QUOTE(thekohser @ Mon 22nd March 2010, 10:02am)
We seem to have
lost one.
I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on this subject, but if his original objection was simply lack of accuracy (due to lack of expert review, fact-checking, etc.), then it's not a huge loss, at least in my opinion - inaccuracy, like vandalism, is a recruitment tool. If he were pointing out things that were stupid, offensive, or blatantly agenda-driven, that would be different... FWIW, it's true that WP articles about cities and towns accumulate quite a lot of data over time, some of which is useful to certain people (again assuming it's fairly accurate).
The real problem IMO is that Wikipedia devalues the intellectual side of knowledge-gathering in favor of a more mechanistic, copy-paste approach that threatens to stifle and ossify human progress. (And so on.) For an article about a city or town, or really almost any well-defined, well-understood physical object, that approach isn't a huge problem. Articles about ideas, concepts, politics, events, theoretical sciences, philosophies, etc., are the real concern - but if that's not what Al Fasoldt is into, then I suppose you can't really blame him for anything worse than a limited perspective.