Some pages on Wikipedia have proved controversial and biopgraphies of living people have proved particularly susceptible to malicious edits. In response, Wikipedia previously kept such pages 'locked', sometimes for years; around 01.% of the 3.3m articles on the English Wikipedia are under edit protection.
Now a new system of editing is being trialled. The 'Pending Changes' tool is to be piloted with 2,000 pages, which will now be opened up to editing, even by anonymous and new users. Pending Changes works by having changes reviewed by trusted users before they appear on the main version of the article. A Pending Changes icon (a tiny magnifying glass near the article title) appears on the right side of any page that is part of the pilot.
Phil Bradley in CILIP Update, Aug. 2010
