Wikipedia—again!

Try to contain your surprise: serna is writing about Wikipedia again. (Even though I just obsessively mentioned them, again, in my post on Wikinomics on the Book Blog.) Except that this time it’s not about the site itself; it almost feels more like gossip. I read this post on Wired today, and wasn’t sure how to take it. Does this add fuel to the fire, in my negative feelings about Wikipedia? Or—as I’m sort of leaning toward—does it have nothing to do with it? Definitely, the personal problems of the guy who leads the company have nothing to do with my problems with Wikipedia, although the way that Marsden got her entry changed might.

But one ray of hope is that if Wales leaves—although there is no indication that he would—then maybe Wikipedia might start to change their direction a bit. Why would they possibly want to alter their methodology, a wee bit? If you haven’t been keeping track, here are some issues that Wikipedia has—which may or may not outweigh the advantages that Wikipedia has:

• When experts write articles, they are often not very readable.
• The flip side is that the collaborative nature of Wikipedia means that experts can get trumped by non-experts, leading to inaccurate posts, flame wars can erupt, and “compromise” over controversial articles can lead to articles that are innacurate.

Wait a minute… I’m writing a post about something that I write about on a regular basis, and quoting my post about Wikinomics on the Book Blog? Why do I have a sense of déjà vu?