Proposal - Pin the published version of a workflow

[yangzhang75]

Background

Discussed in the weekly meeting, coming out of the public workflow
reporting/moderation discussion #6242

The problem

A published workflow currently shows its latest version. Editing it
instantly changes what everyone sees, with no explicit "publish this
version" step. Whatever the author last saved is what the public gets.

This breaks moderation: if a reported workflow is taken down, the author
can edit it to look clean, get it re-approved, then edit it back — the bad
content goes public again with no review. Any approval only holds for that
one moment, not for what's shown afterward.

The plan

Pin the published version.

• Publishing publishes a specific version, not a live pointer to "latest".
• Viewers and cloners get a copy of that pinned version, not the author's
  newest edits.
• The author keeps editing freely; edits do not change the public version.
  To go public, the author explicitly updates the published version to
  their latest.
• A workflow still appears as a single entry in the public Hub. Pinning
  changes which version the entry shows, not how many entries there are.

Author awareness

When the author's latest differs from the published version, the Share
button shows a small dot; hovering explains it, and re-publishing is done
inside the Share dialog. No banner in the editor canvas.

Open question

After pinning, the author's canvas and the published version can differ.
Should the author also be able to preview and clone the published version,
so they can get back to what's currently public? Or is editing the latest
version enough?

[chenlica]

I support this design. It assumes only a particular version of a published workflow is publicly visible, not the entire revision history. It will be good to check other web services (e.g., Google Docs) to see their user experience.

Regarding the question, as the author can alway see the entire revision history of a workflow, they can always revert to a particular version that's published. To make it easy for the author to identify such a version, it will be good to add a special tag for each published version, e.g., "Published on August 2, 2028" or something like that.

[yangzhang75]

Thank you for the feedback. The tag has been implemented, along with two additions.

Version panel.

The version currently served by the Hub is now marked.

publish history

Every published version is listed with its date and operator count. The author can restore any of them to public view, and the working copy is left untouched.

Hub.

When the published version is older than the version the author is editing, opening the workflow from the Hub now leads to the published preview rather than the editor, and Clone there copies the published version. Previously the author was the only person unable to see what everyone else was seeing.