Wikipedia

[ciphergoth]

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

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I think Wikipedia is very good at what it does, and turn to it regularly as a first stop for getting an overview of something I want to find out about. Since I really, really like to find out about stuff, I do this a lot. I find the arguments and fighting actually helpful, since it flags up what's contentious among Wikipedians (a proxy measure for other people) - on hotly contended topics I've found the Talk pages an excellent primer on the basic arguments. My life is vastly improved for the existence of Wikipedia. If I was to be marooned on a desert island, Wikipedia would be on the shortlist for my luxury.

Wikipedia is, in my mind, a classic web story: it's rubbish in lots of ways, and runs counter to the ways we know things need to work to work well, but it's nonetheless hugely successful. (Very like, for instance, a certain instance of distributed hypertext.)


If I were in charge of a project to create something like Wikipedia, but better, I would create a way of stopping the project, or folding it in to Wikipedia. Not because Wikipedia is perfect: it isn't. I just don't think "build a better, separate Wikipedia" is possible from here, and even if it were, I don't think it'd be worth the effort.

Actually, the first thing I'd do is go straight back to whoever put me in charge and ask "Better how, precisely?".

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

... and it seems Clay Shirky agrees with me:
http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/09/18/larry_sanger_citizendium_and_the_problem_of_expertise.php
(And also makes some useful points that hadn't occurred to me, and fills in some history I'd forgotten to bring to bear. Again. Damn his eyes.)