I don't happen to agree with Donna Bogatin's take on the giant cooperative encyclopaedia.
For one, I think she doesn't take into consideration three things: the immense peer review of Wikipedia (since anyone can edit, errors tend to be fixed quickly, rather than relying on an editorial staff's schedule), the sheer quickness in which information can be disseminated and verified, and the fact that traditional encyclopaedias--which are always compendia of extant knowledge, rather than breakers of new ground, also do not produce original research. An expert writing an entry may write about various theories that are extant, but he or she does not use this forum as a means to expound those of his or her own. In that manner, Wikipedia really is certainly within a long tradition of quantifying knowledge.
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