I tried to post a comment to Dare Obasanjo's blog post:
How Do We Get Rid of Lies on Wikipedia, without success (due to
my attempts to add links to the post etc..). Hence a Blog style
response instead.
Dare:
I have been through the Wikipedia fires a few times. If you
recall that I actually triggered the early Web 2.0 Wikipedia
article. along the following lines:
- Asked one of my staff to start a post with the sole intention
of defining Web 2.0 properly
- I then attempted to edit the initial post
- I left a typo re. REST
- Got set on Fire etc... (see very beginning of
Wikipedia Web 2.0 history page)
As annoying as the experience above was, I didn't find this
inconsistent with the spirit of Wikipedia (i.e. open contribution
and discourse). I felt, at the time, that a lot of historical data
was being left in place for future reference etc.. In addition, the
ultimate aim of creating an evolving Web 2.0 document did commence
albeit some distance from "modern man" re. accuracy and
meaningfulness as of my last read (today).
Even closer to home, I repeated the process above re. Virtuoso
Universal Server. This basically ended up being a live case
study on how you handle the Wikipedia NPOV conundurum. Just look at
the Virtuoso
Universal Server Talk Pages to see how the process evolved (the
key was Virtuoso's lineage and it's proximity to the very DBMS
platform upon which Wikipedia runs i.e MySQL).
Bearing in mind the size and magnitude of Microsoft, there
should be no reason why Microsoft's "Microsoft Digital Caucus" (
legions of Staff, MSDN members, Integrators, and other partners)
can't simply go into Wikipedia and participate in the edit and
discourse process.
Truth cannot be surpressed! At best, it can only be temporarily
delayed :-) Even more so on the Web!