"In short, Wiikipedia may perform a valuable service in making material readily available that would otherwise be scattered or not web-connected, but the price may be to undermine the economic system necessary to produce the material in the first place, which will, in the long run, leave Wikipedia with nothing new to make available."

I think this is the fallacy of zero-sum thinking. Wikipedia is not a substitute for the New York Times. Nor is it a substitute for academic journals, or textbooks, or any of the other sources of information from which Wikipedia often draws its sources.

For that matter, if your critique of Wikipedia is that it's derivative, isn't that true, by definition, of every secondary source? The author of a textbook doesn't do original research, he surveys the literature on his chosen subject and writes a readable summary of other peoples' work. Wikipedia no more undermines the market for newspapers than textbooks undermine the market for academic journals. They serve different purposes and different audiences.

Awareness of Wikipedia has spread to the general population, but mostly when folks like Stephen Colbert are poking fun at its truthiness.

For Wikipedia to move beyond the 2.0 technorati who adore it for its concept and must blind themselves to its flaws, as Donna Bogatin wrote, it must become a more credible source. As it does so, it will meet resistance from the very technorati who adore it, because as we have seen, improved quality at Wikipedia has come from improved control from a hierarchy.

Jim, I think you're on to something. I think over time this nascent market of information resources will bring in more trusted sources. Awhile back I discussed how my 11-year-old daughter was cutting and pasting from Lord knows where for a paper on Jesse Owens. Well, now I've found an AOL site called StudyBuddy.com that is an aggregation of numerous sources of educator-approved content from K-12. She will still have to write her own papers, but I would trust her to use this as a study resource, because it's educator-approved. I don't think Wikipedia has received such an endorsement.

I have read several articles that relate to my expertise, and I disagree with your conclusion that:

A remaining question, of course, is the extent to which Wikipedia articles stilll contribute to knowledge in that they provide structure, coherence, and context to the facts.

I suspect strongly that Wikipedia serves little of this function, either, that most of the pieces are more or less lifted, though perhaps from works that are out of copyright, such as past editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

For example, the article about Computed tomography, gives a good overview of this field, that is also current with technology actually being used. Many printed books are out of date on this subject, and other sources such as manufacturers websites, tend to be focused on their particular models.

So, I would challenge you to: find a better introductory article on Computed tomography anywhere.

Tim: ***I think this is the fallacy of zero-sum thinking. Wikipedia is not a substitute***

Nobody is scared Wikipedia will be a substitute for or significant challenger to major publications, what folks disagree with is the significance of Wikipedia.

The thing with FOSS supporters: Often (too often) they measure things by their potential or symbolism, rather than actual impact, economic significance or innovativeness. From this approach, you hear of companies with small market caps, flimsy programs/ applications and things like Wikipedia passed off as revolutions.

Tim:***if your critique of Wikipedia is that it's derivative, isn't that true, by definition, of every secondary source?***

The point is that Wikipedia is almost ENTIRELY DERIVATIVE.

Wikipedia's value isn't symbolic or speculative. It's used daily by millions of people because it provides more information, more conveniently, than any other information source around. Providing millions of people with more information more quickly than they could have gotten it otherwise seems like a pretty major impact to me.

Again, textbooks are "entirely derivative." What's the difference?

Woah, so Wikipedia is used by millions of people, provides more info conveniently than "any other information source around" and does it more quickly? And still it fails to pull profit, struggles with simple plagarism issues and has no claim of being an "authoritative" resource. Thats neither impressive nor any kind of revolution. Textbooks fare better.

Noel, that's like cricitizing a bicycle because it can't go 150 miles per hour or haul large trailers. Wikipedia isn't designed to "pull profit" or be authoritative.

Well, if Wikipedia can't do anything better than existing resources, why is it revolutionary. Every criteria brought up to discuss Wikipedia is said by you to be irrelevant (authoratativeness, originality, profit potential, accuracy). I understand not comparing Wikipedia to established resources, but at least we can apply criteria, or does Wikipedia exist beyond all reproach (perhaps thats why its revolutionary:):)

Noel, I already answered that question. In this thread, even. Wikipedia provides more information, more quickly, more conveniently, and at lower cost, than virtually any other resource.

If breadth, convenience, speed, and cost are not important criteria to you, then Wikipedia's probably not for you. But millions of Wikipedia users disagree with you.

Of course those are important achievements for Wikipedia. It shares basic qualities with most of the world wide web.