Updated: Includes comment from Jimmy Wales.
As Encyclopedia Britannica slowly opens up more to user edits, editing some entries on Wikipedia may soon come under much tighter control if Jimmy Wales gets his way.
Wales posted his plea to implement a pre-screening effort called Flagged Revisions after several unfortunate, but not unfamiliar incidents last week on the site including edits falsely reporting the deaths of Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Janis Joplin’s entry was also tampered with and eventually locked down after a "30 Rock" episode aired involving the cast messing with the entry themselves.
“This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions. It could also have been prevented by protection or semi-protection, but this is a prime example of why we don't want to protect or semi-protect articles - this was a breaking news story and we want people to be able to participate (so protection is out) and even to participate in good faith for the first time ever (so semi-protection is out),” writes Wales.
Flagged Revisions is not a new concept. Wikipedia has been in ongoing discussions with the community on the site for years and it is currently being tested in Germany.
Only a certain subset of “flagged” entries will fall under the additional editorial step, where suggested changes by unregistered users are reviewed by staff before appearing live on the site. Edits could take as much as a week to appear. Keeping the total number of flagged entries to a minimum would prevent the need to take on more volunteer editors to monitor them.
This would be a big benefit to some controversial entries which are high-risk for vandalism and keep them from being locked down completely.
Flagged revisions are also likely to increase confidence in the site’s data, and the extra editorial review on some entries may actually boost public participation.
Wales affirms he is committed to openness and that implementing flagged revisions will not restrict users.
“I am not advocating for that at all,” he wrote in an email to Wired.com. “In fact, I am advocating for opening up entries that have been protected for years.”
Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh has made it clear in the past that they will only be turned on if the community is behind it, and while the page says 60 percent of users are behind Flagged Revisions, Wales will certainly still need to make his case.
“I really like the idea of flagged revisions, and I'm sure that discussion has spread somewhere else. However, I wanted to comment here about Jimbo's original post where he uses the Post's article as an example of something that went wrong: Are you nuts?” writes Wikipedia contributor Ned Scott in the same post.
“It took less than five minutes for the vandalism to be removed, and that's damn impressive. Instead of being proud of your users you instead take it as an opportunity to push for flagged revisions.”
While they would delay some edits, Wikipedia is looking to make the overall process much simpler than it has been. In addition to the 6 million in fundraising, it received a grant specifically to focus on the simplification of edits and hopefully bring in a whole new demographic of contributors.
Photo: Flickr/rtarga
See Also:
