Wikipedia stops being funny

Internet encyclopedia " Wikipedia " is preparing to revise the fundamental principles of the formation of its pages. According to the new requirements, all changes to articles about living people and some organizations will be made only after approval by the editor, writes BBC News . Until now, the site has allowed anyone to make almost any edits to the content of almost all pages.

"I'm sure there will be some controversy about this," said Michael Peel, head of Wikimedia UK, the Wikipedia division. At the same time, according to him, 80% of the 259 users who took part in a special survey supported the introduction of control. "The users themselves made this decision, no one forced it on them," he added.

For the first time such a proposal was made in January of this year by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. The new system will be tested for two months. At this time, readers will have access to earlier versions of articles. Wikipedia describes the new rules as "a buffer to make vandalism less visible and less harmful."

In some cases, the data entered into the text of the article, as is known, had a deliberately false character. For example, in January of this year, a page about US Senator Robert Byrd reported his death. In cases of intentional vandalism, the editor could, in principle, "lock" the article before, that is, close access to it to ordinary users. So, for example, following the first reports of the death of Michael Jackson, the editors had to "lock" two pages in order to stop the publication of idle speculation about the causes of his death. The decision to "take seriously" articles about living people was also prompted by the fact that "these pages are where the most damage can be done," Michael Peel said. "The experiment can be extended to existing organizations," he added.

In the German version of Wikipedia, this practice has been in place for over a year. And in English, containing over 3 million articles, it will be introduced in the coming weeks. This week, the planned reform will be the subject of discussion at the annual Wikimania conference in Buenos Aires.

Due to the fact that Wikipedia introduces the endorsement of some articles by editors, The Times has compiled a list of the 10 greatest hoaxes in the history of this virtual encyclopedia (translation on the InoPressa website ).

So, once in the British Parliament, the leader of the Conservatives, David Cameron, accused Gordon Brown of not knowing the date of Titian's death. At the same time, Cameron himself gave the wrong date. "When the mistake was noticed, an overzealous Tory party apparatchik corrected the Wikipedia article about Titian," writes correspondent Michael Moran, explaining that the story has been nicknamed "Titiangate."

Wikipedia users buried Senator Edward Kennedy ahead of schedule when he had a seizure at Obama's inauguration (in fact, Kennedy continued to work in the Senate and died just the other day, August 25), as well as Miley Cyrus, the star of the television series Hannah Montana.

Robbie Williams was reported for some time to make a living eating hamsters in and around Stoke. About Alan Titchmarsh (a longtime horticultural host on British television) - that he wrote an add-on to the Kama Sutra. "What a pity that I can't fix Wikipedia so it's like this!" - exclaimed, according to rumors, Titchmarsh.

The assertion that David Beckham was a goalkeeper on an 18th-century football team was remembered by everyone, but no one was deceived, the newspaper notes.