I thought this story in Wired on Wikipedia was actually pretty lame. It ostensibly talks about the growing pains of Wikipedia as it continues to expand at the rate of 7% per month, but it never gives any concrete examples and says stuff like this:

The difficulties Wikipedia faces these days relate mostly to its systems for creating and vetting articles, and whether it covers enough specialized topics sufficiently well to be considered a well-rounded, single-reference source.

Any member of the Wikipedia community can write an entry, which then can be edited by other members. Entries are never finished, given that anyone can make edits to any of them. But that also means there is no final authority who signs off on the accuracy of entries; veracity is assumed to come from the self-policing nature of the community.

Yet that lack of official vetting is central to many of the questions facing Wikipedia today.

No, that's an issue that's been central to Wikipedia from day one. It has nothing to do with the increase in size or usage. And the bit about whether or not they're covering specialized topics...well, this issue should be getting better. As Wikipedia expands, they should be covering more and more topics, right?

To academics like Danah Boyd, a graduate student and instructor at the University of California at Berkeley, that is precisely the problem: Wikipedia, for all its breadth of coverage, cannot claim that each and every one of its entries meets any bottom-line standard for accuracy.

Well, no crap. I don't think it claims to.

And they're quoting a graduate student? Is she the girlfriend of the guy who wrote the article, or what?

"Guess what?" Boyd said. "A lot of ancient-history specialists? They're not online, let alone involved in Wikipedia. But a lot of students are going to Wikipedia for information on ancient history."

Guess what? You haven't given a single example in this article. The story would be a lot better if they'd linked to an article on, say, the history of Persia, and pointed out any inaccuracies and why students shouldn't be going to Wikipedia for information on ancient history. From what I can tell, this entry, picked at random, looks pretty good. If there are inaccuracies, I'd be interested to hear about them.

Anyway, I usually find Wired pretty interesting, but this is a limp story about what should be an interesting subject.