Mathias Schindler on Europe Today (BBC World Service)

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Host: Now, within hours of Barack Obama being inaugurated as President of the United States last week, a Wikipedia website that the veteran Irish-American senator Ted Kennedy had died, shortly after suffering a seizure at the inaugural lunch - but Senator Kennedy was, and is, still alive. A similar error was made with Senator Robert Bird, who is 91. He may be old, but he's still alive. The Wikipedia websites for both men were corrected within minutes, but the founder of the online encyclopedia, does not want a repeat of this. Jimmy Wales wants any changes made by users of the site to be approved by an editor first, something which critics say will undermine its reputation for speed. Well Germany already has such a system in place, and earlier I spoke to one of their administrators, Mathias Schindler. Is the concern for speed justified?

Mathias: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it's not a news portal, so we don't do original research, and whether it's a research in microbiology, or in politics, we are not the first to break a story. It's basically your job as journalists to do research to, um, write articles, and the moment they are published, Wikipedia is free to reference them as a source.

Host: But where would those stories that Senator Kennedy and Senator Bird were dead... where would they have come from; because no news channel that I am aware of reported that either man was dead?

Mathias: Wikipedia is a so called 'Wiki', it operates under the assumption that anyone who is able to read an article should also be able to edit it. In this case the edit was not constructive, and it was against the policies, usually if you report the death of a person, you have to name a source. The edit did not include a source, and was quickly reverted. If you came to the site at the wrong time, you would have seen the information that they were no longer alive. In the system we introduced in the German language Wikipedia, it would have required some kind of approval from well respected Wikipedians for this information to be fully acceptable to the public to view, and this is where the system would have performed better than in Wikipedia editions such as the English language one.

Host: So if this extra editorial layer is introduced across the Wikipedia language sites, and if I spot something on a site, and I think it's wrong, and I change it; but then I'm wrong, how long does it take then for an editor to have seen what I have written and change it back again? How long does that process take?

Mathias: You could see the edit instantly. The only difference between the two models we are discussing right now is whether an unregistered user should see the most recent version instantly or whether he should see the most recent approved version, or the most recent version that has been checked by the volunteers.

Host: That was Mathias Schindler, one of Wikipedia's administrators in Germany. Well Rachid in Morocco has said:

"I was reading a very interesting article on Wikipedia, I trusted all the information, until I reached the bottom, and it asked, 'Do you have anything to add? If so, click here.'"

World, have your say at bbc.com.