Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia follows the

procrastination principle[note 3] regarding the security of its

content.[78] It started almost entirely open—anyone could
create articles, and any Wikipedia article could be edited by
any reader, even those who did not have a Wikipedia account.
Modifications to all articles would be published immediately.
As a result, any article could contain inaccuracies such as
errors, ideological biases, and nonsensical or irrelevant text.

Restrictions

Due to the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, some editions,

Number of English Wikipedia articles[76]
including the English version, have introduced editing
restrictions in some cases. For instance, on the English
Wikipedia and some other language editions, only registered
users may create a new article.[79] On the English Wikipedia,
among others, some particularly controversial, sensitive or
vandalism-prone pages have been protected to some
degree.[80][81] A frequently vandalized article can be semi-
protected or extended confirmed protected, meaning that only
autoconfirmed or extended confirmed editors are able to
modify it.[82] A particularly contentious article may be locked
so that only administrators are able to make changes.[83]

In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit English Wikipedia editors with >100 edits
modifications, but review is required for some editors, per month[77]
depending on certain conditions. For example, the German
Wikipedia maintains "stable versions" of articles,[84] which
have passed certain reviews. Following protracted trials and
community discussion, the English Wikipedia introduced the
"pending changes" system in December 2012.[85] Under this system,
new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or
vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before
they are published.[86]

Review of changes Differences between versions of an

article are highlighted
Although changes are not
systematically reviewed, the
software that powers Wikipedia provides certain tools allowing
The editing interface of Wikipedia anyone to review changes made by others. The "History" page of
each article links to each revision.[note 4][87] On most articles, anyone
can undo others' changes by clicking a link on the article's history
page. Anyone can view the latest changes to articles, and anyone may maintain a "watchlist" of articles
that interest them so they can be notified of any changes. "New pages patrol" is a process whereby newly
created articles are checked for obvious problems.[88]
In 2003, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating
in a wiki create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that features such as allowing easy access to
past versions of a page favor "creative construction" over "creative destruction".[89]

Vandalism

Any change or edit that manipulates content in a way that purposefully compromises the integrity of
Wikipedia is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions
of obscenities and crude humor. Vandalism can also include advertising and other types of spam.[90]
Sometimes editors commit vandalism by removing content or entirely blanking a given page. Less
common types of vandalism, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information to an
article can be more difficult to detect. Vandals can introduce irrelevant formatting, modify page
semantics such as the page's title or categorization, manipulate the underlying code of an article, or use
images disruptively.[91]

Obvious vandalism is generally easy to remove from Wikipedia

articles; the median time to detect and fix vandalism is a few
minutes.[92][93] However, some vandalism takes much longer to
repair.[94]

In the Seigenthaler biography incident, an anonymous editor

introduced false information into the biography of American
political figure John Seigenthaler in May 2005. Seigenthaler was
falsely presented as a suspect in the assassination of John F.
Kennedy.[94] The article remained uncorrected for four months.[94] American journalist John
Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today and Seigenthaler (1927–2014), subject
founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at of the Seigenthaler incident.
Vanderbilt University, called Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
and asked whether he had any way of knowing who contributed the
misinformation. Wales replied that he did not, although the perpetrator was eventually traced.[95][96]
After the incident, Seigenthaler described Wikipedia as "a flawed and irresponsible research tool".[94]
This incident led to policy changes at Wikipedia, specifically targeted at tightening up the verifiability of
biographical articles of living people.[97]

Edit warring

Wikipedians often have disputes regarding content, which may result in repeatedly making opposite
changes to an article, known as "edit warring".[98][99] The process is a resource-consuming scenario
where no useful knowledge is added.[100] This practice is also criticized as creating a competitive,[101]
conflict based[102] editing culture associated with traditional masculine gender roles,[103] which
contributes to the gender bias on Wikipedia.

Special interest groups have engaged in edit wars to advance their own political interests.

Policies and laws

External video
Content in Wikipedia is subject to the laws (in particular, copyright
laws) of the United States and of the US state of Virginia, where the
majority of Wikipedia's servers are located. Beyond legal matters,
the editorial principles of Wikipedia are embodied in the "five
pillars" and in numerous policies and guidelines intended to
appropriately shape content. Even these rules are stored in wiki
form, and Wikipedia editors write and revise the website's policies
and guidelines.[104] Editors can enforce these rules by deleting or
modifying non-compliant material. Originally, rules on the non-
English editions of Wikipedia were based on a translation of the
rules for the English Wikipedia. They have since diverged to some
extent.[84]

Wikimania (https://www.cbsnew
Content policies and guidelines s.com/news/wikipedia-jimmy-wales-
morley-safer-60-minutes/), 60
According to the rules on the English Wikipedia, each entry in
Minutes, CBS, 20 minutes, April 5,
Wikipedia must be about a topic that is encyclopedic and is not a
2015, co-founder Jimmy Wales at
dictionary entry or dictionary-style.[105] A topic should also meet
Wikipedia's standards of "notability",[106] which generally means Fosdem
that the topic must have been covered in mainstream media or
major academic journal sources that are independent of the article's
subject. Further, Wikipedia intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and
recognized.[107] It must not present original research. A claim that is likely to be challenged requires a
reference to a reliable source. Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth"
to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the
truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations.[108] This can at times lead to the
removal of information that, though valid, is not properly sourced.[109] Finally, Wikipedia must not take
sides.[110] All opinions and viewpoints, if attributable to external sources, must enjoy an appropriate
share of coverage within an article. This is known as neutral point of view (NPOV).

Governance
Wikipedia's initial anarchy integrated democratic and hierarchical elements over time.[111][112] An article
is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor, nor by the subject of the article.[113]

Administrators

Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many levels of volunteer stewardship: this
begins with "administrator",[114][115] privileged users who can delete pages, prevent articles from being
changed in case of vandalism or editorial disputes (setting protective measures on articles), and try to
prevent certain people from editing. Despite the name, administrators are not supposed to enjoy any
special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have
project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended
to prevent certain persons from making disruptive edits (such as vandalism).[116][117]

Fewer editors become administrators than in years past, in part because the process of vetting potential
Wikipedia administrators has become more rigorous.[118]
Bureaucrats name new administrators solely upon the recommendations from the community.

Dispute resolution

Over time, Wikipedia has developed a semi-formal dispute resolution process to assist in such
circumstances. To determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community
forums,[note 5] or seek outside input through third opinion requests or by initiating a more general
community discussion known as a "request for comment".

Arbitration Committee

The Arbitration Committee presides over the ultimate dispute resolution process. Although disputes
usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article should read, the
Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that should be adopted.
Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of disputes and rather focuses on the
way disputes are conducted,[119] functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between
conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors
back in to participate. Therefore, the committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it
sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Wikipedia policies (for
example, if the new content is considered biased). Its remedies include cautions and probations (used in
63% of cases) and banning editors from articles (43%), subject matters (23%), or Wikipedia (16%).
Complete bans from Wikipedia are generally limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social
behavior. When conduct is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather anti-consensus or in violation of
editing policies, remedies tend to be limited to warnings.[120]

Community
Each article and each user of Wikipedia has an associated "Talk"
page. These form the primary communication channel for editors to
discuss, coordinate and debate.[121]

Wikipedia's community has been described as cultlike,[122] although

not always with entirely negative connotations.[123] The project's
preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires compromise that
includes disregard of credentials, has been referred to as "anti-
elitism".[124]
Video of Wikimania 2005—an
Wikipedians sometimes award one another virtual barnstars for annual conference for users of
good work. These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a wide Wikipedia and other projects
range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include operated by the Wikimedia
social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation Foundation, was held in Frankfurt
work.[125] am Main, Germany August 4–8.

Wikipedia does not require that its editors and contributors provide
identification.[126] As Wikipedia grew, "Who writes Wikipedia?" became one of the questions frequently
asked on the project.[127] Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few
hundred volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore
"much like any traditional organization".[128] In 2008, a Slate magazine article reported that: "According
to researchers in Palo Alto, one percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's
edits."[129] This method of evaluating contributions was later
disputed by Aaron Swartz, who noted that several articles he
sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number of
characters) contributed by users with low edit counts.[130]

The English Wikipedia has 6,148,739 articles, 39,787,653 registered

editors, and 127,156 active editors. An editor is considered active if
they have made one or more edits in the past 30 days.

Editors who fail to comply with Wikipedia cultural rituals, such as Wikipedians and British Museum
signing talk page comments, may implicitly signal that they are curators collaborate on the article
Hoxne Hoard in June 2010
Wikipedia outsiders, increasing the odds that Wikipedia insiders
may target or discount their contributions. Becoming a Wikipedia
insider involves non-trivial costs: the contributor is expected to
learn Wikipedia-specific technological codes, submit to a sometimes convoluted dispute resolution
process, and learn a "baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references".[131] Editors who do not
log in are in some sense second-class citizens on Wikipedia,[131] as "participants are accredited by
members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work
product, on the basis of their ongoing participation",[132] but the contribution histories of anonymous
unregistered editors recognized only by their IP addresses cannot be attributed to a particular editor
with certainty.

Studies

A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that "anonymous and infrequent
contributors to Wikipedia [...] are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register
with the site".[133] Jimmy Wales stated in 2009 that "[I]t turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by
just .7% of the users ... 524 people ... And in fact, the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done
73.4% of all the edits."[128] However, Business Insider editor and journalist Henry Blodget showed in
2009 that in a random sample of articles, most content in Wikipedia (measured by the amount of
contributed text that survives to the latest sampled edit) is created by "outsiders", while most editing and
formatting is done by "insiders".[128]

A 2008 study found that Wikipedians were less agreeable, open, and conscientious than others,[134][135]
although a later commentary pointed out serious flaws, including that the data showed higher openness
and that the differences with the control group and the samples were small.[136] According to a 2009
study, there is "evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content".[137]

Diversity

Several studies have shown that most of the Wikipedia contributors are male. Notably, the results of a
Wikimedia Foundation survey in 2008 showed that only 13 percent of Wikipedia editors were
female.[138] Because of this, universities throughout the United States tried to encourage females to
become Wikipedia contributors. Similarly, many of these universities, including Yale and Brown, gave
college credit to students who create or edit an article relating to women in science or technology.[139]
Andrew Lih, a professor and scientist, wrote in The New York Times that the reason he thought the
number of male contributors outnumbered the number of females so greatly was because identifying as a
woman may expose oneself to "ugly, intimidating behavior".[140] Data has shown that Africans are
underrepresented among Wikipedia editors.[141]