SJ wrote:
We should certainly not strangle that freedom. But I'm not worried about people being 'turned away' from WP because of bad press. I'm worried about the real damage that may be done to people due to bad content. As a community, we should be far more concerned about this than about our own image.
That's true, but at the moment Wikipedia has not yet instituted a system by which we can say that we are even reasonably sure that a particular revision of a particular article is accurate. This has been long-planned, but not operative. In the meantime, people need to read Wikipedia with a large grain of a salt---it is great for finding out information, but any information that is important should be double-checked (this is true of any sources, but especially true of ones in flux). Basically, as David Gerard has mentioned, we've peaked too early---Wikipedia is still in beta, working out how to deal with these issues, so should be treated appropriately.
Perhaps we should make the disclaimers more prominent? There are plenty of possible ways people could be damaged other than libel---for example, someone could rely on a wholly made-up bit of medical advice.
-Mark