The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia. [What happens when a historian tries to edit Wikipedia]

[Jim Lane]

5. My preliminary impression is that he's giving Wikipedia a bum rap.

There's been extensive discussion about this on Wikipedia, including an article in the Signpost, the internal newsletter. It seems to me that the professor didn't recognize or didn't understand all the implications of Wikipedia's commitment to cooperative editing. Statements won't be accepted as definitive merely because a professor asserts them -- especially when they contradict statements made by other authorities.

It does also seem, however, that there was some "ownership" of the article going on. Ownership, in Wikipedia, means that one editor or a small group come to have a proprietary attitude toward the article, and resist changes from newcomers. That attitude is itself a violation of the collaborative editing ideal, but it does happen. It seems in this instance to have made the work of improving the article more tedious than it should have been.