A mechanism to reduce the wikistress caused by controversial articles

There has been problems with some users strongly pushing POV on articles in their area of interest. In the process, they wear out sysops and other users, eventually resulting in a POV article that no-one bothers to try to fix.

Here follows a simple mechanism that may spare the energy of everyone. It will not be a policy, but just a way to help sysops enforce whatever policy has been agreed upon. Therefore, voting or other democratic processes will need to take place in the normal wiki way to determine when an article should or shouldn't be approved.

When an article is found to be problematic, it is marked by a sysop as such with a button similar to locking a page.
When an article is marked as problematic, the last sysop-approved revision is shown by default. The edit link is replaced with a text "edits to this article will need approval. Click here to edit and/or view the latest not yet approved version".
The page with the not-yet-approved version shows an explanation at the top. Otherwise, it works as normal with editing. Sysops also see a "approve this version" button on this page, which works as expected.

// E23

Discussion

Perhaps a voted edit on the talk page to be transfered not a total update Archivist 00:48, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Could you clarify that a bit? // E23 00:57, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Because there may be more than one contentious paragraph/view/piece of information, then paragraphs or versions of paragraphs need discussing/voting. Archivist 01:32, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Presumably the aim for wiki pages is generally to mention each point of view, along with its reason for support, and issues with it. That way the controversy would cease to have any power.

My question then is does the proposed mechanism lead toward the above situation, does it lock articles into the problem, or where exactly does it take the situation? Tabby 23:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]