Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> I appreciate the sentiment. But I'll place myself on record for thinking > that Wikipedia is incredible. It is one of the handiest things to come > about in the last ten or so years. > The Model T Ford was also incredible. It was wonderful breakthrough technology. My mother drove one at age 13 through the streets of New York City. She said that people who grew up in a world where cars are everywhere cannot imagine how liberating they were. Along the same lines, young people today who grew up with computers have no idea how difficult it was to use typewriters and pens, and paper reference books. The Model T was great, but it was a first-generation product. It had a lot of problems. It was dangerous. It worked well on dirt roads and rough surfaces, but by the mid 1920s paved roads were becoming more common, speeds were faster, and in any kind of wind the Model T was blow all over the road. It lasted for a long time, but was eventually replaced with the Model A and by competing cars from other manufacturers. Wikipedia was a good first generation product. It is still quite useful, just as Model T cars were used well into the 1940s. But it is unwieldy, poorly designed in many ways, and the administrative structure is chaotic, corrupt, and badly in need of replacement. Henry Ford said wanted to keep making the Model T "forever" but he was finally forced to stop, and upgrade. Ford was forced to upgrade mainly by competition from GM and other car companies. For years, he had the whole market to himself. If GM had not starting eating his lunch, he would have cranked out Model T cars for another decade. What we need is competition with Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it appears to be "natural monopoly" the way telephone service was until the 1980s, and the way microcomputer operating systems are today. A natural monopoly produces a hegemony, in these cases AT&T and Microsoft. They happened to come along first, in a situation where the first to arrive takes everything. Wikipedia is the same way. As I said, Wikipedia is good for some things but not others. If fails when the encyclopedia entry is controversial. The main problems are that it allows anonymous editing, and it has no respect for authorities in complicated, specialized subjects. I hope that it is reformed, or -- if it is not -- that some competing encyclopedia arises. Perhaps another encyclopedia can be established that specialized is scientific subjects such as cold fusion, and that does a better job using more traditional academic standards. We can leave the present Wikipedia to deal with popular culture, Japanese comic strips, and so on. - Jed
