[kwlug disc.] floss fund

[Rick]

Chris Bruner <cbruner at quadro.net> writes:
> The article you linked to was critisizing wikipedia for deleting
> content they thought was not wikipedia worthy. I can see that. ...
> "If we include every article that anyone wants to write, then the
> encyclopedia becomes useless ... " Sounds reasonable to me.
>
> The http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ which is a self professed critic
> of wikipedia says
> ...

I just finished reading that article and have skimmed
this wikipedia-watch. This is pretty thin criticism.
I know there is pettiness by some members of Wikipedia,
but compared to most organizations, Wikipedia still seems
strong to me.

I've heard of power-struggles and petty in-fighting in humanitarian
organizations like Greenpeace and I had just read about criticism of
Habitat for Humanity. I'm sure these organizations aren't perfect
but I view them as a force for good. And so far, Wikipedia
seems to be in the same category.

To me, the flaws of Wikipedia match the flaws of Linux (or, indeed,
of a spoken language). Things evolve over time in a changing environment.
The criticism at one point of time and addressed later on
and become fodder for criticism from a new direction.

For instance, searching on "wikipedia criticism", I read about
quality-control problems and an anti-elitist attitude in 2005.
But, in 2007, I'm reading about a purge of "non notable articles".
So, in an effort to address quality-control issues from at one point,
Wikipedia editors try to clear out Wikipedia. But now, Wikipedia
is becoming offsetting to many people and it's harder for people
to make their edits stick.

So a balancing act is taking place as anti-elitism gives way to some
elitism. As in democracies or the markets, errors in one era are
over-corrected in another era.  But, because of the forkable
open-nature of Wikipedia, I still don't see a serious problem.

Still, I am interested: what are some _substantial_ criticisms of
Wikipedia, as opposed to whining about Wikipedia's lack of perfection?
So far, the Wikipedia criticism that I've read feels _so_ much
like the complaints about Linux ... and I'm not heading back
to MS Windows any time soon.

By the way, the best source of Wikipedia criticism that I've found
so far is this page:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_wikipedia