The Fix for Wikipedia?

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

An experiment conceived by Germans will be tried on the German version of Wikipedia, this fix, if it works, could open up the front page for edits for the first time in years. For those who don’t remember, one vandal repeatedly posted obscene images on the front page which caused them to close it for public editing.

But now, Wales said, administrators of the German Wikipedia–the second-largest version after English–have come up with a system that could protect live articles, especially obscure ones that escape regular scrutiny from hawkeyed community members intent on maintaining accuracy.

As always, anyone will be able to make article edits. But it would take someone who has been around Wikipedia for some yet-to-be-determined period of time–and who, therefore, has passed a threshold of trustworthiness–to make the edits live on the public site. If someone vandalizes an article, the edits would not be approved.

“We want to let anybody edit,” Wales said, “but we don’t want to show vandalized versions.” Source: News.com

We Say: Sounds good so far, I’m sure there will still be some people who try to game the system, but this should make it a whole lot harder.