Very thoughtful.

I think a few things are going on here and it could be worthwhile to tease them apart. As far as the Wikipedia is concerned, it actually combines a few different innovations and this confluence confuses some of the debate.

To start off, I like Benkler’s characterization of the core aspects of the wikipedia project:

Wikipedia combines three core characteristics: First, it uses a collaborative authorship tool, Wiki. This platform enables anyone, including anonymous passersby, to edit almost any page in the entire project. It stores all versions, makes changes easily visible, and enables anyone to revert a document to any prior version as well as to add changes, small and large. All contributions and changes are rendered transparent by the software and database. Second, it is a self-conscious effort at creating an encyclopedia-governed first and foremost by a collective informal undertaking to strive for a neutral point of view, within the limits of substantial self-awareness as to the difficulties of such an enterprise. An effort to represent sympathetically all views on a subject, rather than to achieve objectivity, is the core operative characteristic of this effort. Third, all the content generated by this collaboration is released under the GNU Free Documentation License, an adaptation of the GNU GPL to texts.

I think that each of these characteristics are probably appealing to various academics to varying degrees. While the three are probably interelated, each does make the wikipedia unique, and there are many digital knowledge projects that do not share all of these characteristics.

Perhaps more important to the analysis of the force of nature that the Wikipedia has become is the fact that, for many, this project is the first time they have encountered this combination of technologies and values - their first hands on exposure to “common’s based peer production”, or open source culture.

At the university where I work I witnessed people’s reaction to the Sakai project have a similar effect. As this project was their first encounter with freeculture, they began to associate its merits directly with Sakai as opposed to recognizing that many of these positive qualities were common to most open source projects. Perhaps something similar is going on here - analogous to a first mover advantage, but in an individual’s personal experience.

Another perspective (and I haven’t yet read Rosenzweig), is that academics should not view contributions to the wikipedia as an obligation, rather as an opportunity. If in reality it turns out to be many people’s first research stop (hopefully not their last), then why not attempt to recapture some of the mindshare that might otherwise be lost to crackpots and sock puppets? How is this any different than a desire to bring university library services directly to the students, wherever they happen to hanging out (By indirections find resources out? Perhaps this is the perspective to consider the call to populate Wikipedia with higher quality material.

I think the disanalogy with the traditional encyclopedia’s stems from the fact that the average academic could not contribute to them even if they had the time and inclination. In this case it reminds me more of participating in a democracy. If you don’t like the status quo, vote with you feet (or in this case, fingers). The saying “less talk, more code” applies here. Instead of whining about the mediocre quality of wikipedia articles, why not choose an topic that you care about and improve it?