I raved at the news when I first heard about the idea of an open-source encyclopedia with the intent to provide free access to information and knowledge to all way back in 2001-2002.As a technologist growing up in the '90s, I am well aware of the corporate greed that has shaped the once benign thrust of the world-wide web, and that is, to liberate humanity through free information access.
I never had any doubt that the such (wikipedia) a concept would take off - however, I do concede, that when Wikipedia first announced their program, it did made me think about how the entire concept could stand the test of time, mostly questions about - what sort of governing infrastructure could they put in place.
As a student from a modest family, I didn't have the luxury that the elites have at their disposal - namely access to the latest books and articles as afforded only by cash.
Basically, all we have was a 12-year-old "World Book" encyclopedia and the school's mostly out-dated collection of documents at our disposal. The encyclopedia is bound to the information available at the time of their print. So it didn't fare well on topics like - medical, technical and scientific developments, which requires constant updates due primarily to their constantly changing nature.
Now, when Wikipedia first came out - I said, "this is good".
Now, it literally would cost anything to learn! I was then, as now, a true advocate of what the Internet stand for --- "free information access".
Now, all of humankind will have access to free information, literally, at their finger-tips.
Obviously, the next big question on everyone's mind then is - "so how does this work exactly?".
As with anything open-source, the articles and materials on Wikipedia will be constantly subjected to arbitration (i.e. disambiguation, updates, etc) for everyone, and anyone within the community. Which is, really, a good thing.
But obviously, as the contributing community grows - it will inevitably go through the age old problems that a typical society faces, namely: governance, relevancy, rules and regulation, and of course, posterity.
It was clear from the beginning that any questions on concepts and proprietary regulations needed to be spelled out clearly.
As always, any great ideas are only as good as how its community wants it to be.
The fact that a good idea has to actually work in order for it to be beneficial overtime needed to be addressed clearly, and that was not the case with Wikipedia.
It was soon clear that the people who introduced the "Wiki concept" had done so in haste. And around late 2005 - to early 2006, the small cracks started to appear...
Slowly, the wiki administrators find themselves refereeing infighting and similar activities between contributors and community members. The level and quality of contributions/articles also declined as most of the community quality contributors decided to leave in disgust as Wikipedia tries desperately to put new laws and guidelines in place, sometimes, giving out new procedures and rules, in a daily format.
The general rule of saturation slowly sets the next stage...
Questions like, "well how often does any article have to be updated" didn't help the Wiki folks and the community at all. Debates over how to set the standards of a Wiki article also became a focus of attention for sometime in 2006.
I mean, let us agree on this fact - That we can only put (or at least try our best to) a finite set of knowledge articles in there, that's one thing, but the contention over editing and updating documents and the governance and processes of these and similar topics cannot all be addressed in the interim.
Overtime, the situation is just bound to be in a direct collision course to mayhem and disarray.
The founders should have made clear that knowledge and information has to have a proper founding guidelines, in order for it to stand the test of time.
Free information is indeed a novel idea, but somehow, all needed to consent to an acceptable regulation, formulated to impact the community overtime, and not when problems are identified.
In the realm of the information super highway, Wikipedia is a small idea that needed a gigantic feat to fully accomplish. Something that requires a rather significant investment in time and energy initially as planning.
Again, I am, in all honesty, do not see the concept of free information to be an impossible novelty, in fact, I'm still hopeful, that some day, someone will be able to tie the "loose ends" and forever secure the world of free access to information for all!
The question on whether that's Wikipedia? I very much have little faith at this point in lieu of fact that they should have given more time hatching out the guidelines beforehand instead of fire-fighting their way out of this mess.
I believe that, bottom line, free information (open-source) is a workable proposition; we just have to fully identify the guidelines and preliminary rules completely and clearly.
