Wikipedia To Require Editing Approval

The NY Times reports on an epochal move by Wikipedia — within weeks, the formerly freewheeling encyclopedia will begin requiring editor approval for all edits to articles about living people. "The new feature, called 'flagged revisions,' will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia's servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version. ... The new editing procedures... have been applied to the entire German-language version of Wikipedia during the last year... Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."

And what's so bad about it?

[Spy der Mann]

In my opinion, this isn't actually censorship, but a rather effective anti-trolling measure.

Wikipedia is not a forum where everyone can post his opinion and let the user decide which one's right. It's an encyclopedia. If someone defaces it or uses it as a means to alter someone's reputation (for good or ill), it will lose credibility.

For one, this "control freak" measure can be used, for example, to prevent mad scientologists from removing negative remarks on their current leaders, or right-wing zealots from removing negative aspects of their favorite political candidate.

If your contribution is indeed impartial (remember we're only talking about living people entries), it WILL get accepted. Just not as fast as you'd want to, but it will.

Isn't this the best of both worlds? In fact, I'm tagging this story "abouttime".

Re:Well...

[maxume]

They are editing edits before they go live, and only some people can do that.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

[Anonymous Cowar]

For years, people here have ridiculed Wikipedia on the notion that anyone can edit it, and edits appear instantly without any checking by another person. Yet now they implement such a system - that's wrong too!

Wrong, only the media, public figures, and other entities that don't understand the internet, web 2.0, the FOSS movement, and the spirit of the internet have been criticizing wikipedia's credibility standards. The whole [citation needed] thing was a reaction to criticism by main-stream press and political figures who can't understand that facts are NOT handed down from 'on high' and that sometimes, the mob can be right if they leave the knowledge to the experts in the field that swoop down and make critical edits to a fleshed out piece, transforming an OK article into a good one.

This is a Bad Move because it has been forced onto wikipedia by external forces and it's own internal cadre of esteemed editors with too much free time such that they protect their article from edits.

If anything, the people here have been criticizing wikipedia for turning away from it's motto of "the free encyclopedia that anybody can edit" towards a more closed model, both from internal and external forces.

Mostly we lament the loss of What Could Have Been and complain when wikipedia bows to traditional media's conform-to-our-paid-for-views mentality.

Re:And what's so bad about it?

[eldavojohn]

If your contribution is indeed impartial ...

Sounds like someone needs to visit the Ignore all rules article [wikipedia.org] which is approved policy for editing the English Wikipedia.

For one, this "control freak" measure can be used, for example, to prevent mad scientologists ...

In fact, in their section on how to break all the rules [wikipedia.org], they teach the right and wrong ways to push your agenda:

• I want to argue my point of view on Wikipedia

• The wrong way is to change an article to make it look like "Wikipedia" supports your position. If people read that Wikipedia says that roach racing is an inhumane practice, will it matter? It's just a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The die-hard fans of cruelty to cockroaches would simply reach for their revert buttons and scowl at how their opponents are trying to skew the article.

• The right way to push your point of view is to provide the facts that led you to believe what you do. Cite academic references on the prevalence of arthritis in insect athletes. Provide an external link to a videotape of a famous blatellid athlete falling to his doom from the table of honor. If the facts led you to a point of view, they'll lead others to the same point of view.

• I want to wipe out the opposing point of view from the article

• The wrong way to kneecap your opposition is to delete his "bogus" claims, sources and all, from the article. Never mind the revert war -- do you want your audience to remain vulnerable to the fallacies he raises? No, if he's raising a point that's been raised before, then you should be able to find rebuttals that people have made to it before. Again, provide your facts and sources. The battle goes not to the swiftest reverter, nor to the most strongly worded edit, but to those who persevere in their research and dig up citable sources for every fact that can be found.

• There are an infinite number of perspectives on a subject, even if you are aware of only two. At the least, consider what ideas and assumptions you and your opponents share as common ground, and also what alternative solutions to a problem can be found that rely on neither your side's assumptions nor the other's for their validity. If you want to succeed in making an article include the facts about your point of view, accept that your point of view when you finish may be more informed than when you began.

• I have a great company and I want to promote it on Wikipedia

• The wrong way to promote your company is with blatant advertising and vanity links. They'll only get you in trouble and lead in the long term to suppression of future attempts.

• The more wrong way is to start a brand new article about your company. Not only will you have trouble with policy, but imagine if you succeed! Then you'll have a page that you have to constantly monitor against vandalism, and you could lose control of it to some disgruntled former employee who can dig up true unflattering information and keep it in place permanently. Besides, how many people would read the article anyway?

• The right way to promote your company is to bear in mind that "advertising" on Wikipedia can indeed be bought with the right currency - information. If you can provide a good, thorough, useful reference on a subject on your company Web site, then you can cite it sparingly in relevant articles and thereby establish your company as a legitimate, trustworthy authority. Literally or figuratively, go into the ba

not really a Rubicon

[bcrowell]

This is not really a Rubicon. I edited for several years with a WP account. Then I decided WP had evolved into a thing that was no longer fun for me, and to reduce my temptation to get involved in any more WP stuff, I disabled my account by munging the password. Ever since then, I've been editing without logging in. There are already a lot of things you can't do without being logged in. You can't upload an image, can't mark your edits as minor, can't make a new article, can't edit certain articles. WP's official policy is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with editing anonymously, but people are often very snotty toward you if you edit anonymously. There's a strong tendency for both humans and bots to revert anonymous editors' edits, even if it's a good edit, with a good comment line pointing to discussion on the talk page.

Unapproved view

[buchner.johannes]

Can I set a cookie or something to always view the newest (unapproved) version? I also didn't see a greasemonkey script yet.

Re:"Everyone can edit", but "no one can contribute

[refactored]

Nope, never been a mod, never been banned in anyway.

Closest I came was when some damn yanks were gaming the system by swamping the article on Waterboarding. Of course the could find thousands of references to Bushshite apparatchiks stating categorically that waterboarding isn't torture and the mods clamped the page at a revision stating it wasn't torture. (I'm please to see the article is now fairly good.)

But the incident made me take the fundamental problem with Wikipedia seriously enough to sit up and look out for it. Once I started to look out for that problem, I noticed it enough other places for me to now instinctively lower the ranking of wikipedia hits.

Of course, if you are an American WASP... you can look and look and look at the wikipedia all day and not see the problem with NPOV. :-))

Re:"Everyone can edit", but "no one can contribute

[Anonymous Coward]

That's always been the point. What you add has to have been published elsewhere first (and not just websites; scientific journals or other reliable sources are preferable to some nutcase's Geocities website). They aspire to create an encyclopedia, and such works do not have original knowledge in them -- the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy being an exception.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

[PieSquared]

You, like most people, seem to be under the opinion that there is only one viewpoint that is "slashdot" and that it is therefor hypocritical when two opposing views are expressed. In reality, of course, there are thousands of regular users all of whom have slightly varied views. And of course you'll hear from the outraged ones but not so much from the ones who don't care about a particular subject, leading you to believe that 'slashdot' as a whole is outraged about contradictory things.

But yes, the fact that anyone can make an edit makes wikipedia an unreliable source. That isn't to say it's bad - on average wikipedia is a very good source of information - but it is a valid criticism of something that's trying to be an encyclopedia.

And then we have this - people are of course pointing out that you can't claim to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and then screen edits. You know what? Anyone can send in a correction to a print encyclopedia as well, and they have people who will look at the proposed changes and make corrections if they're needed. But that's not what is meant by "anyone can edit".

So... yes, wikipedia has in its very subtitle a contradiction. You can't both be a quality encyclopedia and accept any edit. And pointing out that they've managed to be neither isn't wrong. Hell, maybe a revision-controlled wikipedia would be better then what we have now.

Imagine, for a moment, what the effect would be of putting a mandatory 24-hour delay on all edits would be. If an edit is reverted during its 24 hour waiting period, it never changes in the first place. There goes half the vandalism. Maybe a different rule for articles that are about current events... or better yet don't bother with articles on current events until they're done - maybe a redirect to the related news site. This would accomplish the goal of the changes in the article, but without alienating people who aren't major wikipedians. *Everyone* gets a 24 hour delay.

I dare you (Re:So much for...)

[mi]

It's still free, still an encyclopedia, and anyone can still edit it.

Try mentioning Bill Ayers [wikipedia.org] on Obama's [wikipedia.org] page...

Re:Well...

[DerekLyons]

in fact, this is a step forward

Yes, yes it is - towards a day when the inner circle no longer has to use secret mailing lists, sock puppets, WP:CONFUSING, and the ol' boy network... They'll be the Law. And there will be no appeal.

Re:Well...

[VanessaE]

Sorry, but Wikipedia is just another private website, just like most other websites. By extension, that means it isn't under government control, so your obscure 1984 reference doesn't fit. Personally, I approve of the change (I remember suggesting this very thing not that long ago), if only for one reason alone: I contribute to Wikipedia every chance I get, but I'm getting tired of seeing (and when I can, correcting) vandalism, some of which is just plain juvenile (as if written by an 8 year old), and all of it seems to have been posted by anonymous and/or new users.

I want to see Wikipedia grow and flourish. Rules like this will only help, as long as there are enough "trusted" editors to handle putting the edits into place.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you pre-approve / moderate content, doesnt that increase the liability of the editors and the Wiki Foundation?

Citation needed

[trickster721]

Here's the actual policy draft [wikipedia.org]. The so called "articles about living people" are actually specific heavily vandalized articles that are already eligible for semi-protection, and the "experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia" is any account at least four days old that's made at least ten edits. Not exactly the epic failure of Wikipedia's core principles that the mainstream news media would like it to be. It's heavily ironic that that the NYT is too busy bashing Wikipedia to concern themselves with the facts of the story here.

Re:Put a fork in it...

[Hittman]

The control freaks have won, again.

The control freaks have been in charge for years. Pages on straightforward subjects are fairly accurate, but if it is at all controversial, WikiNazis are camped out on it. It doesn't matter if your facts are stated clearly, documented, and presented in an unbiased manner. If they don't like them your changes are gone in an hour or two.

I've tried adding facts to their Passive Smoking page, to no avail. The very name of the page is loaded with bias. The correct term is Environmental Tobacco Smoke. The common term is Second Hand Smoke, and the page used to be called that. But they've deliberately used the most loaded term possible for the page, and it's packed with inaccurate and biased statements. I've added facts, complete with references, and they've never lasted more than two hours. Even tiny edits to make a statement more neutral were quickly removed.

If there's any controversy about a subject you can be sure Wikipedia will only highlight the POV of the resident WikiNazis. This has made the site useless for all but the most basic subjects for years. Now they're just making it even more impossible for facts they don't like to be displayed.

Re:"Everyone can edit", but "no one can contribute

[pegdhcp]

Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?

Agreed, but;

Especially in the English Wikipedia your statement is more than correct. That is, as the English language is de facto lingua franca of the global community, the "culture" you are referring to is divided. Divided by hundreds of lines, carved in stone for ages. I guess people will always agree about their disagreements, in such an environment. Assuming that English is your native language, let me tell shortly about my native language wiki, which is the Turkish version. There is a cultural division in Turkish Wikipedia that is reflecting the socio-political division (some kind of conservative left and some kind of progressive right, if you are looking for logic in politics, look at somewhere else...) of Turkey. This division exist in original articles directly written in Turkish. Most items that I am interested in are (bad) translations from en.wikipedia.org. The logical step for people like me, is to move to English wiki, and start writing there, because it is what we are reading. I guess a similar drive can be found in other languages.

Thus, the fundamental issue can be expressed in one question: Will wikipedia reflect the cultural divide that exists in its reader/contributor base? If yes, it would be very difficult to achieve, and if no, the decision would result in the loss of some (probably very big) portions of "other" people. I guess this decision is made, the answer is "no", thus no cultural fragmentation would be accepted and the chosen cultural center is American Culture (most likely American WASP as mentioned above). This, probably is a good commercial and understandable political decision.

My own position was that of a small contributor for Turkey/Turkish related items. I stopped writing some years ago, because it became more than boring to see some information you provided after some real research to be replaced by some (badly written) incorrect data. And for some months I realized that the material I read became less interesting for me, including "Today's featured article". I can see that in the future I will stop reading wikipedia. In order to see what American general population thinks (more correctly, what they are made to think) there are better sources, like CNN, Yahoo etc.

As I mentioned, the decision (which I assume will not be limited to "living persons' articles only, in the future) is a good decision that will increase the quality, and a bad one that brings in some strong borders. If I was an optimist, I would say "If they keep it balanced..." but I do not think it is possible to keep it balanced...

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Re:Well...

[wvmarle]

Your comment is modded funny for obvious reasons. Moderation doesn't work perfectly but on the other hand I do think it's something that should get some serious thought.

And a way to put opposing views/opinions in an article, as there is no such thing as a one and only truth, especially when you are talking about cultural or moral issues. As long as fact and opinion are clearly marked. E.g. there are the facts about cannabis (the plant it comes from, the chemical substances, where it's grown, etc) and the opinions (using it as a drug is good/bad, using it as medication is a good/bad idea, etc).

And now I'm at it: a way to link to the same subject in a different language. I can read English, Dutch and German and with some effort also French. My wife can read English and Chinese. It would be very convenient to be able to include links to the same subject in other languages, if present. Then I can read the English language article on some subject, and then switch to the Dutch language article which may have a different viewpoint due to different cultures. Or maybe it contains more/other information.

Re:Well...

[pjt33]

The top universities in the UK are often accused of elitism. Somehow it never seems to occur to the accusers that they are and remain the top universities precisely because they aim to select the best.

How about patently false entries?

[Taco Cowboy]

A "bureaucratic" layer is actually necessary, and it's already there

How about patently false entry?

The country I live in is a former British colony, and the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country is firmly controlled by the government, and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false

I have tried to correct those mistakes but everytime within 15 minutes the old entry are back, and finally I was warned by someone (supposed to be volunteer for Wikipedia) to STOP meddling with that particular entry

My experience is only for that entry, and God knows how many of such types of patently false information that are purposely displayed in Wikipedia

Moderation Points

[elFisico]

o Who is a "trusted" editor?

o What is the qualification process for earning "trust"?

Hmm, that's easy. As all they want to do is to check for slanderous or praising-without-merrit articles, anyone who is unrelated to the author should do. I think that slashdots moderating system is a good example how wikipedia could work without needing to create a two-class-society. Just hold all changed articles until two or more randomly selected people have voted it ok. The catch of course is how to select those people, you need a constant and large followership, which is somewhat contrary to how wikipedia works.

Wikipedia and Britannica swap operating models

[David Gerard]

The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.

Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. "Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL," said Jimmy Wales.

The change has proven controversial. "It's a slippery slope," said administrator WikiFiddler451 (real name WikiViolin451). "I don't see how we can reasonably keep the Pokemon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page thatâ(TM)s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality."

Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has considered adopting "wiki"-like methods (from the Hawaiian word "wikiwiki," meaning "your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS"), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopedia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed "suppressive" by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because theyâ(TM)re in it for the money.

Illustration: The hammer of Wiki crushes j00! [today.com]

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Re:Well...

[mdwh2]

And how exactly is "get an account and wait for a while" a secret "inner circle"? Because that's all you'll have to do to be able to edit (and presumably approve) - just as is currently the case for editing protected articles.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm [bbc.co.uk] :

This would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were published.

But hey, don't let known facts stop your wild speculation.

Re:Is it a conscious commercial strategy?

[Animats]

I believe this is a conscious commercial strategy designed to drive more and more content to Wikia, which is a for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales.

I used to think that too. But Wikia has been a flop. It ended up as a free hosting service for fancruft. They have the Star [Wars|Trek|Gate|Craft] wikis, fan fiction, and TV show wikis. Their demographic lives in their parents basement. Wikia Search, an attempt to "crowdsource" a search engine, shut down months ago. Now Wikia is a dumping ground for material not good enough for Wikipedia. They're not getting major advertisers, just the usual Google ad dreck.