in the 1970s and early 1980s stark developed a remarkableconjecture aimed at interpreting the first non-vanishing derivative of anartin l-function $l_{k/k, s}(s, chi)$ at $s=0$ in terms of arithmeticproperties of the galois extension of global fields k/k. work of tate,chinburg, and stark himself has revealed far reaching applications ofstark's conjecture to hilbert's 12-th problem and the theory of galoismodule structure of groups of units and ideal-class groups. in his searchfor new examples of euler systems, rubin has formulated in 1994 a strongversion ("over z", in tate's terminology) of stark's conjecture forabelian l-functions of arbitrary order of vanishing at s=0. our study ofthe functorial base-change behavior of rubin's conjecture led us toformulating a seemingly more natural stark-type conjecture "over z". wewill discuss and provide evidence for this new statement, as well asbriefly describe the main goals of the conjectural program initiated bystark.