What impact do you think you can have on the world?

I'm a bit of an idealist who believes that Wikipedia can shine the light on untruths, and settle long-standing disputes or misinformation. Not that Wikipedia can resolve every dispute, but that one-by-one certain disputes come to stabilize, where all reasonable viewpoints are represented on their own merits.

And the collaboration process is a key part of that. "This article is not neutral" tells me that someone believes that a viewpoint has not been represented fairly (or maybe not represented at all). "This article is unreferenced" tells me that the article might be just one person's personal observations, while "this article needs references from third-party sources" tells me that the article might just be a soapbox with no independent oversight. That's why it's really great when an article gets that little star beside it. Not because it shows that the article is the God-given truth, but because it shows me that the article a fair enough representation of the topic that readers will be able to make up their own minds. And making up your mind doesn't stop at the edges of the article. You follow those wikilinks, to cross-reference the topic... and yeah, you might find another article that's in dispute, which tells you what the real point of disagreement is. That gives you a better understanding of what people are really disagreeing about.

And those disputes are also a huge opportunity for contributions. My first edits as an IP were because I saw articles tagged as non-neutral, and I tried to clean them up. As you get more involved, you realize these disputes are resolved through collaboration, not unilateral changes.

So yeah, I think there is huge value in Wikipedia. It's a ridiculous goal, but I think Wikipedia can strive to settle disputes for readers, by bringing together different volunteers to hash out those disputes edit-by-edit. I think Wikipedia can be an authoritative source that is sometimes better than reading a scholarly essay, because it exposes you to all dimensions of the debate -- not just a single idea.

Randomran22:15, 4 February 2010