Wikipedia Announces Tighter Editorial Control

Daedalus_ wrote to mention a Reuters article reporting from Wikimania. "Wikipedia, the Web encyclopaedia written and edited by Internet users from all over the world, plans to impose stricter editorial rules to prevent vandalism of its content, founder Jimmy Wales was quoted as saying Friday." (Update: 08/06 23:45 GMT by J : But see his response here!) Meanwhile, kyelewis writes "WikiMania, the First International WikiMedia Conference is open in Germany, but if you couldn't gather the money or the courage to fly over, you can listen online in Ogg Vorbis format, or if you miss the talks, you can download them later. The WikiMania Broadcast page has more information, and the WikiMania Programme is also available, so jump in and learn more about the mysterious technology that is the wiki."

Reminds me of Slashdot changes

[bgfay]

When I first started reading /. the contents were completely wide open and free. At first, when changes were made to tame the wildness of it, I was skeptical. Such changes often kill off the spirit of the site. However, the /. changes have been good for me. I read only those responses that score a 3 or better, I meta moderate, I moderate, and all of that seems to work well.

The question I have with Wikipedia is how they will go about imposing stricter editorial control. Discipline is often a good thing, but almost as often it can be a very bad thing. I'll be watching what they come up with, commenting on it when possible, and trying to keep the site as one of the most useful on the web.

Re:Isn't that an oxymoron?

[ifdef]

I've been involved in editing some wikipedia articles, and in observing what was going in them.

Certainly, you don't want to put too much of a damper on people's ability to modify the text in good faith, but some people are just vandals. In one case, somebody thought his version of history was the correct one, and whenever anybody edited the article, he would always just put his own version back. The thing is, he wouldn't discuss the issues, so there was no way to come to any kind of consensus about how to say something in a factual and neutral way, he would simply replace the current version with his own version. What little discussion he did actually get involved in was mostly him calling all the other editors extremely rude and racist names, and saying they should all go to the gas chambers. This is not a disagreement about the facts or the point of view, this is simply vandalism.

I've also seen the text of articles replaced in whole or in part by obscenities. Not controversial articles, not appropriate or funny obscenities, just obscenities. Again, simply vandalism.

As is replacing the Pope's picture, I suppose, but I would think that that was just a joke, which I suppose may have been offensive to some people, etc, etc, but that's the type of mistake I myself have made more times than I care to remember.

Re:Wikipedia Needs Fakipedia

[otisaardvark]

It's been done, welcome to Uncyclopedia [uncyclopedia.org], and no, it doesn't keep trolls away from Wikipedia in the slightest, but is surprisingly comprehensive and always good for a chuckle.

Re:Isn't that an oxymoron?

[uberchicken]

I too am *always* using the wrong picture for the Pope. I despair of myself.

Re:Hint hint

[metlin]

I agree, it's high time K5 got it's shit together.

Its, not it's. [stormloader.com].

Wikipedia announces...

[jwales]

Wikipedia hereby formally announces tighter editorial controls on Reuters and Slashdot... ;-)

I spoke in English to many journalists yesterday and the day before (90 journalists registered to cover Wikimania). I spoke to one journalist about our longstanding discussions of how to create a "stable version" or "Wikipedia 1.0". This would not involve substantial changes to how we do our usual work, but rather a new process for identifying our best work.

I spoke in English, and this was translate to German. Then the German was translated back to English, and then translated again into the Slashdot story.

There was no "announcement". We are constantly reviewing our policies and looking for ways to improve, but we have not "announced" anything. We don't even really work that way... if you know how Wikipedia works, it's through a long process of community discussion and consensus building, not through a process of top-down announcements.

Misunderstanding

[chato]

Two things are getting confused:

1. A version of an article can be validated through the article validation feature [wikimedia.org] (now in beta stage). This validation is a voting by users on several topics, including how neutral, complete, accurate, etc. an article is (see proposal for the interface [wikimedia.org]). This is useful, for instance, for burning certain versions of articles of the Wikipedia into a CDROM, to be used where internet access is expensive or nonexistent.
2. There are measures for protecting a page, and it has been done before. Vandalism has been always kept to a much lower level than alarmists think. Please see replies to common objection [wikipedia.org]

Most important of all, the Wikimania Conference [wikimedia.org] is an ongoing event: (from the article) "Es gibt mehrere Möglichkeiten, die wir hier in Frankfurt besprechen": "There are several possibilities, that we are discussing in Frankfurt". I think the outcome will continue in the way of protecting some pages when it is estrictly necessary and validating some versions of the articles. It will never be something limiting the freedom for anyone to edit pages, which is at the core of Wikipedia's success, and very deeply established in the community of Wikipedians.