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."
Updated January4 at 3:04 p.m.: This story has been changed to correct the number of members of the Wikimedia Foundation's board.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is "absolutely" not out of a job at the Wikimedia Foundation, according to the foundation's director of communications.
On Saturday, Valleywag editor Owen Thomas reported that Wales was "out of a job," writing, "Imagine an online encylopedia anyone can edit -- and no one can run. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's...cofounder, is no longer a board member of the site's nonprofit foundation. Who's in charge here?"
It was reported Saturday that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is no longer on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. But the director of the board said the report was not true.
(Credit: Wikimedia Foundation)The Valleywag report didn't cite any sources saying that Wales was no longer on the foundation's board, though it did point out that Wales' seat on the board--along with those of two others--had expired on December 31, 2008.
But in an e-mail to CNET News, Sue Gardner, the director of the foundation, wrote, "(t)here's nothing to it. Jimmy is a much-valued board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I expect he will hold that role permanently: I know of no reason for anyone to speculate otherwise."
In addition, Jay Walsh, the foundation's director of communications, said that Wales is "absolutely" still a member of the board and that he, along with the two other members, had been "unanimously" confirmed for another term on the board.
Wales' official position is Community Founder Trustee. According to Walsh, the Wikimedia Foundation's board decided that rather than make Wales' appointment infinite, or indefinite, it would allow his seat to come up for re-appointment at the end of each term, giving Wales a way to bow out if he needed to do so for any reason.
"I don't foresee any (time) in the near future where he wouldn't continue in that position he holds," Walsh said.
Indeed, in an e-mail sent on December 28, 2008, to the Wikimedia Foundation's e-mail list, board chair Michael Snow wrote, among other things, "We...had a unanimous vote to re-appoint Jimmy Wales to his position as Community Founder Trustee."
Wales did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Valleywag's Thomas.
Last April, the foundation re-organized its board, formalizing Wales' position as the Community Founder Trustee, and setting forth its current structure, in which the board is intended to be comprised of 10 members, including Wales, three community-elected seats, four "specific expertise" seats, and two chapter seats.
As of right now, the board has just seven members and is still looking for three more, said Walsh.
It looks like there's a bit of trouble over at Wikia Search this morning.
The search portal, run by Wikia, the for-profit wiki service co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, was returning "Service Unavailable" error messages about 10 percent of the time, during a test I ran on both Firefox and Safari.
This error message was coming up some of the time Wednesday morning after attempting to load the Wikia Search home page. The problem was found on both Firefox and Safari, but only about 10 percent of the time.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)The rest of the time, the service seemed to be working mainly as it should, though from time to time, the search page would only partially load.
The error message would return when loading the Wikia Search home page, and read, "Error 503 Service Unavailable." It continued, "Guru Meditation:" and then "XID:" and a nine-digit string that changed each time I found it.
The site Pingdom.com reported earlier Wednesday morning that Wikia Search's problems had been happening since Monday, and were occurring about a third of the time, but my tests revealed that it wasn't that severe.
Pingdom.com also had a chart suggesting that the search site's uptime was only about 65 percent.
When the site's home page did run, it then returned search results with no problem.
The rest of the time, the service worked as normal.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)In October, Valleywag reported that Wikia had laid off about a third of its 43-person workforce.
A call to Wikia for comment wasn't immediately returned.
You may have heard me say this before, but it's worth repeating: I love the Internet.
From my first forays onto Yahoo in the mid-1990s, to my slow, methodical construction of a perfect rating on eBay to the dozens of times I use Google every day, there is simply no question about it: I am head over heels gaga for the medium.
But no matter how many times I laugh at a YouTube video, read something interesting on NYTimes.com or consult Wikipedia, I think my true favorite online hangout is the Internet Movie Database, or IMDB.
What can I say? I love movies, watch them all the time and I find myself constantly doing searches on the site to find out where I recognize that actor in the third lead from or to see what other films or TV shows a director has made.
Yet even I was surprised when I discovered today that IMDB just turned 18 years old. Seriously. Eighteen.
Now, like me, you may not have thought it was possible for a Web site to be older than 14, since the Web didn't even come along until 1994. But there it was in my inbox today: an e-mail touting the fact that IMDB first launched on October 17, 1990, the creation of then-teenager Col Needham.
According to Wikipedia, the database got its start on Usenet newsgroups and later morphed into a proper Web site.
Regardless, this e-mail, sadly, also burst one of my bubbles of naivete (and sure, I have plenty of others left): the idea that IMDB was, despite its ever more polished look and feel, an independent site run by a small but dedicated team who just could not let a minute pass where someone like me can't find out whether Better off Dead or The Sure Thing came first (according to IMDB, they were both from 1985, but the latter preceded the former).
In fact, according to the release in my inbox, Amazon.com bought IMDB in 1998. Sigh.
No matter, though, because over the years, the site has stayed remarkably true to its original mission and to this day is the undisputed champion of movie and TV-related cross-referencing. Sure, it has a few bugs here and there, but in almost every test I've ever put the site through, it's given me exactly what I wanted, and settled more than a few arguments over whether this actor was in that film or not. He was. Or wasn't. I can't remember.
So, here's a big happy birthday to you, IMDB, on the occasion of your turning 18. Now, if only you could go vote on November 4.
The Wikimedia Foundation has instituted a restructuring of its board of trustees, in the process adding two "chapter" board seats and formalizing Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' position as the "community founder" board member.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been designated the 'community founder' board member of the Wikimedia Foundation as part of a restructuring of the board.
(Credit: Lane Hartwell)Valleywag on Wednesday first noted the changes.
First, according to Jan-Bart de Vreede, the board of trustees' vice chairman, the board is expanding from its current 8 seats to a total of 10.
The big change, de Vreede wrote, is the expansion of the board through what he termed "chapter-selected" seats.
"This has been under consideration for a long time, and we are glad to finally be implementing it, de Vreede wrote. "We want to acknowledge that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission and that they therefore deserve a voice in the governance of the Foundation. Please note that the two chapter-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can."
There will also be three Wikimedia community-elected seats.
Further, the foundation is designating four board seats for "specific expertise" in the hopes that it can find people who bring "skills and capacities" the board wants.
"For example, we might decide to actively recruit board members with deep nonprofit governance experience or fund-raising experience," according to de Vreede.
And, finally, Wales was formally appointed to the community founder board seat, a seat he will occupy until December 31.
According to de Vreede, the "specific expertise" seats and the community founder seat will be re-appointed in January 2009. De Vreede's post did not specify how those reappointments would be done.
The community-elected and chapter-selected seats will come with two-year terms and will be reselected in alternating years.
This is the 10 millionth article created on Wikipedia. It is an article about a 16th century goldsmith named Nicholas Hilliard, and was created in the Hungarian version.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Ten million articles.
That's how many Wikipedia has now, if you count all the articles in the 250-plus languages the encyclopedia is available in.
According to a release from the Wikimedia Foundation, the 10 millionth article was created at 5:07 p.m. PDT on Wednesday. It is a "short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard" and was created in Hungarian by a user called Pataki Marta.
The largest version of Wikipedia, the English version, has 2.3 million articles. But when counting all the others, the number swells quickly to the more than 10 million now found in the entire database.
Talk about hot foundation-on-foundation action.
On Tuesday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced it was giving the Wikimedia Foundation--which runs Wikipedia--$3 million.
The money will go toward supporting "Wikimedia's organizational development and help to increase the quality of its content and the reach of its services."
Among other things, the announcement said the money would go specifically to a new Wikipedia feature called "flagged revisions," which will "allow experienced editors to publicly and visibly grade the quality status of articles--in effect, functioning as a kind of 'nutrition labeling' for Wikipedia content."
I sort of wonder if that is in any way related to a feature that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told me about back in August 2006 that was supposed to make it possible for Wikipedia's home page to be open to the public again.
Perhaps not, but it seems there might be some similarities in the functionality.
Update (4:03pm): I got an email this afternoon from Jimmy Wales who confirms that the flagged revisions feature on Wikipedia is exactly the feature he told me about back in 2006. The only difference, he said, is that back then, it was called "stable versions." But he said, that name was too confusing.
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