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German Wikipedia plans to stop vandals

Of course, there are several hurdles still to be cleared and there are no guarantees that the planned German feature will work. Unless and until it does, the intended benefits won't extend to the main site.

The feature "raises a lot of what-ifs", Wales said. "What if articles get stale" because no one pushes forward new edits? And, he said, there's no concrete agreement about who would be granted authority to push forward articles, though it could conceivably be anyone who has been a registered Wikipedia user for as little as four days.

Another thought would be that edits go live automatically after some pre-determined period of time that could be as little as 10 minutes, Wales said.

To Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review, any potential changes to Wikipedia's editing rules run up against philosophies of how much freedom the site's users are given.

"It's all a question of at what point in the process do you want to exercise central control," Niles said.

Niles added that, ultimately, he is in favour of Wikipedia policies that result in users taking as much responsibility for their work as possible. Currently, anonymous users can edit articles.

"I'm really into sourcing," he said. "I think the most effective way to do things is to put your name on [articles] and responsibility follows quickly."

In the past, Wales has talked about creating a so-called 'Wikipedia 1.0', which would be a static version of the encyclopedia free from vandalism. That point is still far off, but he said the German proposal is a step in that direction.

"You'd be able to... pull Wikipedia articles," Wales said, "and be pretty sure you're not going to get a giant penis picture".

And while most people assume that major changes to Wikipedia always originate on the English version, Wales said the proposed feature could put a lie to that notion.

"This is going to be a time when [the Germans] are going to be first to an innovation," he said.

In the end, Niles thinks Wales and other Wikipedia policymakers should get the benefit of the doubt.

"They've earned the right to experiment with it in any way they see fit," Niles said, "so I'm rooting for them to get it right and make it even better than it is".