Wikipedia set to tighten editing rules

New York, January 29: The world’s most popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has expressed its intention to tighten its rules, after some incorrect changes were made to its entries, on who can edit the online encyclopedia.

To help prevent incorrect changes, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales put forth a proposal last week, saying that content will need to be pre-approved by editors before they could go live.

Wales’ proposed system, called "Flagged Revisions," is aimed at preventing the wrong entries going live.

The decision to change the Website's entire operating concept came after someone changed the entries of two U.S. senators, Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd, to erroneously report that they had died.

"This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions," said Wales. "Those who are in the minority who are opposed to this are invited to make an alternative proposal within the next seven days, to be voted upon for the next 14 days after that."

Under the proposed system, which was approved 60-40 by participants in an online poll, first-time or anonymous users would not be able to edit or add the content.

Also, the system tool will make some Wikipedia pages subject to editorial scrutiny, meaning any changes made would have to be approved by trusted high-level users before they go online.

Wales admitted that the new procedure could delay the publication of some articles but said the delay would be justified in order to maintain accuracy.

"Our version should show very minimal delays (less than 1 week, hopefully a lot less) because we will only be using it on a subset of articles," said Wales, "the boundaries of which can be adjusted over time to manage the backlog."

Wikipedia is an on-line copyleft encyclopedia that is constantly evolving, and allows anyone with an Internet connection to contribute or edit content.

Hosted and supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia is one of the largest and most-visited sites on the Internet, attracting approximately six million visitors a day.