QUOTE(Kevin @ Thu 25th June 2009, 1:00am)
QUOTE(Malleus @ Thu 25th June 2009, 9:43am)
QUOTE(RMHED @ Wed 24th June 2009, 10:33pm)
QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Wed 24th June 2009, 7:00pm)
Wikipedia will either die in a puff of smoke caused by a nonrecoverable server crash (it'll be brought back up, sure, but any significant downtime will cause a loss of the addicted), or else with a whimper as its content is inexorably reduced to gibberish as vandals increasingly outnumber those who work to stop them.
I think it more likely that Wikipedia will be made irrelevant by a commercial entity. They'll help themselves to all Wikipedia's free content and follow its general model only with advertising and the addition of cash incentives to content contributors and admins.
I think that seems like an increasingly likely scenario.
I'm not so sure. For that to be successful, the majority of users would have to value better quality information over what is on Wikipedia so much that they are willing to pay for it (by paying or viewing ads), and also would need to understand the difference between good and poor quality.
Is the idea that the commercial entity is going to improve the quality?
I think that's a pipe dream. A pipe dream I once believed, but a pipe dream nonetheless. The work it'd take to fact check a Wikipedia article, to confirm that it wasn't plagiarized, to ensure that it was neutral, etc. would be about as much effort as just hiring someone to write it from scratch. And in the latter case you don't have to deal with the problems of copyleft.