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On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 01:06:01PM +1000, Tom Fifield wrote:
> TL;DR - Obsolete page on the wiki? Consider moving it to the
> Obsolete namespace.
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> Every now and again you encounter someone who's asking a question, or
> trying to do an installation based on some information that was put on
> our wiki in 2010
> 
> We've got a lot of stuff on there, and there are few people cleaning as
> such right now - thanks to those who do!
> 
> => A proposal: There's an "Obsolete" namespace on the wiki, and we move
> pages there to graveyard them.
> 
> This is good because the "move" command on the wiki is available to all
> users (not just admins, like delete is), and it's easier to restore
> bad moves than page deletes.
> 
> Though, I think that just because a page is old, doesn't necessarily
> mean it should be moved out - sometimes we need to refer to old
> blueprint plans to see the history, and it's nice to look back at what
> went on at the Austin summit. However, for pages that have information
> that is actually incorrect and never going to be fixed, marking them
> obsolete when you see them will result in a better experience for all :)
> 
> Alternative proposals and thoughts very welcome!!

Personally I'm not a fan of moving pages around, though the wiki does
help by putting in place redirects. In particular I think it would
often be beneficial to encourage users to update the content of a page
rather than moving the page away.

Mediawiki has the ability to define templates which provide canned
blocks of content, that users can add to a page with a single tag. 
So I think a better option is to define an "Obsolete Content"
template which would add a prominent banner across the top of the
page which warns users that the content is out of date and asks
for contributions to update it. We could expand on this by providing
templates for various other issues we might identify with content.
Wikipedia uses this approach quite extensively - see for example
the many cleanup templates they have:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages#Cleanup

Regards,
Daniel
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