Interview Looks at How and Why Wikipedia Works

driehle writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to interview Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working.

I believe I speak for everyone when I say

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how Wiki works:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 [penny-arcade.com]

Or at least, this is the only way to explain the sheer amount of article defacement and trolling. People + anonymity = total asshats.

Re:I believe I speak for everyone when I say

[RsG]

People + anonymity = total asshats.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward

Re:How Wikipedia Works

[skribe]

Or never be reliable, trustworthy or competent. It's always worked for me.

Re:I believe I speak for everyone when I say

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that you mean John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com]

-Yeti

Alternative ways Wiki could work

[CityZen]

I've wondered if it would be a good idea if Wiki never deleted anything. Instead, all revisions of an article would be kept, and you could choose which you wanted to see. Then, to make this worthwhile, you need a system of rating which revisions are the "best". This is the hard part, of course. A voting system seems like a good idea, but you need a way to keep the vote meaningful. Knowledge is not a democracy; it doesn't matter if the majority of people think the world is flat. Basically, you want to limit the voting to people who are "qualified", meaning that they are knowledgeable and neutral (heh, if only we could do the same for public elections). Now, how do we decide who's qualified? I suppose you need some kind of karma system. Hmm, this is all starting to sound a bit familiar...