niceguyrichy

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, currently serves up the following: Five billion pages a month. More than 120 languages. In excess of one million English-language articles. And a single nagging epistemological question: Can an article be judged as credible without knowing its author?

Wikipedia says yes, but I am unconvinced.

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Read more: CNET

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Matth

The fact that Wikipedia allows (except on a few semi-protected articles) edits by users that can't even be bothered creating their own ID, is semi-ridiculous. Just imagine a forum with unlimited guest posting - a few of the quieter forums can get away with guest posting, but that is very much the exception.

There is only one good reason for wikipedia (and other "public" wikis) to allow edits without a login - it generally establishes a divide where edits with an IP (no name) can be considered less trustworthy, while if a login was always required, the vandals would just have to make a free account instead - similar to the behaviour of the typical "drive by spammer" that is a problem on some forums - cdrinfo seems to be particularly plagued by moron site-pluggers that sign up, post their crap, and are never seen again - though in that case, 0-day posters are automatically suspect.

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Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread