Data Circle

Wikipedia Semi-Protection Begins via Slashdot

Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit (or used to be able to) has recently introduced a Semi-protection policy that prevents unregistered and newly-registered users from editing certain articles. According to Wikipedia, it’s only being used to protect pages that have already been vandalised on several occassions, rather than a pre-emptive measure to reduce editing on a page that might be vandalised.

I don’t blame the site administrators for taking this step , as I feel it’s a reasonable compromise between allowing freedom to correct/improve articles and stopping people posting incorrect or defamatory material. I’ve seen lots of wikis, even small ones (who are perhaps more susceptible, not having the legion of volunteers that Wikimedia has to spot and fix things), being overwhelmed by spam and misleading information. I’m a little bit disappointed by the decision though, as it takes away somewhat from the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia articles, regardless of whether they have an account or not.

On a side note, I’ve been faced with a similar decision on my blogs of whether or not to allow anonymous commenting. Comment spam never used to be a problem, but recently, especially on Rogue Tory, it’s becoming a real problem. I know that requiring users to register in order to post comments would stop 99% of the spam in its tracks, but then I’d almost certainly lose a lot of useful comments left by people who don’t want to sign up for an account just to say something about one of my posts. I don’t think I’ll ever take the step of protecting articles completely, but I might have to think about possibly disabling or moderating comments on older entries (say over a month old, because for some reason new entries don’t get any spam) in the future, which is a shame as it feels as if the spammers are winning.