Reuters Reports 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.
In an interview with German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Wales, who launched Wikipedia with partner Larry Sanger in 2001, said it needed to find a balance between protecting information from abuse and providing open access to improve entries.
“There may soon be so-called stable contents. In this case, we’d freeze the pages whose quality is undisputed,” he said.
Update: 08/06 09:07 EST by J: Mr. Wales speaks about being misquoted.
Misquoted? The fine line of editorial review…
At an ALA panel Jimbo was talking more like making “reviewed and approved” versions of articles, and still allowing them to be edited. I think that’s a big difference with what the article suggests, which is more like the failed Nupedia method of peer review.
It also reminds me of the Open Directory Project, a system in fact owned by AOL and which uses a non-Open Source code. It began with open editing rights like Wikipedia has now; anyone could go in and edit any category. Today it’s far different. Some of my fellow meta-editors approve less than 5% of new editor applications. There’s a lot of self-plugging and other SEO garbage to contend with, but sometimes I think that had the ODP stuck with open editing things would have worked out for the better — as Wikipedia is now, and not bogged down so much with editing rights issues.
I still think Jimmy’s being too hard on himself. The 2005 Stateman’s Almanac for example, lists John Paul II as the current Pontiff. Compare that to the (more often-than-not) good papal info on Wikipedia. Moreover, based on some choice quotes, which one of these sources would you recommend students used?
Yeah, He was Misquoted / Misrepresentedn d_irony.htm
See http://lbr.library-blogs.net/jimbo_wales_vision_a