I have found Wikipedia useful and I am considering making a few contributions because of a vague feeling of obligation rather than anything more positive and passionate. I do have a more positive curiosity about whether it is possible to create and sustain a reasonably correct view on a page about enthusiasts with somewhat incorrect views (audiophiles). A bit of a browse around would seem to suggest not which is a bit discouraging but Wikipedia does seem to be working well in the more specialised areas.

After a further week or two of looking at articles and pottering on Talk pages I am now thoroughly discouraged. The types of articles I would like to help develop are general articles overlapping my area of specialisation. These are often poor but not because good contributions have not been made in the past but because the good contributions have been mangled or deleted. This would not matter too much if one could resort to reason to resolve matters but it does not take much browsing of Talk pages and edit histories to see what sort of weight reason carries with the enthusiastic and ill-informed.

Whatever, I am older and wiser and have an outline and some notes for an article on audiophiles which I might do something with when I am feeling a bit more positive.

At a reducing rate of pottering, I have checked a few technical pages in my own area of specialisation which were generally incomplete in breadth, often too detailed and containing a surprising number of small errors though no big ones that I saw. It has forced me to revise my belief of a few weeks ago that wikipedia was working well in the more specialised areas although I would still judge it useful.

I have also observed the process of problem resolution, managing just about to keep out of it, and it was a real eye opener. If I had a stake in Wikipedia I would have been appalled and angry but I am afraid I viewed it mainly with baffled amazement. Why are these people engaged in writing an encyclopedia? I can see the attractions in being part of a wikipedia community but the widespread indifference to knowledge about the subject of the article or debate is very strange. Wikipedia would seem to have no effective mechanisms for addressing the quality problems in many of the general articles.

So does the usefulness of the more specialised areas outweigh the harm done by promoting disinformation in a wide range of the more general areas? It is a close call.

I have now observed a pair of ethically-challenged administrators with agendas in action "improving" an article about experts leaving wikipedia. Their first action was to delete all the evidence which was the list of links to the pages of some of the experts who had left leaving a message saying why. Although there was protest both before and after the "improvement" it was strangely muted and, at a guess, this may not have been unrelated to the pair's history of dealing with protest as documented by a couple of web sites that watch and record what goes on here. These sites obviously have an agenda and need taking with a pinch of salt but the content I browsed seemed reasonable and amusing.

My view of wikipedia has changed a great deal over the last few weeks. I found it interesting and amusing but would strongly recommend taking it no more seriously than a usenet advocacy group which it resembles in a number of ways.