Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions for Douglas Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
Q. So fix it.
A. The next day someone will fix it back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01wwlnQ4.t.html
My thoughts:
It strikes me that there is really a crisis of confidence in people that editing Wikipedia will have any long term effect. I have heard it many, many times from people on the web and in person as well as seen it in print. "Why bother, someone will just change it back later, or erase it?"
I think it is too important to be dismissive about this approach. Even correctly cited things can be removed or butchered, even incorrectly cited things can stay on. I'm not sure that increased calls for citation will solve or even mitigate the problem. Any academic can tell you that citation is hardly a gold standard; it is not what convinces people of the accuracy of any claim. In the end that comes down to trust, and that comes down to authorship, and that comes down to things that Wikipedia doesn't, won't, and maybe can't do right.
At this point, Wikipedia's epistemology privileges the persistant, the dedicated, and those with a lot of free time on their hands. Which is a set of qualities which describes both the best _and_ the worst editors.
I don't have an answer though. Just something to muse on, in the face of some rather derisive high-brow publicity from an immensely popular, immensely intelligent person.
FF