Wikipedia puts restrictions on creating new articles

Wikipedia has to be one of the best examples of open source online projects. It is a web-based encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute articles. However, the openness and independence it gives to any web user is now creating problems for the project. Anyone can visit the site, edit any section on it, and put in false or even derogatory comments.

A similar instance made big news recently when John Seigenthaler Sr., who was Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant in the early 1960s complained about an article on the Wikipedia which claimed that Seigenthaler had been suspected in the assassinations of the former Attorney General and his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

This has led to embarrassing times for the project, which finds it very tough to monitor changes taking place in all the articles available in the project. Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles. This information was released by the founder of the project Jimmy Wales.

With this step, the maintainers of the project expect that the registration requirement will limit the number of stories being created and bring more quality instead of quantity in the content being added to Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia visitors will still be able to edit content already posted without registering.