Posted by Adam Quinan on August 01, 2008 at 21:53:37 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Committees (was On Wikis and Blogs (was Arthur Ransome Wikia) posted by Peter H on August 01, 2008 at 21:16:16:
I must disagree, it is a rather old and inaccurate cliche which as I pointed out bears very little relevance to reality and was used to denigrate the wiki concept. Thus I considered it to be a jibe, rather than a side-splitting "joke".
I merely pointed out that evolution, the real reason that the camel exists not some nonexistent committee, has produced an animal very well adapted for its environment and, by analogy, that wikis could produce a good product if evolution takes place.
I suspect that if some of those who are so dismissive of Wikipedia and its ilk actually took the time to read some of the good articles (they are called Featured articles in Wikipedia), they might be impressed by what they found rather than blindly assuming that the concept is incapable of producing quality results.
Certainly critics would have a better knowledge of Wikipedia's contents to base their criticism on. It would be better than merely repeating "well known facts" from hearsay and old reports.
I do agree and pointed out in my post that there are also bad articles but in contrast to Gresham's Law, I would argue that the good tends to drive out the bad in a wiki.