Wikipedia limits editability of articles

Wikipedia’s online encyclopedia is going to curtail the ability to edit articles lay. Until now, one of the characteristics of Wikipedia is that the encyclopedia can not only be consulted for free, but that everyone can also supplement and improve the reference work themselves. That is now changing, says co-founder Jimmy Wales in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Wales currently resides in Germany where the first international Wikipedia conference is taking place. ‘A balance has to be struck between improving lemmas and preventing their deliberate mutilation.’

An example of encyclopedia vandalism is a piece about the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI in which the portrait of the prelate was replaced by a photograph of Darth Vader. Even though the picture has not been online for more than a minute, it does affect the credibility of the encyclopedia, Wales said. Wikipedia wants to prevent such abuse from now on. Wales mentions the freezing of subjects whose quality has been established as a possible solution. A committee should determine which entries qualify for this. In particular, topics that can provoke unwanted reactions are more likely to be subject to restrictions. When assessing the contributions, one will mainly look at whether a neutral position has been taken. ‘It is not our job to decide what is true; we prefer to reflect the discussion on a certain topic.’