Wikipedia's fight against its worsening reputation

San Franscisco, Sep 1: The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia will soon be introducing restrictions on editing information about living people along with a new colour code system to highlight unreliable text.

Wikipedia which is known for allowing commoners contribute and publish information online is taking these steps to fight the reputation for widespread errors in its pages.

Informing that the restrictions for bios of living people was taken as these are the personalities who are at a high risk of being vandalised, a Wikiepedia spokesperson said, "This (restrictions) is a two-month trial. It will probably be in place in the next few weeks - we are doing final testing now."

However, the restriction will not be applied on all the bios of living personalities but only on those under the risk of vandalism. The company plans to name a set of experienced users of Wikipedia who would approve the changes made to the bios of living people before it would be published.

A report on Wikipedia's the decision to highlight unreliable information states, "Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange background, while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more people view and edit the new text, it gradually gains more trust and turns from orange to white."

Researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz who are developing this say that this will enable the users to determine the level of reliability of the information that they are reading.

OneIndia News