To Open The Sky

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, was founded by Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. (The expert-written Nupedia was founded first; it is now defunct, and Sanger is developing a successor called Digital Universe.)1 It has grown rapidly and as of this writing contains 1,426,958 articles in the English-language version. There are versions of Wikipedia in 228 other languages; sixteen of these have more than 50,000 articles each.

Wikipedia's main servers are in Tampa, Florida, with additional servers in Amsterdam and Seoul.

There has been controversy over Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy, with the site receiving criticism for its susceptibility to vandalism, uneven quality and inconsistency, systemic bias, and preference for consensus or popularity over credentials. Information is sometimes unconfirmed and questionable, lacking proper sources that could legitimize articles. However, a 2005 comparison performed by the science journal Nature of sections of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica found that the two were close in terms of the accuracy of their articles on the natural sciences. However, this study has now been challenged by Encyclopedia Britannica, whose staff described it as "fatally flawed."

More recently a scandal involving Carolyn Bothwell Doran has arisen. Hired at the beginning of 2007 as Chief Operating Officer, this lady is some piece of work. Her record includes passing bad checks and convictions for DUI. She also apparently shot her boyfriend in the chest. Previous to that, while she and her husband were both CIA officers, he drowned on a Caribbean vacation. Later that year she was jailed for another DUI incident with hit-and-run. As Wikitruth coyly puts it, "she... well, she stopped being the Chief Operating Officer. Her information page was quietly shunted away, her name quietly removed." While it is disturbing that she was hired without a sufficiently thorough background check...

The best coverage of this comes from The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/ . It's a complicated story. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia was remiss in its background checking of a high-level employee. And Wikipedia Review published a timeline of the affair: http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20071220/carolyn-doran-timeline-of-events/

Oddly enough, Googling her name turns up several pages on her at Wikipedia. She still has a Wikimedia user page (though it is blank.) The page recording the Wikipedia Foundation board's decision to hire her on 22 January is still extant.

I signed up as a volunteer editor in late 2005 and since then have been involved in editing various articles on an intermittent basis. What follows reflects my personal experience, plus some recent research and discussion on Usenet.

The central feature of Wikipedia's operation is that it should be open to anyone to edit. This idealistic precept has, not unexpectedly, led to less than ideal results in the real world. The problems can be grouped into three areas: Invalid information, pranks and vandalism, and the so-called "edit wars" or "revert wars".

Incorrect information

Sources

• Wikipedia and the rise of the latrines
  (A snide reference to the Terminator movies)
  The "Aetherometry" site — possibly has an axe to grind.
• Wikipedia Review
  An active and well-run blog with a wide variety of topics
• Wikipedia Watch
  Includes "Wikipedia Hivemind", which paints itself as a sort of rogues' gallery.
• WikiTruth
  "The free scandal sheet that anyone can visit"
• Why Wikipedia isn't like Linux (27 October 2005)
  I feel this article in The Register is the best single criticism of Wikipedia.
  Yes, Carlo Graziani's analysis applies to me as well, since I conflated the two.