In December 2005, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales announced that the ability for anonymous users to create page on the English Wikipedia would be disabled as an experiment. In the same month of that year, the semi-protection policy of the Wikipedia was also introduced, which prevented anonymous users making edits to certain pages such as George W Bush.
Many things led up to both of these changes. Mainly it was the John Seigenthaler, Sr. affair, where an [anonymous] user created a dubious article about the journalist John Seigenthaler, who in turn wrote an article for the USA Today criticising the nature of the Wikipedia. However, more than a year after the decision to stop anons from creating pages, Jimbo Wales is reconsidering.
I can say that I think that the experiment with disabling page creation for anons has not been particularly useful and that we should turn page creation back on for anons at some point fairly soon.
The key problem with the page creation disabling for anons is that you can spend a few seconds extra, and register, and you are then able to create an article. Many articles are still self-promotional, however, there are not many which are purely vandalism. In my opinion, though, re-enabling page creation for anons is going to create more trouble for Wikipedia editors who patrol recent changes and newly created pages.
When this restriction is lifted, I wonder what the press’s reaction will be. Bill Thompson was complaining over a proposal, which I and most other Wikipedians know very little about, whcih would control the version of a page anonymous users view. He seemed in oppposition of this; many journalists are in opposition of the principle of an encyclopaedia anyone can edit.
Tags: wikipedia, wiki, jimmy wales, bbc, jimbo wales, web2.0, web 2, web 2.0, web2
Hi there
I wasn’t complaining about the new proposal so much as exploring some of its implications - that if there’s an editorial layer between the editor of a page on Wikipedia and its appearence then the ‘wikiness’ of the site is diminished, and Wikipedia becomes more like any other site.
I feel that the community should be talking about this, which it seems they are. It also seems that the plan so far is that edits will be visible to those who choose to see them but that anon visitors will, by default, see only the ‘approved’ page, which is not quite what I’d understood from the interview with Jimmy Wales given to C|Net.
But you’re right that I approve of a user-made encyclopedia, and want Wikipedia to succeed - I just think that, like all significant projects, it needs critical friends who can raise questions and have them taken seriously.