Having a "hive" mind to relay info is the basis of AI, the closest thing to human intelligence minus emotion - kinda like Spock. Look for it on future NASA space trips to the moon and beyond. I think Wiki does a better job than anyone else evolving data in sentence form.
I've always had the impression that they try to do good work. I believe in their overall philosophy of having a kind of open-source encyclopedia. It's a very useful thing.
I have friends who are heavily involved in Wikipedia (one is a wheelchair-bound PhD engineer who retired almost 10 years ago due to some kind of muscular degeneration). I believe that they're by-and-large good people, who are just trying to maintain the quality of information on Wikipedia. There are a lot of people who try to use Wikipedia to advertise their products, warp definitions to support a particular social (or political) view, and some are just vandals who like to deface web sites.-As wikipedia has become more and more popular, there are a higher and higher percentage of people who try to use wikipedia for unintended purposes. Moderators have had to get tough as a result. It's not all that different from cops. When everyone's a good law-abiding citizen, cops can afford to be nice and friendly and invest appropriate time into dealing with the occassional problem. When there's a lot of crime, cops deal with things more confrontationally and put less time & effort into understanding a situation.
Having a "hive" mind to relay info is the basis of AI, the closest thing to human intelligence minus emotion - kinda like Spock. Look for it on future NASA space trips to the moon and beyond. I think Wiki does a better job than anyone else evolving data in sentence form.
I've always had the impression that they try to do good work. I believe in their overall philosophy of having a kind of open-source encyclopedia. It's a very useful thing.
I have friends who are heavily involved in Wikipedia (one is a wheelchair-bound PhD engineer who retired almost 10 years ago due to some kind of muscular degeneration). I believe that they're by-and-large good people, who are just trying to maintain the quality of information on Wikipedia. There are a lot of people who try to use Wikipedia to advertise their products, warp definitions to support a particular social (or political) view, and some are just vandals who like to deface web sites.-As wikipedia has become more and more popular, there are a higher and higher percentage of people who try to use wikipedia for unintended purposes. Moderators have had to get tough as a result. It's not all that different from cops. When everyone's a good law-abiding citizen, cops can afford to be nice and friendly and invest appropriate time into dealing with the occassional problem. When there's a lot of crime, cops deal with things more confrontationally and put less time & effort into understanding a situation.