Follow-up in re: Wikipedia

Sue's link to the Technology Review article about the decline of Wikipedia made me think of one of my favorite articles about Wikipedia, from a scholar on the Haymarket riots. It really helps crystallize what Wikipedia is and isn't. From February 2012: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/

Some choice quotes:

Within 10 seconds I was informed that my citations to the primary documents were insufficient, as Wikipedia requires its contributors to rely on secondary sources, or, as my critic informed me, "published books." Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: "Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."

[Again, after he was able to back up his edits with citations to his own recently published book:] My improvement lasted five minutes before a Wiki-cop scolded me, "I hope you will familiarize yourself with some of Wikipedia's policies, such as verifiability and undue weight. If all historians save one say that the sky was green in 1888, our policies require that we write 'Most historians write that the sky was green, but one says the sky was blue.' ... As individual editors, we're not in the business of weighing claims, just reporting what reliable sources write."