Wikipedia

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What do you think of Wikipedia?

If you were in charge of a project to create something like Wikipedia, but better, what would you create?

Comments

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

As something of a 'free rider' as far as wikipedia is concerned, I like wikipedia. It's a fantastic way of quickly finding basic information on almost anything. If I need to be 100% certain of the information, I would of course verify it elsewhere, but it's an excellent starting point.

I do however understand the frustrations of those who contribute. There is an inherent problem in that without a high degree of knowledge of a subject it can be a challenge to identify the subject matter expert without the debate degenerating into 'he who shouts loudest'.

I think that improving the accuracy while maintaining the best aspects of the wikipedia approach would be a challenge. I can't see an obvious way to do it without creating greater editorial overhead and thus higher costs and I'm not sure about the idea of selling advertising or similar to pay for it.

In other words, I'm not sure I would create something like wikipedia, because I'm not sure that major changes to the way content is altered or managed could be carried out without losing some essential part of what attracts people to wikipedia in the first place.