Oliver Pereira wrote:

My point is that Susan didn't use the word "racist", and the statement can be interpreted in other ways. This mailing list often seems to get into these "Chinese whispers" situations where people's positions get distorted, and I think we should all be sure to check our sources. We should be experts at that, working on an encyclopaedia project!

Oliver's observation highlights one of the things that I find interesting about Wikis as opposed to listservs. Both are open-ended enough that anyone can say anything (unless a moderator exists). However, the Wiki approach neatly eliminates the "Chinese whispers" problem. Instead of a serious of sequential responses (which inevitably either peter out or stray from the point of the original message), Wiki articles cumulatively refine the original message. The listserv approach tends to accumulate *lots* of information, whereas the wiki approach accumulates *better* information, with a presumably higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Has anyone done an analysis of Wikipedia from a game theory perspective? I'd be interested in seeing a good analysis of the way different "rules of the game" influence the content of various strategies for information-sharing such as listervs, newsgroups, etc.