Re:open and accurate? (Score 1)

And conventional experts DON'T "change their minds"?? If you're talking mostly about random trolling and vandalism, sure, I understand your concern, but you can look at the page history to check up on that sort of thing. The general business of "changing opinion" on something is different. I didn't know wikipedia could "change its mind" anyway, although I know what you mean. I still think people basically misunderstand the purpose of the whole thing. It was never intended to be an "authority" on anything. As far as accuracy, again, I think it's far too early to be judging things. The basic mechanism of getting better and better accuracy is basically the same at wikipedia as in conventional encyclopedias, just slanted more toward populism and still in infancy. But, really, how do "experts" arrive at what is considered accurate?? Voting! Consensus! This is how science and most areas of knowledge work. While the mechanism at wikipedia may be rougher around the edges and young, I don't see any reason to think IN THE LONG RUN it won't attain a high degree of robustness. And the advantage at wikipedia is, the mechanism of arrival at consensus and accuracy is IN PLAIN VIEW and public, as opposed to other domains of knowledge (like science) where the experts can arrive at "expert conclusions" while keeping the mechanism of how they did this largely secret from the world.