 | This page in a nutshell: Quality articles on Wikipedia should be sealed to preserve said quality, therefore edits to them should be made by group decision. |
Open editing is a necessary tool for building a Wiki, just as water is necessary for our survival. Like water, too much of it can be fatal, drowning the project in mediocrity. How can a beneficial balance be struck? By sealing community recognized quality articles from open editing and instead having edits to them decided by proposal/discussion on the talk page. This would preserve the quality of recognized good or excellent articles, while still allowing for open editing to be conducted on articles not yet recognized.
Currently, all articles are theoretically open to editing by everyone. Since "everyone" includes vandals, COIs and those who want to help but aren't due to several possible problems, the quality can fluctuate quite a bit.
Under this proposal, quality articles would only be subject to editing by administrators who may only do so after a decision is reached in discussion.
Thus editors would be freed from having to monitor good/FA articles for vandalism, or well intentioned edits that otherwise decrease quality. It's important to understand that this proposal is not a quality guarantee as poor quality could still result from group decisions too.