Wikipedia has always let anyone make instant edits to almost any entry, but it’s investigating safeguards that would reduce incidents of “vandalism,” which I assume to mean the insertion of materials that are either off-topic, clearly wrong or wildly partisan.
Under a system being tested by the German version of Wikipedia, registered users can edit any article the wish and the changes appear instantly, but anonymous users who make changes must wait until a “checker” approves those changes to see them hit the site.
The Wikipedia community — which is currently having a convention in Alexandria, Egypt — was to have heard a report on the experiment Friday but I have yet to see any account of it.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the idea.
I’d love to see Wikipedia (and every other reference work) reduce the number of factual inaccuracies.
I would not, however, accept greater accuracy in exchange for some form of censorship that decided certain interpretations of events were too offensive or too far from conventional scholarship to merit inclusion.
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