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

[Jimmy Wales]

There was no "foreshadowing", nothing new announced, nothing new said. 
The same old same old.

Keith Old wrote:
> 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*
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