Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems – Yes it’s garbage, but it’s delivered so much faster! – Creator of ‘wiki’ alters course, exits Microsoft

Encouraging signs from the Wikipedia project, where co-founder and überpedian Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online work.

Criticism of the project from within the inner sanctum has been very rare so far, although fellow co-founder Larry Sanger, who is no longer associated with the project, pleaded with the management to improve its content by befriending, and not alienating, established sources of expertise. (i.e., people who know what they’re talking about.)

Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that’s almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, … passionate, you haven’t met a wiki-fiddler. For them, it’s a religious crusade.

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco

Full Story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/wikipedia_quality_problem/

***

Creator of ‘wiki’ alters course, exits Microsoft
He leaves for open-source work at non-profit

By DAN RICHMAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The creator of the wiki, a kind of Web site built and maintained by anyone wanting to participate, has left Microsoft Corp. after two years for a position more philosophically aligned with his invention.

On Friday, Ward Cunningham left the company to join The Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit organization in Ottawa, Ontario, that develops open-source software — software collaborated on by many and then given away or sold at low cost.

Monday was Cunningham’s first day as the foundation’s director of Committer Community Development, reporting to Executive Director Mike Milinkovich.

Cunningham has a history of innovation in community-oriented computing. He is the highly regarded inventor of the wiki, a type of Web site that lets visitors create, read, edit, add to and reorganize the site’s contents. The best known example is the Wikipedia, a community-written online encyclopedia that claims to have 770,000 English-language articles.

Full Story: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/245069_msftwiki19.html