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."

Comments

Then base stable on a time period

[grahamsz]

When an article goes unedited for maybe 4 hours it automatically becomes stable.

That way wikipedians can always view the draft version, but it's highly unlikely that vandalism will stay around long enough to be stablized.

People coming in from google or such like will automatically get the stable version unless they deliberately choose draft.

Re:Isn't that an oxymoron?

[kngthdn]

I couldn't believe Wikipedia could do this to us. The idea, of anyone being able to edit anything, is more important than the possiblity of Tiger Wood's page being replaced with "oMFg!! tIgeR WOODs sux". The only reason I have ever contributed to the site was because I am so amazed that it works. Yes, I have had my user page replaced with porn as a Troll's revenge for cleaning up vandalism, and egomanics have rolled back changes that I made.

But it *always* gets fixed, very quickly. It's easy to imagine vandalism sitting undetected until it's "found", but that isn't the way it works. As soon as changes are submitted to an article, all the information (# of bytes changes, user or anonymous, article name, and a link to the last diff) is output on an IRC channel anyone can join. Using CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, a handy java program, makes it even better. Trolls are blacklisted, shared between peers on the network, and shown in bright red. All you have to so is watch it for a while, wait for an anonymous user to make a big change (always to the same articles, Bush, Homosexuality, Anus, etc.) and...you click the link and roll it back. That simple. People do this all the time, which is why there is so little vandalism that survives.

At any rate, this article is totally 100% bogus. This is off the Wikipedia Announcements page:

Numerous news outlets are quoting a Reuters report that Jimmy Wales has stated that there will be a "freeze" on editing. This statement has not been corroborated by any of the Wikimedia board, nor by any present at the Wikimania conference. General agreement among long-time Wikipedians is that Jimbo has been misleadingly quoted, and that the report is a giant steaming pile.

Makes me feel better. ; )

To all the doubters, Wikipedia works, and millions of people love it. If vandalism bothers you, download Cryptoderk's program and get to work.