cornwall - 7:26 pm on Jun 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

Wikipedia shows the ups and downs of user-generated content. On the plus side, they've spend relatively little money to create the world's biggest encyclopedia. On the minus side, anybody can add or change content, and people who are biased or simply uninformed sometimes do so.

With you there.

If it is "worth" a person's time putting a point of view, then they will either

a) for financial gain (links usually in this case)

b) for political spin/bias

I have come across both in Wikipedia, but at the moment it is usually the political spin that is more usual.

When you browse a Wikipedia article and have no knowledge of the subject you may miss the spin. As an example the Wikipedia article on "Cornwall", to which I have not contributed, gets a big input from a Cornish Nationalist writer, and puts forth a view of local politics in Cornwall that may well not represent the view of the majority of peolple living in Cornwall. But if you were living in Chicago how would you know.

Without full time editors, Wiki will get more bogged down in this sort of thing. But they cannot afford the editors without the money. Make contributors aspire to that sort of uber-editor, and you degenerate into ODP politics. It is difficult to find a solution :(