Wikipedia community grapples with changes
When it comes to Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," any kind of structural change is a very big deal.
That's why the current plan for a new rule that would require an editor's approval before any edits to articles about living persons go live is a very big deal. As reported in The New York Times on Monday, that new system is expected to be implemented sometime soon, though it will most likely initially be a trial that will affect only a limited number of articles.
This week, much of the movers and shakers in the Wikipedia community are in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the annual Wikimedia conference. There, the breaking news is that the Omidyar Network has agreed to donate $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, in exchange for a seat on the foundation's board of trustees.
But surely, the real question being asked in Buenos Aires is: can Wikipedia survive changes to its fundamental nature as a user-generated site that grants nearly unfettered rights to just about anyone? The quick answer? Almost certainly.
The move to require editors' approval before edits go live was hatched three years ago, as CNET News reported first at the time. Back then, the idea was one that was going to be tested out on the German Wikipedia site as a way of seeing how to fix problems with vandalism that were increasingly creeping up. It was thought that if the test was successful in Germany, the same system could then be rolled out on the English version.
One of the ideas behind that proposal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said at the time, was to theoretically make it possible for the English site's front page to be opened up to the public for the first time in years. It had long been locked to public editing because of the danger of vandalism that would be extremely public.
Subsequently, the changes, known as "flagged revisions," have been implemented on the German site, and now all article edits must be approved before going live. According to Andrew Lih, the author of "The Wikipedia Revolution," the German experiment has proved successful, giving proponents of rolling the system out for the much larger English site a lot of ammunition.
BLP articles
Perhaps as a way of managing the utter freak-out that would likely occur if German-style changes were made to the English site, the only proposal on the table being taken seriously right now is one that would mandate editors' approval for changes made to articles about living persons--articles known as "BLP," or "biographies of living persons."
Still, according to Lih, BLP articles have "been a real pain in the neck for Wikipedians to patrol and control," and have resulted in some of the worst scandals involving the free encyclopedia, particularly vandalized articles about Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, and the entertainer Sinbad, all of whom were purported to have died.
Unlike the originally proposed "flagged revisions" changes, the "flagged protection and patrolled revisions" modifications would only apply to BLP articles.
Will this be enough to satisfy many of Wikipedia's critics--those who, like Eric Goldman, an associate professor at Santa Clara University's law school, think that the encyclopedia faces self-destruction without a much stricter way to control what the public can do on the site.
That's not known yet. But those critics definitely feel strongly that Wikipedia has outgrown its initial mandate, that of being a site that anyone can edit anytime they want.
Wikipedia's English-language site will likely soon require an editor's approval before edits to articles about living persons can go live.
(Credit: Wikipedia)"I think free editability is Wikipedia's Achilles' heel," Goldman wrote recently in an article titled "Wikipedia's labor squeeze and its consequences." "Wikipedia attracts vandals and spammers who edit entries for unproductive purposes. Thus far, Wikipedia's volunteer editors have successfully defended against these threats, but future success is not guaranteed. First, as Wikipedia's popularity increases, so does its appeal to vandals and spammers, which also increases the volume of malicious edits. Second, over time, Wikipedia's current editors will turn over, and I believe various obstacles--including Wikipedia's reliance on contributors who are not seeking cash or credit--hinder the recruitment of replacements. This dynamic will create a labor squeeze because more anti-threat work will be borne by a reduced number of committed editors."
Probably the most famous scandal in Wikipedia's history--the so-called Seigenthaler incident, in which a then-anonymous editor in late 2005 modified the article about writer and journalist John Seigenthaler to indicate that he might have been involved in the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy--resulted in one of the site's biggest changes to date. That change, which took place not long after the Seigenthaler episode, required users to register before they could edit articles. Previously, anyone could do it any time.
And did Wikipedia collapse as a result? Hardly. If anything, it has only flourished. Today, the English-language site has more than 3 million articles and is regularly one of the top 10 most visited sites on the Internet.
By comparison, it certainly is a big step to require editors' approval before edits to BLP articles go live, but of course, even that change wouldn't mean that edits would be invisible to the public. In fact, given the way wikis work, even unapproved edits would still be readily available to anyone who looks in an article's history, Lih said.
That fact might help assuage the concerns of those who worry about the new rules and still want there to be a record of any edits, whether publicly-viewable or not.
To Goldman, implementing flagged protection, as the system to be tested is known, is a step in the right direction, but hardly enough to keep vandals from doing their business.
"Flagged protection and patrolled revisions are...consistent with the current assessment that Wikipedia has avoided significant incursions on free editability," Goldman wrote, before continuing that "more dramatic technological measures are inevitable."
In fact, Goldman continued, most of the barriers to bad behavior on Wikipedia are social rather than technological. He argued that most new articles are quickly deleted by editors, and that most edits to articles are just as quickly reverted to the previous versions. Yet he concludes that this is not enough, and that over time, as editors move on and become hard to replace, the barriers may well go away.
But within the Wikipedia community, there appears to be a lot of sentiment that something like flagged protection is necessary. The test will certainly provide evidence as to whether such a system works, but for now, according to Lih, the momentum is on the side of those wanting at least some change.
"I would say the (real news is that) rather than seeing this as a lockdown of general articles--which it isn't--this has been developed as an alternative to full protection and semi-protection," Lih said. "It is an 'opening up' of sorts of...articles than have had to be locked down for awhile. So rather than semi-protection--newbies and anonymous people cannot edit--and full protection--only admins--this allows for these 'problem' articles to be re-opened up for editing, but providing a checking, or 'flagging' system to allow those edits to be screened."
Further, Lih doesn't think that the proposed changes are likely to go beyond BLP articles, at least not anytime soon.
"The intent (of the) proposal, and I have to think that people will be faithful to that original premise," Lih said, "is that BLP was the motivation, and that the list of currently protected and semi-protected articles is the starting point, and straying too far off that path will be discouraged."
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
As a result, I think the major problem is that WikiMedia puts far too much of an emphasis on Wikipedia, making people believe that Wikimedia = Wikipedia. Wikimedia should focus more energy in publicizing Wikinews as the news site, and Wikipedia as the reference site, rather than making people think Wikipedia is both news and resource, and Wikinews doesn't even exist.
That is, this solution may be far from perfect but until a better solution can be found it's the best we've got.
I wrote up a primer on Flagged Revisions on my blog at http://nihiltres.blogspot.com/2009/08/flagged-revisions-confusing-development.html . Try reading that if you want a real understanding of the changes to come. Better yet, actually read the "flagged protection and patrolled revisions" page mentioned in this article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions ) and you'll see that the story "all edits to articles on living persons will be reviewed before going live" is a joke.
But of course people who make money controlling things (like lawyers and professors and journalists) are going to continue trying to push that wikipedia needs to change.
I'm a contributor to Wikipedia - with over 5000 edits. I find that more and more people who contribute to not just Wikipedia, but the Internet as a whole lack basic college term paper writing skills. I used to blame them for dumping these skills after graduating, but now I realize that they really never had good research skills in the first place. Even at my workplace, colleagues who supposedly graduated with a 4-year degree can't even write a properly structured proposal.
Wikipedia is just as useful of a resource as any other Internet-based resource. But, it is up to the student to know how to test and use his resources. Schools should be teaching these skills, instead of blacklisting certain resources just to make it easier for the instructor to grade papers. And, they should be teaching their students better term paper writing skills.
They still banned all encyclopedias upfront because they're neither peer reviewed or impartial.
Wikipedia is crossed off for the same reason newspaper opinion columns are crossed off, it's not reliable as an impartial and tested source. I ended up referencing two well known software engineering books as well as three books related to the code I worked on and numerous references to direct personal statements from the authors of code I was extending (relating to what their own plans for the code were and why I was not duplicating their previous or planned work) and I still would have been marked down for referencing an encyclopedia of any kind because it demonstrates poor judgement.
Please explain what this have to do with liberals vs. conservatives?
- A proud, independent thinker that does not judge liberals or conservatives.
aaahhh :)
- by s_vatsala October 3, 2009 11:43 PM PDT
- I am a great fan of wikipedia as it is a very informative and enlightens about everything. I am very much greatful for the effort in bringing wikipedia. I happen to scroll through wikipedia of various contemporary artists and their biography during my free time. One of them was about Nazia Hassan (Disco Deewane and Aap jaisa koi girl). I was annoyed of the following para which I have marked in a bracket. It praises Nazia Hassan as a legacy for which I have no problem and the rest of the para is as follows: [In fact, such was Nazia?s success that in Bollywood there is an intriguing story stating that she outdid both in terms of sales and popularity the Indian playback singer, Lata Mangeshkar. ? Lata's biographer Raju Bharatan poses the following question: ?Were there, then, no serious challenges to Lata Mangeshkar in her long singing career?? The answer surprises: ??there was a happening in Lata's life and times that made a mere teenager a near despair for her. That teenybopper was Nazia Hasan.? He continues, ?Lata?s film Aasha?just could not catch up with Nazia's Aap jaisa koi for 14 weeks running, hard as it tried! The year 1980 in Hindi film music thus belonged to a UK based Pakistani singer ? a slip of a girl who came to India via England to capture subcontinental hearts. There was no way even the velvet voice of Lata could scale down Nazia during that spell.?] This seemd to me absolutely absurd. Why would Lata get threatened about her existence when she was the topmost singer in Bollywood ??. She was already about 50years old(in 1980) and had achieved much more than any one else. LATA IS THE LEGEND AND HER SONGS WILL BE LOVED BY EVERYONE FOR EVER. I have nothing against any artist as I love all types of music (whether classical or modern) in all the languages and art and everything in life and consider everyone as human beings. I like Ghulam Ali?s music too much. I was a teenager when Nazia started singing (I am 2 years younger than her), and of course liked all her songs. But, never felt that she was at par with Lataji and Ashaji. (Could she ever beat Asha Bhonsle?s ?Piya too ? Monica oh my darling?, ?Aaa jaane jaa? etc., and innumerable nos. Aap Jaisa Koi Mere song is famous more because of our beautiful, sexy lady Zeenatji and the song has added a little bit of flavour to it. Actually it is Zeenat Aman?s fantastic dance, acting and her everlasting bewitching beauty which made Qurbani a big success with little support of this song. I never dispute the success and talent of Nazia Hassan. I admire her for what she was. But, it was for a short while only, like a passing phase.The one and only person who can be compared to Lataji is our sweet voiced kid?Shreya Ghosal?. Lataji was in guiness book of records for her songs during 1971-1994 and why would she be afraid of this teenager. Each one of us have our own talent. Nobody need fear the talent of others. I would like to praise Biddu for his hard work and the fine music that he innovated at this juncture. I also feel very deeply sad for this artist?s sad demise in the year 2000 while battling against lung cancer, that too at a very young age of 35. Of course she was an achiever thanks to her powerful family background, prominence as well as her talent. There are hundreds of teenager who could be as talented as she was and never get a chance at all to meet someone like Biddu Appiah in their life time due to various reasons. I have my due respects to this pop singer who was also a lawyer (as I am a lawyer too) and who had her own struggles in life. But, please don?t compare her with Lata Mangeshkar ?the legend?, the nightingale, the best ever know singer of this universe. If possible please change those sentences in the above demeaning para of Nazia?s wikipedia even if it is the feeling of Lata?s biographer. It could mislead our younger generation about what music means. Thanks for bearing with me for these comments. It is with no intention to hurt any others' feelings.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)