There have been some vague but disturbing rumors lately that Wikipedia has been tinkering with the idea of no longer allowing open edits. A spokesperson for Wikipedia, Sandra Ordonez, has now come forward to quell those rumors. At least, in the short term. She did confirm that big changes were on the agenda, but for the interim everything will remain as-is. And, it seems, changes they do plan to implement they will make people aware of for possible input:
"None of this has been decided firmly at all," said David Gerard, a director of Wikimedia U.K., the foundation that runs Wikipedia. "We're deciding this over the next two months... to see if there's anything that makes people cough up a hairball."
It also seems unlikely that Wikipedia would take actions like this, as the site wouldn't even exist were it not for scores of anonymous editors along with the registered ones as well. That said, there's a lot of room for improvement and obviously Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously as an information resource. They are going to need better auditing policies in the future, though how they plan to balance that along with an open editing policy has yet to be told.