Wikipedia

Every once in a while, I see articles on how Wikipedia is potentially bad because everyone can change it. I have to say that I like Wikipedia and use it almost every day. But while I can understand their logic and agree with most of the arguments, I don't think the authors understood how Wikipedia, even with the vandalism, is relevant.

Think about a real world object, like, for example, the bus stop shelter outside my house. This object is also subject to vandalism. Once or twice a year, someone comes, break a windows or put a tag on a wall. Then someone notices it, call the transport authority and they send a cleaning crew to get the thing back in the original form. Now, as citizens and users of the transit system, we don't stop using the shelter because it's been vandalised, we are just annoyed that the thing doesn't do the job well. So, as society, we put up with some form of vandalism because it's a fact of life. We can't afford to have people at every bus stop watching the installation. It would be too costly and unpractical.

Wikipedia is kind of the same. In order to have the same quantity of the article, you have to give a bit of responsibility. For the same reason why ours streets are not covered in trash and graffiti, we like a clean environment and condemn someone is see as a nuisance. The system attempt to auto-heal itself. Giving a bit of responsibilities to the citizens make sense in some case and it makes a lot of sense in the case of Wikipedia. It's basically a tradeoff. As netizens, we get more rights, but more responsibility at the same time. The result is much faster growth than a closed system, but it will almost always be an imperfect one because you can't control everything.

But it was never meant to be a perfect system. It was meant to be a quick reference with open access to anyone. It is not a reference to be quoted in papers. It is a more a reference that points to where to search for one.

I just think it is a very impressive example of what people can do when they work together