We had already a "latest" redirect in the past IIRC, which leads to people reporting "I have used the latest..." instead of "I have used 17.01.4...", which will lead to the question: what latest?
Forum users reading postings 6 months after the initial "latest" will find a different "latest"....
IMHO not a good idea.
Regarding "stable": AFAIK, 17.01.4 (vs. snapshot) does not imply any stability, see e.g. Netgear WNR3500L v2 install and bricked - #10 by sereeds
Apart from that: Updating from one release to the next is done via script, therefore not that much work at all.
Can you explain obscuring the... a bit more?