• exposure to obvious or subtle vandalism•attempts by strongly opinionated editors to dominate articles•inaccurate or non-existent sourcing for controversial assertions in articles •edit wars and other types of non-constructive conflict among editors

CRITICISMSCRITICISMS

OPINION PIECEOPINION PIECE

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has joined a speaker's agency. His pitch starts: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge ... To create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."

But history tells a different story, one extensively entangled with commercial goals and ad-supported websites. In the early days, nobody foresaw how successful Wikipedia would become. Nowadays, Wales often presents Wikipedia as a precursor or prototype for his venture capital-backed startup company, Wikia Inc. Wikia is sometimes summarised with the slogan "Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia. Wikia is the rest of the library." But libraries are not dedicated to making profits by selling advertising on every page of their books while having authors write the books for free (How will Wikia cope when the workers all quit the plantation?)

A recent article in Trader Monthly Magazine …describes Wales's previous failed entrepreneurial ventures, leading to "... his effort to take the success of Wikipedia, and commercialise the hell out of it".

It's informative to observe how long Wales has been pursuing a strategy of selling advertising around other people's work. Beware corporate executives posing as social visionaries. The hype may be about the fulfillment of human potential, but the reality is the exploitation of digital sharecropping.

SETH FINKELSTEIN / THE GUARDIAN / THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 25 2008