I'm sooooo glad you asked that question, because I've only answered it about 10³ times in the last 2 years, so maybe this time you'll be porting the answer directly into your little grey cells.

10³+1 …

Try to take an "Objective" view of Wikipedia. NO, I don't mean some Randroid species of Naive Objectivism (NO) — I mean nothing more than to regard Wikipedia as an Object, that is, an external object, not some hunk of your personal anatomy or sole inspiration that you just can't seem to find a way to Live Without.

Viewed as an Object, a Soctech Socware Object, then, what can you say, with all due critical reflection, about this Object?

And what brand of action does your critical reflection impell you to?

Now, I am painfully aware that even trying to think about taking an Object View Of Wikipedia (OVOW) amounts to a Burdensome, Odious, Mentally Intolerable Strain (BOMIS) for Some People, so I will give you all a while to mull the exorcise over.

Jon

As a student of systems design, I view Wikipedia as just another engineered artifact, ostensibly built to serve an array of ostensible objectives and subject to evaluation on that basis.

Systems come into being and systems pass away.

You may think that Wikipedia is something special in the way it mixes up social and technical devices, but when you look closely at the kinds of systems that human beings have been wrapping around themselves for many millennia you will realize that it's not really all that unique. No one here will have any qualms about criticizing Microsoft Windows™ in the performance of its ostensible functions, and Wikipedia is not a bit different in that regard.

The very idea that anyone should fear for their livelihood on the basis of what issues from Wikipedia horrifies me. I do not think that we should simply accept that condition as a premiss or fait accompli and then try to retrofit a motley of patches on top of it. Like some systems we know.

Jon

Great Essay.

I suppose individual BLP victims can spend their individual life-savings and the rest of their individual lives trying to fight this crap in individual court cases …

But what they really ought to do is come to the Review and help us amass a Sock Puppet Army to keep blanking these articles on a continual basis.

Wikipedia is just like any other Defective Product that some commercial interest has foisted on the Public with insufficient provisions for safety and effectiveness, and the Public has a right and a duty to expose its defects by any means necessary.

Let's quit Wiki-Pussy-Φootin Around with this Turkey and stick a Gadshillion Φorks in it !!!

Jon