This week's Nature continues the "new Web technology" theme with a look at wikis - specifically a comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica (with an editorial here).
They conclude that the accuracy of the two sources is comparable. There is some discussion as to what degree Wikipedia can be considered a trusted reference source and on the whole, they are enthusiastic about the wiki concept and encourage experts to get involved with amending entries.
There are lots of issues here and I was pleased to read balanced and generally positive articles. Two things stand out for me - first, you don't need a professional qualification to know about a subject. There are lots of enthusiastic and knowledgeable "amateurs" out there - think of amateur astronomy for instance, and I'd say Wikipedia is testament to this. Second is a sentence from one of the articles: "...only a small percentage of scientists currently contribute to Wikipedia." It seems to me that a lot of scientists have yet to get their heads around the idea of community websites. I run one - ArchaeaWeb. There are over 100 registered users and I receive frequent email about it, but not a single user-contributed weblink, article or comment. Some people seem to think that because I run it, they have to go through me to contribute. As for the rest - lazy, nothing to say, disinterested, too busy? Who knows?
