You've probably heard the buzz that Wikipedia was tightening its editorial rules and might even freeze some articles to prevent vandalism. It's untrue. The story started when Wikipedia president Jimmy Wales gave an English-language interview to German reporters after the Frankfurt Wikimania conference last week. His comments were translated into German for the German press and translated back into English by Reuters. It looks like the double translation introduced the false elements to the story. Wales clarified the situation to Steve Outing of PoynterOnline:
The interesting thing is that the media simply made up the story about us permanently locking some pages. It's just not true....There is absolutely no truth at all to the story. None, zero. It is a complete and total fabrication from start to finish....The story seems to have legs, even though we've contacted Reuters and every other outlet to try to get a correction, no one seems to care at all....No response. We're important enough to write about, but not important enough for them to listen to at all.
Here's how Wales corrected the story on Slashdot: "I spoke to one journalist about our longstanding discussions of how to create a "stable version" or "Wikipedia 1.0". This would not involve substantial changes to how we do our usual work, but rather a new process for identifying our best work."
(PS: It's obvious but I'll say it anyway. An error like this would not have lasted 10 minutes on Wikipedia.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/12/2005 10:00:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
