Ian Woollard wrote:
On 27/08/2010, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Wikipedia needs competitors.
Realistically, the space that Wikipedia occupies seems to be a more or
less a natural monopoly.
What makes any monopoly "natural"?
And Wikipedia doesn't even make money per se, so
why would anyone even
want to be a competitor to it? There's no market. A market is where
people pay for stuff.
That seems to reflect the fundamental error of economists: that anything
that cannot be monetized is by definition worthless.
It's not like Wikipedia is abusing its monopoly
power. Is it?
How can you know? Without competition there is no way of evaluating that
statement. NPOV cannot be evaluated when there are no POV sites for
comparison. Even when there are other sites supporting the ideal of
NPOV about a given subject they can reach different results. Abuse of
monopoly power does not come from any willful intent, but from the
zealous belief that the monopoly is right.
Ec