How do you solve a problem like Wikipedia?

realclearpolitics.com

4 points·RickJWagner··4 comments

Some interesting ideas there, but it would have been much better if he actually started by presenting and giving evidence for there being a problem other than "I want a space for my truth".

In particular, he mentions "Allow multiple, competing articles per topic", but I think that would go against the whole idea of an encyclopedia. As I see it, if we can't arrive at a single synthesized truth about a topic, then we don't have an encyclopedic article.

>In particular, he mentions "Allow multiple, competing articles per topic", but I think that would go against the whole idea of an encyclopedia. As I see it, if we can't arrive at a single synthesized truth about a topic, then we don't have an encyclopedic article.

Reminds me of Knol - Google's attempt to create a Wikipedia competitor (closed in 2012):

>Any contributor could create and own new Knol articles, and there could be multiple articles on the same topic with each written by a different author.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2 (1998-)

This is analogous to the "freedom of speech on campus" moral panics of a few years ago. Wikipedia isn't under the thumb of an oligarch, so use the language of free speech in bad faith to whip up a general willingness to destroy it.

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