This one is unusually thorough and contains quite a bit of background analysis, believe it or not, as if the author actually knows what he's talking about. Not what you'd expect from the Financial Times...
QUOTE
From this perspective, the whole idea of a post-modernist encyclopedia seems ironic: if there are as many different views of the truth as there are contributors, can any one version claim enough authority to merit being placed in an encyclopedia in the first place?
Asked whether Wikipedia invites this kind of relativistic critique, Jimmy Wales, chair of the board of trustees of its parent group, the Wikimedia Foundation, instinctively recoils. “Yikes, I most certainly hope not,†he says. “Postmodernist/deconstructionist theories of truth are incoherent at best.â€
So clearly, Mister Jonny Cache really
was wasting a lot of valuable time over there at WP, when he probably could have been learning the art of making sushi or something far more useful to him personally. (Sorry, man, but I had to say it...)
The article doesn't end as well as it starts, though:
QUOTE
A debate has grown up around Wikipedia’s editing processes, producing an explosion in the number of pages on the site dedicated to airing, and resolving, disputes. One possible conclusion, say the IBM researchers, is that Wikipedia “is becoming less anarchic and more driven by policies and guidelinesâ€.
Another possible conclusion is that Wikipedia is becoming less cohesive and more driven by the inability to produce coherent policies and guidelines that don't require endless debate. But I prefer another possible conclusion: The one in which I, personally, am producing every single word of the verbiage in these so-called "policy debates" myself, perhaps using a semi-intelligent travesty generator program that I wrote in my spare time.
I'd publish the source code, but it's in Pascal, and well... You know how it is!