ABSTRACT
Wikipedia is an amazing achievement, and presents an entirely original way of collecting and distributing information, a method which seems highly suitable to our era. The difference in approach between Wikipedia and Citizendum is crucial, and rests on a fundamental disagreement on how knowledge is best produced. The Wikipedia doctrine holds that knowledge-creation is a social process that is fluid and never finally complete. A typical article in Wikipedia might start when an individual user collects information from sources he or she considers trustworthy and pieces these together into a first draft. The success of the Wikipedia process depends very much on the number and calibre of the users who commit themselves to participate in the editing process. If the Wikipedia community is sufficiently large, active and diverse, then it may claim to represent society at large, in which case the knowledge produced might be taken to be appropriate and acceptable to that society.
