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Michel RolandAnnotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fsurveys%2Fdisplaystory.cfm%3Fstory_id%3D6794228
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Wikipedia's numbers actually make it an anomaly among wikis. Joe Kraus, the co-founder of JotSpot, a provider of wiki software, reckons that most of the millions of wikis already in existence are designed for small, well-defined groups of people. Team members in a company, for instance, might use wikis to collaborate on presentations or project calendars. Wikis are communities, and “communities require trust,” says Mr Kraus. Trust comes most easily when the people involved know one another or are accountable for their contributions. Given that the optimal group size for humans may be less than 150 members (see the article on blogging earlier in this survey), most wikis might be expected to be small.
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20 Feb 09
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Mr Chase posted a biographical article on John Seigenthaler, a distinguished journalist (and former editor of the Tennessean) who in 1961 did a stint as assistant to Robert Kennedy, America's attorney-general at the time. Mr Chase, however, fabricated an entirely different life for Mr Seigenthaler, one that had him living in the Soviet Union, founding a public-relations firm and, most perniciously, suggested that he was implicated in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy.
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For 132 days, the libellous lies went unnoticed and remained on the site.
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Wikipedia's English-language version doubled in size last year and now has over 1m articles. By this measure, it is almost 12 times larger than the print version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Taking in the other 200-odd languages in which it is published, Wikipedia has more than 3m articles.
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A common assumption, expressed most cuttingly by Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is that Wikipedians trust in “some unspecified quasi-Darwinian” process, whereby accuracy “evolves” as more and more “eyeballs” examine an item
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. “Does someone actually believe this?”, wonders Mr McHenry. He obviously does not. To him, Wikipedia is a “faith-based encyclopedia”, based on “the moist and modish notion of community and some vague notions about information wanting to be free”.
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Instead, says Mr Wales, the process “is much more traditional than people realise”. Fewer than 1% of all users do half the total edits. They add up to a few hundred committed volunteers like himself
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Besides “democracy” on the site, he says, there is occasional “aristocracy” (when editors with superior reputations get more say than others) and even occasional “monarchy” (“that's my role”) in cases such as the Seigenthaler biography, when quick intervention is needed.
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Nature's experts found 162 errors in Wikipedia's articles and 123 errors in Britannica's.
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Dale Hoiberg, Britannica's current editor-in-chief
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puts a brave face on it, claiming that “our model, although not perfect, is the best.”
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