Wikipedia, the world's free, user-made encyclopedia, just announced that it will require people who make new entries to register before doing so. The general public can still edit articles without registering. But already, this policy change raises questions about how free and open Wikipedia and other publicly maintained databases can be.
The controversy arose out of an apparently erroneous Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler, Sr., the American journalist and political figure. Seigenthaler claims that his original entry contained several grievous errors: it said that he was briefly implicated in the assassination of President Kennedy, was a Nazi, and lived in the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1984. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, apologized for these negative statements and instituted this new policy. As of this blog entry, Seigenthaler's entry is still available, but the disambiguation page separating Seigenthaler from his son contains the following disclaimer:
“This page has recently been featured in a major source outside of Wikipedia. As a result, it is experiencing higher than normal traffic, and has become the target of vandalism.”
Frankly, Wikipedia is great, and not just for random everyday words and concepts. In the spring, some friends and I used Wikipedia to look up constitutional law concepts that our casebooks made too confusing. In writing our complaints for the Cyberlaw Clinic, some of us cite Wikipedia's definition of "spyware". Just about every entry seems professional and even-handed, even those on sundry pop culture topics like beer.
My two cents on this is that the marketplace of ideas certainly has its limits, but straightforward rule-based regulation of it seems ineffective. Surely, Wales and the various editors of Wikipedia can implement new technological and administrative measures to keep ahead of “vandalism.” But what has always been most surprising about Wikipedia has been the consistent quality of the entries (at least those that I've seen). Somehow, Wikipedia projects a strong set of norms that keeps contributors within the bounds of propriety. Those norms obviously vary between projects (compare Urban Dictionary), but probably have little to do with the rules in place.
As an aside, the best part of all this is that through this blog, I can take credit for writing about a topic that anyone could learn more about through five minutes on Google. Isn't blogging great? Jennifer, this is my fifth entry, in case you're keeping score.