On 7/24/06, Arwel Parry arwel@cartref.demon.co.uk wrote:
I just found a very long and interesting article about Wikipedia on the "New Yorker" website ("KNOW IT ALL: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?"). Seems pretty fair, overall, lots of quotes including from Jimbo, Essjay, William Connolley...
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
Damn, posting about the same article twice makes me read it twice. This time I made it all the way through though.
One thing I noticed is the downside of our "Lamest edit wars" page, which was clearly the source of a number of disputes. Whereas in reality these are actually really rare exceptions, the fact that the journalist can easily pull out a list of the more bizarre ones (apple pie, cheese, Ann Coulter's birthdate...) makes them sound more common than they really are.
The points about most edits being simple additions/deletions rather than reshaping articles are well made. It's a very difficult problem to solve.
Steve