This is a very interesting discussion--the issue has been raised before, but you state it very articulately.
On 12 Sep 2001, Robert Bihlmeyer wrote:
Timothy Shell tshell@bomis.com writes:
One could plausibly argue that Britannica will always have an advantage in quality and reliability, but I don't think this is the case. For one thing, the Wikipedia process results in a high level of quality.
With quality I agree. Reliability is another thing: sometimes I'd want to link with a resource that explains a concept, which *won't* suddenly change from under my hands. Even if we believe that changes to Wikipedia generally go to the better, more detailed, more balanced, etc. that can be detrimental sometimes.
Suppose I write a paper about something that references an Wikipedia article. Now someone broadens the article with much information that is also in my paper, i.e. the papers is rendered a bit useless. Or worse, someone puts information that refute my theory on the page. Oops.
On the other hand, as we can all see now, up-to-dateness is a virtue in which Wikipedia can beat all printed encylopedias hands down. britannica.com also has something by now; I can't judge details from here, though.
This raises issues about the future that I think are very interesting to think about (even if they are in the somewhat distant future).
Basically, I think the occasional temporary degradation of articles is an acceptable disadvantage of our present system, given that the what causes that disadvantage, namely our completely open system, creates huge (and ever more rapidly increasing) amounts of generally reliable content.
The other disadvantage mentioned, that references might lead to personal embarrassment, doesn't strike me as a terribly huge disadvantage. Who, after all, is going to *cite* a Wikipedia article? Nobody, or at least, nobody before we have "stable versions" of articles (if we *ever* do) that are given a stamp of approval (perhaps by Nupedia review groups).
But I think we probably will, in the distant (how distant, who knows) future, have an official approval process (that is kept carefully separate from the article-generation process). It would make sense to save copies of the exact article that was approved, for citation purposes, or to populate a database of "approved articles."
The way I see it, pretty soon, Wikipedia is going to have 100,000 articles, and Wikipedia will be a household name. Even those who have scoffed at the idea of a wiki-based collaborative project will see value in the result, and a natural movement will be afoot to certify or approve certain articles, so that the public can trust that the information in those articles is reliable. I think at that time we probably won't have any trouble at all getting suitable experts interested in serving on approval committees. Again, we might try to tap Nupedia for this purpose--if they're willing, which they might not be, but who knows.
Anyway, Wikipedia can't be *completely* up-to-date unless we've got a *lot* of people working on it in many different areas. And, at this stage anyway, the best way to keep a lot of people working on it is by keeping it completely free.
Larry