Filed under: Internet, News, Education
Wikipedia will require trusted editors to approve changes
According to the New York Times, Wikipedia is making a move away from a democratic free-for-all system where anyone and everyone can edit any article. Instead, the site will require that changes to articles about living people be approved by trusted users. As fans of Spider-Man are aware, with great power comes great responsibility. Wikipedia's massive growth over the past few years, and its emergence as a trusted source of information, has led the board of the Wikimedia Foundation (which oversees Wikipedia) to make changes that would put more power in the hands of the site's trusted contributors.
Apparently, the German-language Wikipedia has been doing this for about a year, and not just on pages dealing with living people. The English version seems to be moving in the same direction. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales sees this as a test, to make sure the new approval process will go smoothly before rolling it out to all articles. This could be a practical step toward improving the quality of Wikipedia, but it seems to signal a retreat from the philosophy on which the site was founded. It might be worth retreating, however, to deal with the frequent, sometimes high-profile, incidents of vandalism on Wikipedia.
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Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hackius said 10:23AM on 8-25-2009
Jimbo Wales and his cronies are exactly what's wrong with Wikipedia. He uses wikipedia like his own piggybank to sponsor his jetset lifestyle. "trusted" are anyone who supports him.
The community should hold wikipedia accountable and hold all donations until Wales is booted out.
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der_tuxman said 11:05AM on 8-25-2009
They should rather make changes IMPOSSIBLE for anonymous users. This would increase article quality heavily..
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Michael K Pate said 11:17AM on 8-25-2009
Wikipedia lost all credibility as a open resource years ago. The only thing this changes is just one more public acknowledgment of it.
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_death_of_wi.php
The problem with this approach is that it has already been disproven to work.
http://www.libraryplanet.com/2008/04/17/the-power-of-the-wikipedia-editor/
If you really want your wikipedia entry to be accurate, do what Jimmy Wales does: edit it yourself.
http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/2828/wikipedia-founder-looks-out-number-1
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