently described, plus some possible solutions:
 * It forces admins to use their janitorial abilities to make and enforce content decisions, something that is supposed to be avoided. Even if we ignore the potental problem of admins ignoring the rules and editing the protected page directly, and assume they work through the dev version for all non-trivial edits it still calls for, at the very least, an admin to decide on a version of the page to stabilize, followed by (presumably) repeated admin decisions on when the dev version is approprate to move over. Even if a page has no discussion or disputes when it is stablized, this essentially says that it will be moderated forever and that all further disputes on it will have to be resolved by an uninvolved admin, who will have to judge when discussions have settled down, decide if a version is stable enough to bring over, and perform the actual transfer. I do not think that even the most hard-working and stable admins could do this constantly without occasionally allowing their subjective judgements of a version's quality to influence their decision; who is seriously going introduce a new 'stable' version when they think that it is, on a content level, clearly significently worse than the current one?
 * The primary way to solve this is to have a clear 'Non-Stable Articles' process, and to make it extremely straightforward: If a single editor in good standing (i.e. not a vandal or a completely new account) claims that an article is not stable, it is not, and that status will be revoked immediately upon their request.  No justification need be provided for this request; if any editor thinks that an article isn't stable, it isn't.
 * Per the above, a bot runs which checks the number of edits to developement versions; if they receive more than a set number, the article is automatically put in a queue for possible switching back to non-stable status (an admin would still do the actual de-stabilization, checking to ensure that the edits sparking the destabilization are not trivial or vandalism.) This could pose problems with people spamming the page with minor edits to destabilize it, of course, if it weren't for the above; but the fact that any editor can revoke an article's stable status on request would make such a situation unnecessary.
 * Some people might object that no article that would benefit from stabilization will be able to keep it under the above restrictions. This is probably true; but the problem with that is in the original proposal, not my proposed solutions.  An article that is genuinely stable would, after all, not need any of these elaborate rules and regulations to keep it so. --Aquillion 20:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)