Jerry Brito

Why all the wiki-hate?

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Why is everyone so down on Wikipedia? Tech Central Station recently ran a story comparing it to a public toilet, and librarians galore have been going nuts about its reliability. The critique is that because it is open to change by anyone, its articles will be error-filled and biased. While I think that is an exaggeration, why get aggravated over such a thing? For one thing, it’s a free resource, and they make no secret about its public authorship. Anyone who uses it should know better than to cite it in their PhD thesis. Keeping in mind that it’s not perfect, it is a great tool for quickly looking up something you don’t know anything about. The alternative is Google, and because Wikipedia articles include links to other related sources on the Web, it beats Google at pinpointing the most relevant sites.

While the profit motive will produce the best products (and privately published encyclopedias and books are no doubt superior), the corollary that all publicly produced goods are worthless is a non-sequitur. That is where libertarianism misses the point of the Internet.

Nov 22, 2004 | Comments