What makes the model work is not only the collective knowledge and effort of a far-flung labor force, but also the willingness to abide by two core principles. The first: neutrality. All articles should be written without bias. Wikipedians are directed not to take a stand on controversial subjects like abortion or global warming but to fairly represent all sides. The second principle is good faith. All work should be approached with the assumption that the author is trying to help the project, not harm it.
Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and the goodness of others. In the Wikipedia ideal, people of goodwill sometimes disagree. But from the respectful clash of opposing viewpoints and the combined wisdom of the many, something resembling the truth will emerge. Most of the time.
But both Sanger's critique and Wales' reaction miss a larger point: You can't evaluate Wikipedia by traditional encyclopedia standards. A forked Wikipedia run by academics would be Nupedia 2.0. It would use the One Best Way production model, which inevitably would produce a One Best Way product. That's not a better or worse Wikipedia any more than Instapundit.com is a better or worse Washington Post. They are different animals.
Encyclopedias aspire to be infallible. But Wikipedia requires that the perfect never be the enemy of the good. Citizen editors don't need to make an entry flawless. They just need to make it better. As a result, even many Wikipedians believe the site is not as good as traditional encyclopedias. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Wikipedia a 7.8 in reliability," Kvaran told me in New Mexico. "I'd give Britannica an 8.8." But how much does that matter? Britannica has been around since before the American Revolution; Wikipedia just celebrated its fifth birthday. More important, Britannica costs $70 a year; Wikipedia is free. The better criterion on which to measure Wikipedia is whether this very young, pretty good, ever improving, totally free site serves a need - just as the way to measure Britannica is whether the additional surety that comes from its production model is worth the cost.
What stood in the way of this new approach was precisely what encyclopedias prided themselves on. "Respectability seems safe," he wrote. "But what will be respectable in 30�years seems avant-garde now. If an encyclopedia hopes to be respectable in 2000, it must appear daring in the year 1963."
Jimbo and his minions - from Einar Kvaran in his New Mexico trailer to Lord Emsworth in his New Jersey bedroom - may seem daring today. But they're about to become respectable.
thank you Adam....
