I like Wikipedia okay, but I wish I could set my Google preferences to block results from Wikipedia. I think I am becoming a believer in the theory that it's unnaturally up in rank.

Wikipedia is not a democracy. What you explain above is that Wiki isn't actually an oligarchy, which is true, but the notion that Wikipedia is a "democracy," often spread about the internet, is simply false. With the exception of the board-of-directors election going on now, there really is no official voting that goes on. Often there are consensus-building processes in which different sides will weigh in one way or the other, but it is consensus regarding policy that pushes things one way or the other, not (ever) a raw vote count.

The basic thrust of this article is correct: it is the casual editors that help Wikipedia continue to grow. But the notion that this makes Wikipedia a _democracy_ is a misconception that really ought be stopped.

It is true that most content is added by non-cabal members. This does not, however, make Wikipedia "democratic." The cabal members are there to enforce an overall ideological perspective, and they do this not primarily by participating in constructive debate over the content, but by harassing, intimidating and ultimately by banning editors who do not conform to the desired point of view. One Wikipedia administrator who objected, publicly, to these tactics, was recently stripped of his administrative powers, and was admonished, "don't try to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare."

And the flip side of that theory is that www.wikipedia-watch.org is unnaturally down in rank. It's been almost a year since it started, and every single one of its pages has a PageRank of zero.

Wikipedia is the best online source for content. Most of the contents in the articles are well consolidated and rich in content. I think google should just wiki: to Wikipedia!

dude: it's not that hard to simply append "-wikipedia" to your search queries to scrap all that.

Wikipedia is the first "massive" democratic document the size of it is impressive, it also points to other democratic histories and documents that could be created by wiki format. I live near San Francisco, for ever block in every neighborhood, getting a history from people contributing their vision of the shifting city seem a great wiki format next to the formal history's. Every race should have its own central democratic document, and the nations and peoples that contributed to this nation should get a place to define their own history. Wikipedia is the first but lets hope not the last democratic document.

Very interesting. But I still don't have a sense of how many of the remaining facts in the text are the ones originally written by the "drive-by" contributors, or how much the edit ends up taking those facts out.

This is not a credible line of reasoning.

Of course Wikipedia accepts contribution from many people (or at least many IP addresses). But it isn't democratic, because those contributions are on issues that the Wiktators don't care about. And you can still get a lot of contributions from many, many different liberals.

The Wikipedia universe is politically skewed left about as far as it can. That's why guys from San Fransisco like it (see above). It's an obnoxious version of groupthink. Look at "Campaigns Wikia" about homosexual marriage. It's all just liberal propaganda and it isn't very original or intelligent. They win all the "consensus votes" because Conservatives like me refuse to touch it. Which is similar to how public universities have fallen apart.

So it's not Wikipedia=Democratic, it's Wikipedia=Democratic Party.

Wikipedia's dirty little secret is that many real experts contribute content or at least clean up the really bad errors. Otherwise, the entries tend to be complete cr@p. Unfortunately, the systemic antielitist bias and constant harassment from the Wikipedia "Children's Crusade" eventually drives most experts out.