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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."
Hey now, maybe a certain *other* site could take this opportunity to review the quality of its editors...
I have no idea how they plan on implementing this, but if it was up to me, I'd have a "stable" and "draft" version of each high-profile page. Anyone should be able to edit the draft. Periodically, the draft version could replace the stable version (perhaps a voting system could be in place, not unlike the kuro5hin submission queue).
The importance of a page (to decide if a locked "stable" page is necessary) could be determined automatically either by number of hits, or computing the pagerank of each page given the link graph of the whole wiki.
> That's my main worry, what I liked was the kind of controlled chaos of the idea
Yeah, I like that too. Unfortunately, on the internet, once your site reaches a high enough profile every dickhead in the universe feels obligated to do whatever they can to screw it up.
Like Slashdot, for example.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I decided I didn't like this new policy, so I went to WikiPedia and rewrote it.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
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.
Eh, when you read something in the media or in an encyclopedia in paper or something in a library, how do you know it's correct?
Let's say you are doing research on a two-seater variant of the f-16 foghter aircraft, and the "paper encyclopedia" puts the range at 2400km, and wikipedia puts the range at 2550km, who would you trust?
Now, if you came to the knowledge that the article on the trainer variant in question was edited by Captain John Miller, USAF, at the Point Ueneme Air Force base, the only base in the United States using this particular variant, and that he was the man in charge of all pilot training, who would you believe then, the "paper encyclopedia" printed in Taiwan in 2003, or Wikipedia?
Now, let's say that John Miller posted as JonM at 3 am, you might not know that he's the USAF trainer, but you might ask him how he knows, and he might tell you to call him at the base during his office hours. Then you might know. Try calling the Encyclopedia.
Assuming that information is correct is always asking for trouble, regardless of where the infomration comes from. What wikipedia allows you to do is more easily contact the authors to validate or invalidate, as the case may be, the factual nature of the information.
"Piter, too, is dead."
But timothys been here from the start, long before Slashdot became well known.
Which is, of course, the point of an encyclopedia.
But then again, I could be wrong.