[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales foreshadows possible changes to Wikipedia

[Keith Old]

Folks,

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article featuring an interview with Jimmy
Wales.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-wont-be-so-dicky/2007/03/27/1174761429336.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1


It foreshadows changes such as stable versions and credential checking.


*"One of those tools was an upcoming feature called "stable versions", which
Wales said would "allow the community to flag particular versions of
articles as being non-vandalised so that those would be shown to the public
first in certain high-risk areas".*

*This would help to reduce the number of instances where blatant errors have
passed through unchecked, many of which going unnoticed for weeks.*

*One of many to fall victim to false Wikipedia entries is the former
governor-general of Australia, Peter Hollingworth.*

*Mr Hollingworth called in to the ABC radio program Australia Talks last
week, as it was interviewing Mr Wales.*

*"I found an entry on me at one stage which I found offensive and inaccurate
and it had been put on there by someone I had never heard of and I purely by
accident found it when someone else told me that I should check it out," he
said.*

*"Now I fully support the whole idea of the democratisation of knowledge ...
[but there is still] the question how you balance this out with truth and
accuracy."*

*Mr Wales said while many inaccuracies were picked up within minutes, one
way to avoid them would be to, for particularly vulnerable articles, "make
sure that new edits perhaps are reviewed by someone in the community before
they go live".*

*He was considering adding this feature to future versions of Wikipedia, but
stressed that control would remain in the hands of the community.*

*"We are not contemplating any kind of a system where there is going to be
hundreds of editors in a building reviewing what the public's doing - that
model makes no sense for us," he said.*

*The Wikipedia community was also "discussing the possibility of a voluntary
credential verification process" for contributors.*

*Mr Wales would not give specific details on how contributors would be
verified, but the idea arose after revelations this month that one of
Wikipedia's most trusted editors, who claimed to be a professor, was
actually a 24-year-old with no advanced degrees.*

*He said verifying professional credentials for certain contributors would
not be particularly difficult."*

As noted earlier, this misleading content was based on media reports but I
digress.

The other interesting thing is that the photo is from "Wikipedia Commons".

Regards

*Keith Old*