What I Learned Today...

As of today (or maybe it will be next Monday) Wikipedia will no longer allow anonymous users to create pages:

Wales plans to bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. That change will go into effect Monday, he said, adding that anonymous users will still be able to edit existing entries.

The article on ZDNet (Growing pains for Wikipedia) was published today - so I'm not sure what Monday they're talking about.

This change was brought on by a few highly publicized errors in the Wikipedia:

First, in a Nov. 29 op-ed piece in USA Today, a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy [John Seigenthaler] lambasted the free online reference work for an article that suggested he may have been involved in the assassinations of both Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy.

Then, on Dec. 1, a new flurry of attention came when former MTV VJ and podcasting pioneer Adam Curry was accused of anonymously editing out references to other people's seminal podcasting work in an article about the hot new digital medium.

While I don't disagree with this move to only allow registered users to create pages, I do think the complainants are being a little silly ... especially since anyone can edit the encyclopedia ... meaning they could go in and fix their own pages. In fact that's what Seigenthaler ended up doing.

Let's hope this doesn't change the Wikipedia too much!