Wikipedia talk:Static version

This smells familiar...sort of like WP:STABLE. A merge might be necessary. Johnleemk | Talk 04:43, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes... I had to pick the word 'static' because 'stable version' is already a redirect there. I feel this proposal is fundamentally different though - I'll add a bit to the page to explain why.  Worldtraveller 09:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I described my idea for a stable version here. I emailed Jimbo asking what he thought, and he rather liked the idea. I believe Worldtraveller's description here is almost identical to my own. Raul654 18:16, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, my follow up - http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5290 Raul654 18:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * That's closer to what I had thought. I still don't see the difference with this and WP:STABLE. Stable kind of describes a number of the options that have been discussed. I also think the stable needs to be an editable branch instead of a frozen oldid. With advanded diff and merge functions keeping up to date with good changes but eliminating the bad would be possible. - Taxman Talk 18:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * "I also think the stable needs to be an editable branch instead of a frozen oldid" - no! If it is seperately editable, then it becomes a fork, and forks are a Very Bad Thing. Raul654 18:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No reason for it to be a very bad thing :). It's still Wikipedia, but having an editable branch with approved editors only allows eliminating vandalism, trolling, revert wars and other sundry problems we deal with every day. I believe it is the only way we'll attract enough of the type of talented people we need to develop the type of content we need. I believe those problems are holding us back from where we need to be. - Taxman Talk 19:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If the stable versoin is editable (as opposed to what I suggested, which essentially it's a copy of an old version deemed by an admin to be vandalism free, 'etc) then essnetially it becomes a new Nupedia. I do not see what the purpose of letting people edit stable seperately would be - I only see downsides to it. Raul654 19:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * An editable stable branch allows all the advantages I listed above, basically through stricter conduct policies. Some minimum qualification to get in, and strict conduct policies-any edit warring, trolling, etc and you're out. That combination would eliminate the downsides of the current system and allow attracting the type of editors that refuse to edit now because of that crap. We are in a very different position than Nupedia was. We have momentum and content. People will cry anti-wiki, but it's still very much a wiki and still very open to anyone as long as they demonstrate trust first, which we have an easy system for. It pretty much hits the best of both worlds. What we have established is the current system isn't working very well in producing large enough volumes of high quality content. It's worth experimenting with some new options. - Taxman Talk 21:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The way I see it, an editable stable version with approved editors could well be an excellent thing but would be a fork, unavoidably. I think it would be better to lobby here for the much stricter conduct policies. I always thought Wikipedia's attitude that even the most disruptive editor could be persuaded to be productive was a great strength that helped to generate substantial editor numbers, but now the project has, surely, the critical mass of editors it needs and there is no longer a need to be so tolerant of disruptive behaviour.

But a non-editable stable version could also eliminate the problems you describe. If the stable version is the 'finished' product, visible to the public, while the wiki continues to be the 'development' stage, that would take away an enormous amount of incentive to vandalise, edit-war, troll, etc etc. If edit warring is only over a work in progress rather than a perceived final product, it begins to seem rather pointless. Why bother vandalising an article if it's not even visible to the public? I think instead there would be a far greater incentive for serious editors to collaborate and actually produce 'finished' articles of high quality. Of course, initially there would be few finished articles and the 'development' articles would all need to still be visible. Worldtraveller 11:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't get me wrong, I'm for that too, I just don't think it goes far enough. I'm fine with it as the lower change option at first as long as the option for an editable stable branch isn't forgotten about or made more difficult/impossible. I believe Tim Starling has some demonstration code for an editable stable branch, but he hasn't gotten time to work on it much. I also agree now is the time to no longer give disruptive users so much sway. Not sure where to successfully coordinate work on that. Doing it in the blocking policy talk page doesn't seem enough as for it to work people need to see and understand the why's-not just the people that come to that talk page. - Taxman Talk 14:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * How is an editable stable branch not a fork? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it wasn't, because technically in some ways it is. I clarified my comment above to reflect what I meant. But also when software projects have a stable and a testing branch no one really worries about that being a fork. Think Debian, FreeBSD, etc. When the branch follows the same basic policies and methods, it's not a problematic fork. Yes it always adds some overhead, but if the end result is more net positive, that cost is worth incurring. I obviously believe it would be worth it in this case just like many opensource software projects have discovered. I strongly believe it would be worth a test, and that people would soon see the benefits are enormous. But like I said it comes down to the code, so... - Taxman Talk 19:43, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Issues to be addressed
I think any stable/static version proposal must address the following issues:

1) Is only one version seen by the general browsing public, and if so, which one?

I'm not sure if it's the general consensus, but I think the answer to this has to be only one and the appropriate one is the stable/static version. Having two "wikipedia" articles on the same topic, both visible to the general public (presumably both indexed by google) seems like a nightmare to me. In addition to eliminating the confusion factor, I strongly suspect exposing only the stable/static version would greatly reduce the motivation to vandalize. What's the point of vandalizing if your efforts are not immediately visible?

2) Who picks stable/static versions?

The Stable versions proposal suggests a consensus process managed by administrators for each stable/static version. Raul's suggestion is "administrator decides". My suggestion is a new class of user, designated by admins, decides. I strongly suspect any kind of consensus mechanism would not scale well (and would lead to stable/static versions effectively becoming permanent). I object to "administrator decides" on the grounds that administrators have never had any particular authority over content, and I'm not convinced that it would scale sufficiently either.

3) How are stable/static versions updated?

Stable versions suggests a perpetually parallel fork with (I think) both some set of privileged editors able to directly change the stable/static version and the ability to pick a new stable/static version from the "open" version. Raul's suggestion (and mine) is that the stable/static version is always simply one of the "open" versions (whether it's an actual copy or just a marker in the database).

4) Can people browsing the stable/static version easily edit the corresponding open version and, if so, how?

My interpretation of Stable versions is that the answer is no. There might be a link to the open version from the stable/static version, but it would effectively be like viewing a Wikipedia article at answers.com and clicking a link to get to the open version. Note that the more impedance there is to updating the stable/static version, the more likely the open version will become significantly different. IMO, I think this means the stable/static version should be as easily updatable as possible. It's not obvious to me how any mechanism that results in the stable/static version being at a different URL than the open version can preserve the ability to easily edit the open version. IMO, the goal is not to prevent edits but to provide some mechanism to make sure the edits are reasonble.

-- Rick Block (talk) 23:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think #1 is clearly that the stable version has to be displayed. For #2 I don't see any way around an RfA style process that promotes editors trusted with content issues. An option to avoid the mess of that at the start is let all admins do it and take the priviledge away quickly from anyone abusing it (under a very strict definition of abuse). #3 is open for debate, but the oldid marker way is a great step forward and the least change, so it may be the best thing to do first. For #4 I'd always thought the interface would be the same as now except the edit this page tab might say editable version or edit open version of this page. - Taxman Talk 23:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 1 - I agree, the stable version has to be the one displayed. That then provides a huge disincentive for vandalism to the 'live' version.
 * 2 - admins are supposed to be janitors and it's always been emphasised that they have no higher status as editors. Therefore, I would not be in favour of making this an admin responsibility.  My favoured option would be to create a new group of editors who can do this.  Probably many admins would end up being in this group, but it would avoid giving admin status an aura of editorial superiority.  I'd think some kind of RfA-type process would be necessary.
 * 3 - Ideally I think improvements from live versions should be incorporated into static versions on a six month basis or something like that - a reasonable interval for 'releases' of an encyclopaedia - but this could be tricky. There would inevitably be (often substantial) divergence between the static version and the live version.  I was just looking at Sun, which in a few weeks following its promotion to FA, grew by 20%.  It's very difficult to work out what changes of that were good and what were bad.  It's exactly the kind of article that makes me really enthusiastic for a static version because of course it doesn't include everything about the Sun - if it did it would be impractically huge - so people always think they can improve it by adding a little bit.  Often, although its addition is of course well-meaning, each little bit added detracts from the overall organisation and cohesiveness of the article.
 * 4 - If an editor is browsing a static version, thinks 'I could improve that bit' and clicks on an 'edit' tab, the live version they end up editing could be very different to the static version. Maybe instead of an 'edit' link there should simply be something like 'work on next update'.  That would reinforce the demarcation between the 'development' fully editable version and the 'release' static version.  The live version would probably not suffer nearly as much from the problems I mentioned for 'Sun' above, just because changes would not be visible immediately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Worldtraveller (talk • contribs)

I guess I missed a couple:

5) How often do we want stable/static articles to be updated?

IMO, nearly continuously. I don't think the goal is to have articles that we put on the shelf that remain unchanged for months and months, but rather articles for which any changes have to be made and/or vetted by someone at least slightly more responsible than anyone with a web browser. If we have a stable/static article on a living person who dies, I'd expect the visible article (which it sounds like we're all saying should be the stable/static one) to be updated the very next day (not 3 months from now). I think this implies the working version and the stable/static version cannot be allowed to drift very far apart. If we can't keep up in a continuous sense with changes to the working versions, the number of such changes will grow unbounded (basic queuing theory).

6) How does an article get its first stable/static version, with the related issue of how many articles do we want to have stable/static versions?

I think there are basically two choices: something like WP:FA (which, as Worldtraveller has observed, runs at the rate of about 1 per day), or something like WP:GA. I'd think our target would be something in the neighborhood of 100,000 articles (see List of encyclopedia topics) which I think means we can't use WP:FA.

-- Rick Block (talk) 14:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 5: It depends on the article, I think. If the static version is constantly updated, then article with a static version will require more or less double the work to maintain.  For a large number of articles, a release every six months would be more than sufficient - things like Restoration Spectacular, Benjamin Mountfort, Cat's Eye Nebula, they don't change dramatically on a day to day or even a week to week basis.  If an article is likely to require updating more often than that, I'd say it probably can't be considered 'finished' and so a static version of it would be inappropriate.  But obviously, if a major fact changes, a static version would need to be updated - I think the kind of thing we're talking about here would be still be editable but only by a subset of users, so I don't think that kind of update would be a problem.


 * 6: I've mentioned the figure of 50,000 articles in some recent discussions as a fairly unambitious total. FA won't produce that number of finished articles until next century, so is not viable as the only method for selecting static versions.  A GA-style single-person assessment is certainly a good way to assess much greater numbers of articles than FA can, but while GA was originally supposed to be excellent short articles, which would be worthy of static versions, it has grown to include long but mediocre articles as well.  The list grows by about 4-5 a day - still too slow for the creation of even a modest encyclopaedia of articles that meet basic quality criteria.
 * I think this point illustrates another fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is that there's very little incentive to produce large numbers of short, excellent articles covering the whole gamut of what an encyclopaedia should cover - instead, the immediately-visible incentive encourages the creation of vast numbers of stubs, while the FA incentive produces very small numbers of very long, very detailed articles. Worldtraveller 15:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania discussion
I'm a firm believer in face-to-face discussions as the only real way to resolve old chestnuts like making Wikipedia articles more reliable. I think that stability is only one of several issues associated with validation (defined as "knowing an article is accurate"), and we need to develop an overall strategy to address all of these together, not separately (though any separate solutions are, of course, welcome!). I am involved with organising a discussion on validation issues at Wikimania 2006 in August, that may be of interest to folks watching this page. It's 45 minutes long, and the title is "Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate." The following is part of my submission:

''The aim of the discussion will be to develop a workable method for article validation on Wikipedia. The discussion leader will initiate the discussion by briefly outlining the problem and describing some possible solutions. These will include review by subject experts (an elected panel, respected WikiProject members and/or outside reviewers), and the creation of validated versions (or “blessed editions”) of articles, possibly in their own “validated article” namespace. After the discussion a proposal will be placed on Wikipedia representing the consensus reached, and participants will be encouraged to refine the proposal further.'' (Links added here to help the reader)

Developing stable/static versions of articles is an important part of this debate. Of course, if consensus has been reached here on the issue over the next 3 months, that will help shape the discussion. I hope folks interested in these issues can attend the meeting in Boston in August and contribute. Walkerma 16:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Move Wikimania to London and I'll be there! I'll be very interested to find out what the response is to your talk.  I suppose with this proposal I'm more or less ignoring how the validation would be done and just proposing what should be done with validated articles.  Will your talk address that point as well?  Worldtraveller 15:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Any further thoughts?
Some form of static version seems to be regarded as a reasonably good idea. There doesn't seem, though, to be any kind of momentum and enthusiasm for pushing it forward. Walkerma's talk in Boston may encourage more movement on this, but any thoughts in the meantime? Worldtraveller 14:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It all rests on the code. There's not too much we can do before that it ironed out. - Taxman Talk 17:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents
I think this proposal should not be implemented, for one reason: even featured articles require updating. For example, Microsoft is a featured article. Microsoft will make notable releases of new products periodically, and we must update the article to reflect the release.

Instead, I think that all featured articles should be semi-protected. This will prevent most of the vandalism - from new and unregistered users - while allowing established users to update the article.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This proposal certainly doesn't aim to prevent articles being updated. It just aims to avoid letting bad edits severely degrade articles.  This does happen and can be quite depressing to see - one example that I have noticed is Ryanair, which is getting pretty awful as an endless stream of users add biased info.
 * In many ways your idea is more restrictive that the other options listed. The first two, for example, involve a live version which anyone can still edit, and updates from which are periodically integrated into the static version.  To me this seems to retain all the benefits of a wiki while mitigating or eliminating many of the disadvantages.  Worldtraveller 11:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Extracting list of articles from Category
Folks, I want to get a list of articles, one per line, from Category:Wikipedia CD Selection.

I have done it by saving the HTML from the category pages (it stretches to about 12 pages, 200 per). I then plan on using mwdumper against a recent XML dump, with this list as a parameter. I will then fill in the images, and convert it to plucker format for use on a PDA or CD. If I can easily automate this, I can create regular snapshots, as articles get added. Wizzy… &#9742;   16:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

stable or static versions
I think this is a very good idea, esp for articles which have reached that age where any new changes might just as well go on a detail page. Honestly, hundreds or thousands of pages could stand to be "protected" esp if they were the "main" pages and detail pages were not protected. However, this all inks directly into a different problem. Wikipedia doesn't seem to currently have a direct classification system of main article, primary detail article, sub detail article, and sub sub detail article. Articles need to be classified like that in order to make something like "stable" or "static" reasonable. Also, just in order for organization and order to be sane, and as a navigational aid. Prometheuspan 01:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The Focus of this version should be on discussion. A static wikipedia is an oxymoron
Interestingly use of the page protection feature already performs this function.

I think it's important to recognise that discussion of protected articles is the main basis for the creation of a 'static' version of wikipedia.

Discussion of protected articles is what 'Wikipedia static' should primarily be about, rather than a 'static' version of wikipedia. We should not fool ourselves by ever calling wikipedia 'static', or any other encyplopedia for that matter.

An encyclopedia is never static, the suggested title is an oxymoron. For that matter, neither are they ever really stable, as the world changes daily, although the degree of stability of fields of knowlege vary and perhaps, degree of content stability is something that should be a feature of each article, perhaps as a rating?

Also I think this proposal is an opportunity to refine the process for mediation of POV disputes. Perhaps POV disputes should be its focus? Supposed 02:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)