[Air-l] naturally occuring Wiki conflicts

[Robert Cannon]

--- Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> For the heck of it, I've been watching 30-50
> Wikipedia sites for the past
> 6 months. There are many conflicts on there, most of
> which get resolved.

But how are the resolved?  I have watched a few wiki
conflicts that are resolved it seems to me by the
biggest guerrilla -- the contributor who has the most
time dedicated to editing and quibbling.  Where the
end result is a product that does not reflect accuracy
as much as it reflects the point of view of the
guerrillas.  In the one page I watched in particular,
the content was edited away from expert opinion (that
could be cited and sourced) to misinformation of the
peanut gallery.

I know this is subjective ... what is the right
rendition of information after all ... right? 
Perhaps.  But my observation is that Wikipedia is best
when it deals with generally held information - but
when the information is expert that only a few have
done sufficient work to accurately understand - the
views of the few are rejected for the inferior
information of the majority.  

Sort of the critique of democracy as a tyranny of the
majority.  The majority or guerrilla wins, regardless
of whether the views are well informed and would pass
a laugh-test at a peer reviewed journal.



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