Business Bytes
Curt Finch

New Controls at Wikipedia

 

Wikipedia has announced that it is going to start assigning editors to articles to approve edits before they go live on the site. According to CNN, some critics believe that this goes against the nature of the crowdsourcing concept that Wikipedia was founded on. Caterina Fake, the founder of Flickr, agrees with Wikipedia's choice, saying that user-submitted content sites can no longer be a "free-for-all" without rules.

Others, like web writer Marshall Kirkpatrick, view this development as "a departure from the essential nature of Wikipedia." In fact, the Irish Times ran a story on this with the telling title, "Wikipedia editing controls spell end to famously open system."

They haven't claimed they'll do it for all entries, and the limited number of committed editors that are trusted to review input means they'll have to only do this for contested areas of the site. I think they're probably doing just the right thing.

And don't forget how open and free it still will be compared to any major news outlet or any old-style encyclopedia.


Curt is the founder & CEO of a timesheet software company in Austin, Texas.

Curt Finch has more than two decades of software development and distributed workforce management experience. In 1997, Curt created the world's first internet-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offering. Curt has a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His book, All Your Money, is available on Amazon. @curtfinch