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Wikipedia Founder Wants to Restrict User Updates

by Lee Bains on January 27, 2009 at 07:28 AM



The Internet generation's resource of choice may soon be toning down the radical nature of its editorial process, according to the New York Times.

After anonymous visitors edited the Wikipedia entries of Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy, only to falsely read that they had both passed away on Inauguration Day, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales implied -- via his user page -- that the online encyclopedia's days of quasi-anarchy were numbered.

"This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions," Wales wrote.

These "Flagged Revisions," which have been used in the German-language version of Wikipedia for some time, serve to automatically mark unregistered or suspect users' revisions for approval by Wikipedia editors. Until receiving that editorial approval, those changes would be invisible to the public.
While supporting the change in policy, Wales also foresees running into problems similar to those experienced by German-speaking users. "[German Wikipedia users] have an approval delay of three weeks at times, a figure which I regard as unacceptable," he conceded. He added, though, that the English language version of Wikipedia would take a more moderate stance. "Our version should show very minimal delays (less than 1 week, hopefully a lot less) because we will only be using it on a subset of articles," Wales continued.

In keeping with Wikipedia's democratic character, though, Wales has not ordered any policy change, simply "asking Flagged Revisions to be turned on now." At present, according to an English language Wikipedia poll, 60-percent of users support the proposed amendments. [From: Wikipedia via New York Times]

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