More Wiki Than Ever

Earlier today Slashdot took a look at a change being implemented on the German version of Wikipedia which raised quite a few eyebrows. Many of the implications, however, led the readers to believe things that just are not necessarily true. Wikipedia founder Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales took a minute to help set the record straight. Jimbo writes: "Recent media reports have been quite confused about the new feature we will be testing in the German Wikipedia. Some explanation is in order. Wikipedia is undergoing change. The fundamental nature of that change, the fundamental trend of that change, is to open up more than before, and to become more of a wiki than ever before. If you have read otherwise in the mainstream media, well, digital culture is hard to understand, and it is no wonder that errors are made so often."

From the early days of Wikipedia, we were forced to do something that we did not like to do: protect (lock) pages. For a long time, whenever there was a major editing dispute requiring a cool-down time, or a sudden spate of vandalism to an article, the community administrators of Wikipedia were forced to put pages into a state where no one could edit them. (Admins could technically edit them, but by social custom did not, in order to preserve the level playing field between admins and ordinary users.)

Protection was a good way to prevent further vandalism, but it did unfortunately still allow the general public to see the vandalism.

After many years of this, we recognized that protection was too un-wiki for us, and so the community devised a new software feature: semi-protection. An article which is semi-protected is more open than an article which is protected, because it is open for editing for all but anonymous editors and the very newest of accounts. This innovation has been very popular in Wikipedia precisely because it allowed us to be more wiki, more open, than when we were forced to lock articles.

Encouraged by this development, and after carefully watching the use of the feature and finding it to be a net improvement, members of the German community in particular thought creatively about how we might do an even better job of openness and therefore quality. Could we simultaneously open editing still further, while also dealing better than ever with the problem that protection and semi-protection were designed to solve?

After much discussion, a clever and elegant innovation was found. This innovation holds forth the promise of Wikipedia being able to open the front page for editing for the first time in 5 years! And at the same time, it provides a finer tool for preventing much of the vandalism that had unfortunately slipped through to the general public, while eliminating the need for semi-protection!

The new feature will allow the community, using the same sorts of procedures and norms that we have used for years to determine semi-protection and protection status, to flag certain versions of articles as "non-vandalized", and these versions are what will be shown to users who are not logged in. The feature will be tested in the normal manner of all new features at Wikipedia, with a simple quiet introduction and a period of testing and evaluation within the community.

We expect the following benefits from this innovation:

• Wikipedia will be more wiki than ever, in the sense that for the first time in years, we expect that nearly ALL pages will be open to editing by ANYONE, even non-logged-in users. This means the almost complete elimination of the editing restrictions we have been forced to have for years.

• We have good reason to believe that the primary incentive for most vandalism, as the primary incentive for most graffiti in the real world, is that the vandalism can be seen by the general public. Vandals seek to shock people. The new feature will deprive them of that benefit, and we expect to see a corresponding drop in the total amount of vandalism that the community has to deal with. This is an excellent example of our philosophy of trusting the general public to do the right thing when given the right incentives, and an illustration of why openness and transparency is better than control.

• Although not all pages will have the 'non-vandalized versions' feature enabled, we expect that it will be enabled quickly by the community on all the pages that are currently semi-protected due to being popular vandalism targets. Thus, we will achieve our aim of preventing the general public from seeing vandalized versions (as we do now on these articles), but at the same time allowing open editing of these articles.

---

A quick summary to make this even more clear:

• PROTECTION - NO ONE can edit, NO ONE can affect the public version

• SEMI-PROTECTION - all except new users and anons can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions

• VERSION FLAGGING - ANYONE can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions

As you can see, each step of this chain allows MORE people to do MORE things, rather than less. Each step of this chain is becoming MORE wiki, not LESS wiki.

The news media has an unfortunate temptation to follow a story arc that goes something like this. "Open editing is impossible. It worked for a little while at Wikipedia, but now even Wikipedia is admitting that it does not work, so they are closing off public editing step by step. This proves that our traditional model is best in the end."

The fact that this story arc has no relationship to the reality of changes in Wikipedia has not stopped them. I am hopeful that this post will catch enough attention that journalists will start to grasp the real revolution that is taking place here.

Setting 'Not Vandalized' can be done by ANYONE.

[Derivin]

I think you are missing the point of this change and how it is making things MORE Wiki.
Previously only Administrators could make a page me protected, or semi-protected (which wont change).
That mechanism meant it was the Adimistrators which determined what the anonymous or new users would see and be able to edit.

This new system will be controlled by the internet community at large.
The permissions are in a sence becomming Wiki'd.
(granted the protection editing is semi-protected ;-)
Welcome to meta-recursion.

Re:Oh well

[9x320]

Donations by governments have been rejected as a risk to its impartiality, or perceived impartiality, at least.

Re:Article updated

[Darkforge]

If you think this is "less wiki", then you've missed the point of Wales' response. Here's a ranking from least wiki to most wiki:

1) Every page is locked: only modifiable by the admins (this is almost every page on the web right now!)
2) Every page is semi-protected: only modifiable by logged in non-new users
3) Every page is version-flagged: where anyone can make a modification, but only non-new users can "bless" the page to make it public.
4) Most pages are a wiki-like free-for-all, but some pages are Locked
5) Most pages are a wiki-like free-for-all, but some pages are Locked and some are Semi-protected (today's status quo)
6) Most pages are a wiki-like free-for-all, but some pages are Semi-protected (and none are locked)
7) Most pages are a wiki-like free-for-all, but some pages are Version-Flagged (and none are locked or semi-protected)
8) All pages are a wiki-like free-for all

Clearly, moving from 5 to 3 would make Wikipedia substantially less wiki, but that's not what they're proposing. But that's not what's happening; they're going to 7. Moving from 5 to 7 makes Wikipedia substantially more wiki.

Thanks!

Re:Vouching

[NumbThumb]

Something like this is in fact part of the proposal currently under discussion: a seconds flag ("validated" or something) in addition to "not vandalized". The ability to set this flag would be reserved to a special group of experts. For core articles about science, etc, I think this can work. I'm not sure though how much of Wikipedia can be covered this way.

Re:predictable consequences

[amRadioHed]

1. There are two wikipedia's - public and "underground". There are two classes of people for those two wikipedia's. Instead of one most recent version with equal access, now we will have two. Depending on the level of care for the underground Universe - it will becomes "street"opedia as in wise and street-wise.

That's just silly. For that to be the case it would require a conspiracy of all registered wikipedia users to prevent the best, most up to date pages from being seen by the unwashed masses. Obviously that's not going to happen.

2. Wrappers around "underground" wikipedia will appear exposing it to the public.

More power to them.

All users can edit semi-protected pages!

[raehl]

It irks me everytime someone says some users can't edit semi-protected pages. That's not true. All users can edit; some of them just have to wait 4 days.

There is a big difference between 'can't edit' and 'can't edit now', just like there is a big difference between 'can't make changes' and 'can't make immediately viewable changes'.

There's nothing un-wiki about changes not being immediately viewable.

Re:What about the Colbert effect?

[dubl-u]

Now, imagine if this system were in place. The same legion of Colbert-inspired editors would also flag the page as valid, thus making it the default page and making the harm difficult to repair.

And a bunch of other Colbert-watching editors would put it back. Or, at worst, the page would get protected for a couple of days until the pranksters found a shiny new video on YouTube.

With version control and one-click reversion, it is easier to clean up messes than to make them. That fundamentally shifts the balance of power.

Re:Article updated

[David Gerard]

Possibly, but I don't think the present behaviour reflects such a tendency. English Wikipedia presently has about 800 locked pages and about 200 semi-protected. If a tendency to overapply softer protection did exist, I'd expect that second number to be higher.

Further, there are many admins on en: who are fiercely opposed to any locking down whatsoever, want it kept as absolutely open as possible and regularly patrol locked or semi-locked pages to get them unlocked. I'd expect them to do the same with this option.