Wikipedia crack down – writers told to register

Web site tightens rules after subject says biography false

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is tightening submission rules after a prominent journalist complained that an article falsely implicated him in the Kennedy assassinations.

Wikipedia now will require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Web site, said Monday. People who modify existing articles still will be able to do so without registering.

The change comes less than a week after John Seigenthaler, a one- time administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, complained in an op-ed article published in USA Today that a biography of him on Wikipedia said he had been suspected in the assassinations of the former attorney general and his brother John F. Kennedy.

Wikipedia, often cited as a prime example of the type of collective knowledge-pooling that the Internet enables, has about 850,000 articles in English, as well as entries in at least eight other languages, including Italian, French, German and Portuguese.

By Dan Goodin, Associated Press

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