Wikipedia is setting restrictions on Wednesday for new and unregistered users who try to edit the page about recession.
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the company behind the online encyclopedia, told The Hill that starting Wednesday, new account users and anonymous users will be able to make changes to the English recession page, but their edits will be subject to review from volunteer editors.
After the Commerce Department announced last week the nation’s economy shrank for the second quarter in a row, the recession page drew a frenzy of users who debated the definition of a recession and how it should be reflected in the article.
A discussion page about the recession article shows how divisive the topic has become, with some users accusing Wikipedia’s editors of censorship, adhering to “liberal sources” or attempting to “scrub the page” of the definition of a recession.
Traditionally an economic recession has been defined as two quarters of negative GDP growth.
