Wikipedia is probably the largest collection of human knowledge of history, but the free online continues to record numerous cases of vandalism despite its attempts to eradicate it from their pages.
For a few hours Monday, the Spanish Minister of Culture, Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, was "minister of ignorance" on Wikipedia, the latest example of the practical jokes that occasionally affect the profiles of personalities in this portal.
With over three million articles in its English version-half million in the Spanish-Wikipedia is the most interesting encyclopedic project in history because his articles have been created by its own users and anyone can theoretically enter information or change it.
In this vast wealth is its scope and also its main weakness, as the different taste jokes and slander occur in it with some frequency.
Among the mistakes is the article on known U.S. journalist John Seigenthaler, who was wrongly linked him "with the assassinations of John F. And Robert F. Kennedy Kennedy.
Most errors are published in a few hours in the community "wiki" or sometimes by individuals themselves, but Wikimedia is the foundation behind Wikipedia, is trying to stop the lies about living persons adversely affect its reputation.
Wikimedia announced last August that all changes on individuals living in the future will be reviewed by a "trusted editor" before getting on the network, attention has so far only received entries on people like U.S. president .
Jay Walsh, spokesman for Wikimedia, told Efe that the system already works for some time in the German version of the page and will be implemented shortly in the English version, but it is unknown when it will come to Wikipedia in Spanish.
The requirements to be "trusted editors" are simple and, in theory, any person who is a user of Wikipedia for over 48 hours and has at least five articles published in that time you may receive this status, so that control of the rest community is still needed.
Walsh acknowledges that the procedure is controversial. "It's a very complicated process," he said. "People want to be very careful" with changes in the functioning of the portal and added that it is being discussed extensively on the subject.
Some members of the community "wiki" were in favor of increasing the level of control over all items and not just those living personalities, but Walsh said that was discarded because it would slow the rate of content creation.
Moreover, this idea would run somewhat against the spirit of independence and anti-bureaucracy of Wikipedia and the last thing needed now is free to drive away the thousands of selfless contributors, he said.
Wikipedia reached its zenith in March 2007 with about 820,000 employees, but this figure is now about 750,000 a month, according to a study by Palo Alto Research Center in California.
According the same source, published today in Wikipedia about 40,000 new items every month, up from 60,000 three years ago.
It is true that the number of items grows, but does so at a slower pace than before. Internet users seem less interested in collaborating with the project without anyone knowing exactly why.
One theory circulating is that dwindles as knowledge areas cover or to edit, because practically everything is now written, at least in the English version.
The Wikimedia Foundation is trying to counteract the tendency to simplify the editing interface and tried to attract new publishers with little presence in the Universe "wiki", especially women and people of developing countries.
"Wikipedian''''The medium is a young man from a developed country that is probably a college student, recently acknowledged Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
In contrast, the contributions of women are only 13 percent of the total. "We just started to worry about this.
It really is a complicated problem, "he added.
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