Good Discussion About Wikipedia

I just want to share this really good discussion about Wikipedia and its strengths and weaknesses. It comes through an interview with one of the founders of Wikipedia who left because of a disagreement over how the site should proceed and operate.

And just to give you a sense, here is the best quote, in response to a question about how readers should use Wikipedia as compared to an Encyclopedia Britannica:

“What Wikipedians themselves would say—and I agree with them on this one—is that Wikipedia has finally awakened in people an understanding that even carefully edited resources can frequently be wrong and have to be treated with skepticism and that ultimately we are responsible for what we believe. That means constantly going back and checking what we thought was established or what we thought we knew. Wikipedians often say that you should never trust any one source, including Wikipedia.

That's not anything new; it's always been the case that you should check your source against another source. It's just that the way that the Internet has exposed the editorial process has, for more critical-minded people, made it absolutely plain just how much responsibility we ourselves bear to believe the right thing.”