Somehow I tend to agree with this news item by Charles Arthur on the Guardian Unlimited (UK) Technology Blog. I always thought that Wikipedia would be forced to move into nastier, less idealistic territory.
This is very interesting. Carr (who wrote “Does IT matter?”) doesn’t mean “dead” as in “offline” (Wikipedia is still very much there); he means “dead” as in “not open to anyone to edit at any time”. Dead as in no longer living by its original ideal.
Carr is worth reading on this. A few weeks ago we ran Andrew Orlowski’s piece on what Wikipedia misses (“A thirst for knowledge“) and my, didn’t people disapprove of that message. Well, if you didn’t like that, you’re not going to like what Carr’s written. But that doesn’t make it untrue. Just uncomfortable.
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