Yeah, I look things up there all the time. Totally brilliant!

Uh DUH! Who doesn't use it? ;)

Wikipedia is the proof of "everything you read isn't true". There's an ongoing war of words about the accuracy of Wikipedia entries based on their model of "everbody can contribute". Which unfortunatly means everybody does. Just check out the churn on Turkish/Cyprioit issues as an example. Partisans can easily hijack wikipedia for their own ends. I'm very sceptical that any "million monkey" brute force algorithms can produce high value info without editorial oversite of domain experts.

Ok so we have beauty. But unfortunately not everybody?s opinion is created equal. So accuracy suffers. (ok so most of the geek stuff on Wikipedia is by geeks for geeks and so isn't so bad) For Wikipedia to really work - converge on broad, high quality encyclopedic knowledge - there really need to be some sort of evaluation function included that operates much the same way as peer review for science journals or editorial boards for newspapers does - not that they have perfect reputations - providing some judgment as feedback, or selection if you wanted to view the encyclopedias process as the result of a genetic algorithm, on the content. Wikipedia is trying to work on this issue with those tags you see that say "This entry under discussion" or "is contested" or some such but they're hindered by their philosophy that anybody can post on anything. So unless you're the online equivalent of the pant-less mental patient screaming on the corner you write up what ever you want and post it. (kinda like this comment area:) The ax I currently grinding is about the problems with the process and how anybody that take issue with the underlying utopianism is told ?you don?t get it?.