Wikipedia will launch page controls

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is devising a major revamp to how people contribute to some pages. The site will be requiring revisions to pages about living people and some organizations to be approved by an editor.



This is a rather radical shift for the site, which apparently allows anyone to make changes and alterations to almost any entry. The two-month trial, which proved to be controversial to some contributors, will begin in the next couple of weeks as per a Wikipedia spokesperson.

"I'm sure it will spark some controversy," said Mike Peel of Wikimedia UK, a chapter of the organization that operates Wikipedia.

The trial had been approved in an online poll, with 80% of 259 users in favor of the trial. Peel said further, "the decision to run this trial was made by the users of the English Wikipedia, rather than being imposed."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales first outlined the said proposal last January this year. It was met by a storm of protests from Wikipedia users who argued the system had been poorly thought out and rather would create extra work.

'Lock down'

The two-month trial will assess a system of "flagged revisions" on the English-language Wikipedia site. This means that any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were to be published. At the same time as the changes are being considered over, readers will be re-directed to earlier versions of the article.

Wikimedia believed the system was "essentially a buffer, to reduce the visibility and impact of vandalism on these articles".

There have been numerous high-profile edits to pages that have provided false or misleading information about a person. For instance, last January of this year; US Senator Robert Byrd’s page falsely reported that he had died.

If a page has numerous controversial edits or is repetitively vandalized, editors can lock a page, so that everyone cannot edit it. For instance, editors had to lock down two pages about the initial reports of the death of Michael Jackson to stop further speculation about what had caused his death.

"For these articles, flagged protection will actually make them more open," noted Mr. Peel.

The decision was purposely created to focus on the pages of living people because they were the "most high-profile pages with the highest probability of causing harm".

He added that, "[The trial] may also be extended to organisations which are currently operating.”

The system has already been in operation on the German version of Wikipedia for over a year.

The changes to the English language site - which now has more than 3 million pages - will be rolled out in the coming weeks. The changes will be discussed in Buenos Aires this week during the annual Wikimania conference.