Monday, May 17, 2010

Wikimedia's Wales gives up some top-level controls | Digital Media - CNET News

This is a classic journalism 2.0 case study – Fox News apparently ran an incorrect story on Jimmy Wales, based on “anonymous sources,” and didn’t even both to fact-check it with Wales.  Let’s see – which should we trust more, Fox News or Wikipedia?…

However, multiple representatives from the foundation say Fox's report is not entirely accurate. Rather, Wales voluntarily gave up his special account status, according to Wikimedia Foundation's head of communications, Jay Walsh. Wales had been the lone person holding a unique "founder" status, a position above both registered editors and various levels of administrators in the editorial hierarchy within the largely volunteer community. He has now given up that special status; specifically, that means he will not be able to block users, delete pages, or "protect" pages. However, he still plans to participate as a regular user, according to Walsh. He said the decision was a good faith effort on Wales' part--made in order to keep policy discussions about pornographic content in Wikimedia Commons productive.

Wales himself tells me he remains final arbiter of major disputes and that he still has the final say on various policy matters.

Wikimedia's Wales gives up some top-level controls | Digital Media - CNET News

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