I feel pretty strongly that we should not mount this slippery slope, in part because that slope will end up being a very long slope.

PerlMonks is not an all-wiki world. And it is not primarily an archive of items to be perfected.

We could update the node and add a note saying who added the link(s) and why. But that isn't much better than the person who wants the link(s) replying with the link(s). Or providing a new node that meets their desired level of perfection.

The new node could even be located in one of the several areas where PerlMonks does use collaborative improvement to try to provide "finished" material (Categorized Q+A or the site FAQlets). Then the information would also be easier to find.

Or it could go into Tutorials which is a bit of a hybrid (even more so than Cat Q+A). Each individual tutorial is owned and (we hope) maintained by the person who contributed it. If a tutorial becomes abandoned, then anyone can offer a replacement or the tutorial's ownership can be transferred to a group who can maintain it collaboratively.

Then there is the wi(l)der question of whether we should turn PerlMonks into an all-wiki world. If so, then we'd need to remove most of the current ownership restrictions as consider-vote-janitor is a heck of a load to just get a few links added and won't scale for wide-spread improvements to historical contributions.

Of course, throwing out most vestages of ownership means voting and XP don't make sense any more. And I think XP is an important part of why PerlMonks works for many (the site certainly doesn't work for all, but trying to make one site fit all is often a good way to make most find it less fitting).

The most I could see is allowing nodes to eventually become wikis, sort of like copyright (before Disney). If an account becomes abandoned (not used for some specific long period of time), then that monk's nodes become wikis that can be updated by those of sufficient level. For active members, they could donate nodes to become wikis after the node is over a certain age (like a couple of weeks). Voting on wiki'd nodes would not affect the XP of their former owner.

So it'd be an interesting and somewhat grand experiment and a bit of work.

But I don't think we should go "improving" everyone's old nodes. Janitors should restrict themselves to cleaning up messes (hazards to navigation). Feel free to /msg authors to suggest improvements (or use the other suggestions above).

well said, tye!

If one could vote twice on a node, yours (posted as I composed the note below) would be getting another ++.

Otherwise, the post should remain "as is".

(NB: as I understand OP, the idea is "linkifying;" NOT "adding relevant links.")

"Should," yes! "Would?" ... well, maybe.
But maybe the poster hadn't caught all the niceties of coding a post. "Should?" Yes! But "has" may be a different story.

If a good survey was conducted and showed that a supermajority of Monks want, in general, such minor improvements to be made to old nodes, then you'd have a much better argument.

Good surveys are rather difficult to produce because it is much too easy to bias the results quite a bit based on minor changes in how you word the questions.

Even with a good, objective survey, I find an open debate much more compelling. It is too easy to click "Answer A" without really thinking through the issue. I'm much more persuaded by someone presenting why they would choose "Answer A" and with how others react to such declarations.

So (to take an extreme position which seems terribly unlikely) even if 90% of monks want "A" but 5% of monks want "B" and several of those 5% write eloquently about why "B" is a Good Thing while only a very few relatively poorly received replies try to refute any of their points or to defend "A" (some of which are eloquently refuted) and the "B" nodes even get quite a few more upvotes than "A" nodes (some of which get just a few downvotes)...

...then you could hire the world's best survey team and convince me that 90% of monks want "A" and I'm pretty sure I'd advocate "B".

I want to do what is best for the site, even if that isn't the most popular choice.

And voting on considerations is a quite bad form of survey. The consensus and policy is that having 2/3 of votes "for" a consideration is just not much support. Such a vote often means that there will be an outcry if the consideration action is implemented and yet will be less grumpling when the action is reversed.

I want to know what principles are well-regarded here and use them to guide action. And those easily beat a straw poll about a specific action, especially when the principle calls for not changing something.

- tye