Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
I've mentioned this in passing elsewhere, but it's time, I think, to say it outright. The managers of Wikipedia have been adding layers of oversight and scrutiny. And they plan to add that allow overseers to vet revisions, which means that most readers will not see a revision until it has been reviewed. This will destroy Wikipedia. People are not going to want to contribute if they know it won't be seen until some (anonymous and unqualified) overseer gets around to 'flagging' it. This means that, more and more, it will be the people with an agenda, rather than the people who just want to add good content, that will be contributing to Wikipedia. It's also not going to be long before there are protracted disputes between the overseers and the common editors. The managers at Wikipedia have to stop listening to the critics. They had a perfectly good encyclopedia because anybody could correct the errors. Now, because they're listening to the people who profess to be concerned about 'quality', they will end up loading it with uncorrectable misinformation. This is a huge mistake.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 09:39 a.m.

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