Wikipedia has experimentally removed the ability of unregistered users to create new articles
Wikipedia locks out anonymous editors
/v3-uk/news/1972048/wikipedia-locks-anonymous-editors
08 Dec 2005, Ken Young , V3
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced the implementation of stricter editorial practices in the English edition of the free online encyclopaedia.
Wales said in a statement that he has experimentally removed the ability of unregistered users to create new articles in Wikipedia.
Unregistered users will still be able to fix spelling mistakes and add to existing articles, but are required to register a user account before creating new pages.
"This will reduce the workload on the volunteer editors controlling contributions to the project," said Wales.
"Our main goal is to produce a free high quality encyclopaedia. The 'open editing' process is a means to this end which allowed us to build Wikipedia and make it available to everyone free of charge. It is not a goal in itself."
Concern over editorial accuracy has become a key issue since the recent media coverage of a complaint in USA Today by retired journalist John Seigenthaler.
Seigenthaler discovered insinuations in his Wikipedia biography that he had been involved in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy. After contacting Wikipedia this version of the article was immediately removed from the site and has since been rewritten.
Like many of the problematic contributions to Wikipedia, the offending version of the Seigenthaler article was written by an unregistered user. Wikipedia volunteers patrol a large volume of contributions in an effort to eliminate such problems.
Wikipedia has become increasingly popular as a reference work while it still remains a work in progress. However, the Wikipedia community takes its responsibility towards its readers very seriously.
In response to this incident, community members have debated a number of options to prevent such problems in the future. Possibilities under consideration include features to rate articles and identify stable versions that are suitable as finished work.
Wikipedia is a volunteer project in which quality control and fact checking are handled by a community of more than 1,000 regular authors.
Although online changes or deletions can be made quickly in high profile cases, accuracy is a growing concern now that the content is being transferred to CD by publishers in France and Germany.
Wales claimed that feedback about the change has been positive. One regular on Wikipedia said: "As a new page patroller, the new system does seem to be working. It's pleasant to be spending more time fixing useful articles, and less time getting rid of newbie tests."
Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is currently the world's fastest growing, most current and largest encyclopaedia, with 2.5 million articles under active development in over 120 languages.
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