wikipedia’s “editorial row”
29 January 2009
In the aftermath of recent edits to the Wikipedia pages on Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy that pronounced both of them dead, the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, is proposing a system of “flagged revisions” — in other words, every change has to be cleared for accuracy by an editorial board somewhere. The system is already in place in the German version of wikipedia, but changes can take days or even weeks to appear.
Personally, I’m altogether opposed to the idea. The whole point of wikipedia is that it’s a dynamic source of information; if that sometimes means it’s wrong, so be it. I’ll leave it to the free market of intelligent people to fix any problems that arise. Wikipedia’s purpose is not to be a rock-solid absolutely reliable source about everything; let’s not pretend it is. And any editorial board can’t possibly be more all-knowing than the masses that throng through wikipedia each day, so why not let some kid from Massachusetts who’s pretty sure his senator’s still kicking fix it by himself, and we can all go on with our lives?
