Wikipedia faces an editorial dispute

At the end of February many news websites reported on an internal editorial debate going on at Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia which has come to dominate information needs on the web and regularly appears prominently in Google’s search results. Since it became such a huge resource, Wikipedia has also been the target of an ongoing debate about the accuracy and reliability of its content and the issue of editorial standards.

Anyone can create an account on Wikipedia and contribute content, which has been the cause of the accuracy debate, although a panel of established editors are in place to review and remove inaccurate content where they can. However, several recent events on the site – where edits of the pages of US Senators Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy gave the false impression both had died – have prompted a review of the rules, that would see revisions being approved before they were added to the site. First raised by Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, he proposed a system of flagged revisions, which would mean 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 published.

However, this potential editing change has proved controversial and sparked a row among the site’s editors. It would mean a radical shift from the site’s philosophy that ostensibly allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry. Wales’ proposal has caused a storm of comments on the Wikipedia forum, with many editors saying the proposal was unworkable, so that Wales has now offered a compromise, asking those who were opposed to the changes to make “an alternative proposal within the next 7 days, to be voted upon for the next 14 days after that.”

A BBC report says that a system of flagged revisions has been used by the German Wikipedia site for almost a year. However critics say that the process is labour intensive and some changes can take days, if not weeks, to appear. The issue is similar to that faced by the Open Directory some years ago, when this volunteer-edited directory was being swamped by submissions for listings on the resource, particularly when it had a notable influence on Google’s search results. The problem facing many human-managed websites such as these is becoming one of scale and resources to keep pace with the rapid growth in content – which was once the sites’ strength but now becomes a serious management concern.

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