Local english tabloid puts it's slant on the news. Unfortunately we didn't get any
quote in there.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208941/Free-edit-Wikipedia-appoint…
Wikipedia has been forced to abandon its policy of allowing anyone to edit its pages.
An army of 20,000 unpaid 'expert editors' will be drafted in to check all changes
to articles on living people before the pages go online.
The move is a response to the hijacking of the site by those with political or personal
motives.
jimmy
Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. logo
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that the change in the system is just a test
Wikipedia
Tory and Labour politicians, as well as 'web vandals', have falsified entries to
discredit their enemies.
Wikipedia was set up eight years ago as a free encyclopedia built on the work of
volunteers.
All contributors had the power to edit, improve and update the content and it has become
one of the top ten internet sites with more than 13million entries.
But well-publicised hoaxes have forced the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit Californian
body that runs the site, to curb its freewheeling ethos.
They hope the switch to volunteer editors will curb malicious tampering and reduce the
risk of lawsuits. Wikipedia tried to clamp down on the problem in 2005 by banning
anonymous users from creating entries.
Experts said the latest change was much more significant and 'crosses a psychological
Rubicon'.
The system of 'flagged revisions' will compromise the founding principle that
everyone has an equal right to edit any Wikipedia page.
But Michael Snow, who is the chairman of the Wikimedia board, said it was no longer
acceptable 'to throw things at the wall and see what sticks'.
Jimmy Wales, one of the site's founders, said: 'We have really become part of the
infrastructure of how people get information. There is a serious responsibility.'
With millions of changes made to entries every month, it is thought that 20,000 editors
will be needed.
Modified pages go live only with their approval.
Wikipedia is the first reference point for many web inquiries - often because its pages
head the search results on Google and Yahoo.
More than 30million visits have been made to the Michael Jackson page since his death on
June 25.
'Wikipedia now has the ability to alter the world that it attempts to document,'
said New York University professor Joseph Reagle.
A limited number of popular or controversial pages are already protected, including those
for singer Britney Spears and U.S. president Barack Obama.
Wikipedia's credibility took a dent when it emerged in 2005 that a biography of
American journalist John Seigenthaler, once an assistant to US Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, had been altered to accuse him of involvement in the assassinations of both his
boss and JFK.
In one notorious case David Cameron’s aides altered the page on the artist Titian to score
a point over Gordon Brown.
And in 2007 it emerged one of its main contributors had faked his qualifications.
Ryan Jordan, who had edited more than 20,000 pages of information, had claimed to be a
professor of theology but was exposed following a magazine article as a 24-year-old
college dropout from Kentucky.
Last year, the New York Times worked with Wikipedia to restrict information about the
kidnapping of a correspondent in Afghanistan.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208941/Free-edit-Wikipedia-appoint…