You probably saw the news yesterday that Wikipedia, the open-access online encyclopedia, has tightened its rules slightly to prevent abuses like this one. On Wikipedia, anyone can create a new article, and anyone can edit an existing one.
It used to be that anyone could create a new article and be anonymous;
likewise with editing an existing Wikipedia page. Now, only registered
users can create a new article — though to edit something, anonymity
is still possible.
This seems like a logical move, and I’m glad to see it. Indeed, I’d go
further and require registration for editing as well. I think that for
just about any citizen-journalism site (and Wikipedia fits broadly
within that category), it benefits the readers to know about who wrote
or altered any piece of contributed content.
Here’s my wish, and it applies not only to “citJ” operations but also
to traditional news websites: That every piece of content posted to the
Web have a link to a bio page about the author. This sort of transparency
is important in the worlds of citizen and traditional journalism.
