Kuro5hin: Can an Open Content Encyclopedia Survive? I sure hope so, for reasons that will become clear in the next few days.
Wikipedia operates on the famous Open Source principle of “given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow”, except instead of code and fixing bugs, Wikipedia is about knowlege and correcting falsehoods. All of the articles are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, and are created and modified by anyone from the general public, not hired writers and editors. This is done by using what is called a “Wiki”, a type of software that allows anyone to modify web pages using shorthand instead of HTML, all through their web browser. This means anyone is free (and in fact encouraged) to write and improve articles on subjects they know about.
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© 2001–9 Mark Pilgrim