Oh good...

...the WikiPolice have official powers now. There are some people who are so overly protective of the articles to which they have contributed (note I choose not to say *their* articles) that they literally revert every single edit, whether it improves the readability or factual content or not. IMHO it is these people that are the problem with wikipedia, yet they seem to be showered with high-school awards from the wiki foundation!

About time, too

Don't most serious organisations in this world require some form of QA process? There's even a specific job title for the printed (and online) media: Editor. This is distinct from the role of Author, in case anyone's forgotten... and Moderaterix, of course.

You misdescribed it

> "Under the system, new or unknown users would be required to have their article alterations vetted before they become viewable to the public."

I think you meant: "Under the system, everyone will have to conform to the official group-think".

Ah, Wikipedia - the encyclopedia that anyone can edit - as long as they don't differ from what's already there.

Sinbad?

I knew it was too good to be true.

Love it

Wikipedia - the encyclopedia that almost anyone can edit

It might catch on you know!

reg: About time, too

@Matt: Definitely agree. For every 1 writer of wikipedia there are 10,000 readers. For the so-called "rights" of those 1 writers, 10,000 peoples "rights" get compromised. (yeah, yeah, everyone one knows that wikis could be wrong - goto brit encyclopedia for the correct info.)

People will argue back that this police-free rules are what made wikipedia. Well dudes, as a product evolves, the needs change and the changed needs creates new rules. Need of the hour 10 years back was policing free, public created knowledge database. Now that database is there.. the need is to protect the sanctity of it. Funny thing is - people who advocate policing free speech also are advocates of the "winds of change"... (but when winds change on them - they can't seem to embrace the change).

Phew... didn't know I had this in me. Apologies if I hurt any feelings. Paris, coz she would stage her own wikideath.

Perhaps it is time...

.. to have non-anonymous contributors and allow full peer review.

Skull & Crossbones - because they are the sign of death on old gravestones.....

The Onion agrees.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/wikipedia_celebrates_750_years_of

Ted Kennedy

So he's still alive really?

;-)

ROFL

"A warning to celebrities: under the new policy of moderating articles of living people, fledgling Wikifiddlers can still tamper with your article - only now they have kill you first"

Love it. Where do I submit my list of candidates for termination?

slipping

bloody hell, El Reg, you got to the third paragraph without name-calling.

losing your touch?

All editors are equal

But some are more equal than others

Problems

I actually think this is quite a good idea. From what I've gathered, "new" users whose updates aren't auto-accepted are those who joined less than 3 days before the edit. It seems fairly clear that that will stop most opportunist pranksters, since registering is too much of an effort.

But, I doubt this will work, for a couple of reasons:

- it introduces a tonne of extra work for moderators, who won't have time to vet all the changes, and as such

- there's a concurrency issue. If two 'new' users make changes to the same page, what if those changes affect each other? This issue was of course there before, but on a much lower scale.

Matt's prediction: further changes to come.

@Apocalypse Later

Er, citation needed?

Yes please. The one with the list of celebs, the iPhone with their wiki-entries bookmarked and the small bottle of cyanide in the pockets please.

huh ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8221686.stm

Keepin' it boring

This is just the sort of thing that keeps Wikipedia boring. They could learn a thing or two from the classy editors at encyclopediadramatica.com

Oh, encyclopediadramatica.com is typically NSFW