Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales does not agree with Thompson's analysis about the changes implemented on the German Wikipedia version (published at BBC News: Not as wiki as it used to be ).
Wales set the record straight and shared a rebuttal with Slashdot.
Quote 1 (from Slashdot):
"Recent media reports have been quite confused about the new feature we will be testing in the German Wikipedia. Some explanation is in order. Wikipedia is undergoing change. The fundamental nature of that change, the fundamental trend of that change, is to open up more than before, and to become more of a wiki than ever before. If you have read otherwise in the mainstream media, well, digital culture is hard to understand, and it is no wonder that errors are made so often."
Quote 2:
A quick summary to make this even more clear:
- PROTECTION: NO ONE can edit, NO ONE can affect the public version
- SEMI-PROTECTION: ALL except new users and anons can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions
- VERSION FLAGGING: ANYONE can edit, all except new users and anons can affect the public versions
As you can see, each step of this chain allows MORE people to do MORE things, rather than less. Each step of this chain is becoming MORE wiki, not LESS wiki.
The news media has an unfortunate temptation to follow a story arc that goes something like this. "Open editing is impossible. It worked for a little while at Wikipedia, but now even Wikipedia is admitting that it does not work, so they are closing off public editing step by step. This proves that our traditional model is best in the end."
" ... I am hopeful that this post will catch enough attention that journalists will start to grasp the real revolution that is taking place here."
... more at Slashdot
