Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review on articles about living people.
The new feature, called “flagged revisions,” will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved, it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia’s servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version.
Roughly 60 million Americans visit Wikipedia every month. It is the first reference point for many Web inquiries — not least because its pages often lead the search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The new procedures have already been applied to the entire German-language version of Wikipedia.
