The Wikipedia community also reinforces another Web 2.0 value - reuse and rmix. If you can build and learn from the work of others, this unbridled content can evolve much faster.

...the ever-increasing feature set of the Wki markup language has become more arcane and more user-unfriendly. Even a new user who braves the community policies is likely to be scared off by the increasing complexity of the markup language.

Being free has unexpected advantages. Wikipedia has evolves from being a no-cost alternative into being a superior resource in its own right. Over the years, it has become deeper, broader, and more up-to-date than its traditional rivals. Because of its mission to stay free, it encourages participation-volunteers choose to donate their time and... See more

The story of Wikipedia has inspired business, government, and academics to reevaluate accepted truths about producing works of knowledge. Credentials and central control, once considered the most important parameters for generating quality content, now yield to new terms crowdsourcinf peer production and open source intelligence. What was once only... See more

Wikipedia had to deal with unique problems, since anybody could edit. With its popularity, spam and shameless self-promotion became a constant problem. These were challenges predecessors didn't have to face. Pasting a sales brochure into the Web pages of Britannica was impossible, yet this phenomenon was a continual battle for Wikipedia's... See more

One Wikipedian, with the handle of Durova, is pessimistic about the ability of Wikipedia to remain personable. She came up with a formulation that seems to track Wikipedia's evolution:

Durova's fourth law: small organizations run on relationships. Formal policies emerge when the organization becomes too large to operate on that basis. Policies continue to grow in both quantity and complexity in proportion to organizational growth until the policies no longer work, at which point policies remain in place while the organization... See more

...it was decided early on that there could be only one version of each article presented at any single time. Participants had to work toward a single common article entry. Differng parallel versions of an articple would serve no one well - it would simply be too easy for factions to go off their own biased corners.

For many wikipedians, the act of participating in article making is also an act of learning. This is a dynamic most outside readers don't often see or experience. Writing about subjects while abiding by Wikipedia's neutral point of view requires research, critical thinking, and weighing the facts. Contributors often find themselves learning by... See more