Well, uh, yeah. That’s why account names exist. Editors accumulate reputation within the project. That’s a feature.

And I still don’t say that Wikipedia is a perfect resource, I just say that it’s improving in the right way and it’s still under construction.

Look, if you show an encyclopaedia of better quality, from tomorrow, I’m going to spend my time and energy to improve that one.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by.

Essentially, the question is this: How do you know an article represents the most commonly held consensus view, unless it is allows to rapid and continuous editing?

Everybody knows that the more popular an article is, the more edits it gets, and the closer the article comes to resemble the state of common knowledge. However, this means that it’s problem of kinetics – there’s a balance of rightness and wrongness in every article, and in order for the article to most closely resemble the state of common knowledge, edits have to be rapid, continuous, and from a large number of individuals so that the equilibrium is established.

So for the majority of the infrequently edited articles, and also for the articles that are defended against changes, how do you know it represents consensus?

In response to your points:

@ proper references – You sure that’s what’s being included in Wikipedia entries? I’m not convinced. Quantity does not equal quality.

@ time and energy to fight for my edits – As I’ve said elsewhere, if I were convinced that Wikipedia should be the authoritative resource of the world, I would put in more effort. As it is, I think my time is better spent elsewhere. And I suspect that much of the back and forth that goes on in the edit history of the entries are pretty futile.

@ self-promotion – I’m sure some, or many, cases are clear cut but I still think there are many sites with valuable information that are being excluded simply because they are not “official agencies.” From my observations, Wikipedians with a long history inside have a much better chance of having their edits kept than anonymous or new Wikipedia contributors.

@ Wikipedia being a one stop source – I’m not saying that Wikipedia isn’t a truly amazing accomplishment. I’m only trying to remind people that just because Wikipedia turns up in the top 5 search results for many terms doesn’t mean it should be their last stop resource. First stop, ok. But definitely not last stop.

As for flame war, nobody’s flaming here. I’ve still got my flame-proof suit on, although I think Thomas has got it a lot worse over at Epidemix.org.