Wikipedia and the Collective Hive Mind?

devv_null asks: "This morning on my drive to work, I was listening to the latest podcast of the Philosophers Zone. The topic of the program was 'Is a free market in ideas a good idea?'. It featured author and speaker Jaron Lanier, who in May published an article Digital Maoism. He highlighted Wikipedia as an example of the one of the worst kinds of 'collective intelligence' and using the 'wisdom of the crowd' to average facts about the world and include them in a massive, lifeless document. Being a habitual Wikipedia user, I could only disagree with his take on the web enterprise. While it shouldn't be considered the ultimate source of knowledge on the web, I think it's ideal in many cases to use as a starting point. Apparently, Lanier thinks a Google search results page is better." So, what is your take on this issue?

Comments

Wikipedia does not allow exposing the Elite

[cryophan]

I mean that if you try to introduce evidence that makes famous people look bad or that makes America look bad, they will remove it and ban you, even if you have good sources. Wikipedia honchos know that if they allow in this sort of hidden truth about how evil and manipulative the American elite are, the mainstream media will shun them, and give them no publicity, and then they will not be able to sell wikipedia for bug $$$$$ or make big $$$$$$ from consulting and speaking fees based on that media coverage. In order to get rich off the internet, you have to play the establishment game and not expose the hyprocrisy and corruption of the American elite. That is why Wikipedia is rightwing and conformist

Re:Too deep

[DiamondGeezer]

The question which isn't being asked is "why the bitter and sustained attacks on Wikipedia from the mass media?". What we have here is a free resource, a collaborative community effort which would be lauded as a benefit by any sane society, even if it isn't perfect. Instead it's being vilified. Why is this happening?

Why is this happening? Because properly researched scholarly history is not written by a mass of semi-literate unscholarly non-experts except by complete accident (the million monkey phenomenon)

Successful community efforts terrify centralised mass media. Wikipedia, Wikinews et al, and even Youtube and Google Video are in their infancy now, and experiencing all the teething troubles you'd expect from a newborn. Anyone with a little vision though, can see the potential for these fledglings to replace todays big media organisations.

They're not terrified. They're laughing. Anyone with vision would see wikipedia as an attempt to rewrite history according to a majority viewpoint, whatever the mob decides happened, happened. That's not history, it's communal prejudice.

This "Digital Maoism" article is an attempt at poisoning by association. The linking of Wikipedia and Maoist collectivism doesn't stand up to even minimal scrutiny. It's sole premise, once the verbiage has been stripped from the text, is that people take the information in Wikipedia too seriously.

Maoism is a very good desciption. An even better one would be "anarchism" with its touching and completely wrongheaded belief in the wisdom of the masses (or the mob)

We get to the real nitty-gritty of wikipedophiles: that Wikipedia is inaccurate but fool you for believing that its a real encyclopedia, whose statements can be trusted.

Wikipedia is a disgrace to scholarship and a danger to democracy by elevating mob-prejudice over scholarship and responsibility.

And for some reason, because people are involved in Wikipedia, and have sacrificed some effort to improving a few articles, they somehow feel that its all worth it. Well, I'm here to tell you that its a waste. You won't like it, but there it is.