Wikipedia to Make Controversial Pages Easier to Edit

One of Wikipedia’s biggest advantages, the ability for anyone to edit any page, is also one of its biggest drawbacks. The site is constantly facing vandalism or users with personal agendas. Trying to keep the content on the site objective is a daunting task and some of the more controversial pages and topics are locked from regular or anonymous editors, sometimes from editing entirely. This keeps the pages clean but goes against what Wikipedia stands for. The site is now testing a new method of handling this issue with a more laid-back approach.

“As mentioned in this post in January, the English Wikipedia will be trying out the Flagged Revisions extension, using a configuration we’re calling Pending Changes. This new configuration requires new features, which in turn required substantial code changes to Flagged Revisions,” an announcement on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Tech Blog read.

“For technical reasons, we can’t release that code just to the English Wikipedia, so we will upgrade all copies of Flagged Revisions in use on Wikimedia Foundation projects. Happily, that will result in a number of minor improvements for all Flagged Revisions users,” it added.

Pending Changes is the lowest form of protection a Wikipedia page can get. Anyone will be able to edit the page, however, edits made by anonymous or new users will be relegated to a dedicated tab on the main page, similar to the Discussion one. Those edits will be visible to anyone, but won’t go into the main page until approved by a user with higher editing privileges.

This approach simplifies the process of editing a protected page while also offering some level of defense against some of the more undetermined visitors up to no good. Anyone with a real axe to grind will be able to get through this, but the feature is aimed at less controversial pages.

The feature started rolling out yesterday across all versions of the site. The hope is that it will streamline the editing process and encourage more people to participate without degrading the quality of the content on Wikipedia.