You might have a point, but I think that's a terrible analogy.
It could go as you suggest. Or it could be like a locker room: if everybody is naked, then nobody cares.
What made me add drafts to the lists is Daniel Dennett's energetic description in Consciousness Explained of how he repeatedly circulates drafts of papers to colleagues for comment. At least in philosophy, that's an important part of the process.
Having to show interim steps would make fraud much harder, and it's a zero-overhead thing if people are already backing up their work.
Yes, I often circulate drafts of my papers to colleagues too. I don't post them for the world to see into perpetuity until they reach a certain level of quality.
Your shower analogy doesn't work because there's no way to force people to post drafts. We already have the option posting of drafts. It's called personal websites and/or the arXiv.
Well, the mechanism I suggested for forcing was journals requiring it for publication. People would be obliged to keep a version history of some sort. Careful writers do already, and it's easily automated, so I don't think enforcement would be hard.
It could go as you suggest. Or it could be like a locker room: if everybody is naked, then nobody cares.
What made me add drafts to the lists is Daniel Dennett's energetic description in Consciousness Explained of how he repeatedly circulates drafts of papers to colleagues for comment. At least in philosophy, that's an important part of the process.
Having to show interim steps would make fraud much harder, and it's a zero-overhead thing if people are already backing up their work.