The FAQs are at wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ

Mentioned at some length here in Neutral Point Of View. Important stuff. But we need to cover more than that.

There are two things I'd love to explore here, initially

1. Ben Kovitz having the original idea, according to a very early page I read on Wikipedia itself in 2001, which thanked him for that very thing. That was the founder or initial managing editor speaking, as far as I could make out. Although I always thought it was a great idea, I didn't make notes or take a snapshot of the HTML at that moment.

• Ben suggested the wiki-izing of it - full history is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia . At the time Ben was proselytizing wiki in lots of places outside Wiki Dom. A regular Johnny Appleseed our Ben. I doubt he expected a tree with 2 million apples on it, however.

2. John Naughton's thought-provoking commentary on the unexpected success of Wikipedia in The Observer this Sunday here. Naughton refers back to his delightfully entitled "Wiki's wacky, but it really does work" in September here.

This extraordinary phenomenon is the greatest outcome of Ward Cunningham's genius, I was thinking as I read the article. And some interesting play by Ben, and others, of course. But neither man was mentioned. I say you can't always trust everything you read in a distinguished UK newspaper, a public toilet or er, anywhere.

My father asked a good question too on reading the article on Monday night. Has that Canadian chap commented on it? Sunir as we'll call him here. Yes, what has Meatball Wiki been saying about all this? -- Richard Drake

Encyclopedias and dictionaries are the biggest reference books outside telephone directories. They aren't about a subject, like c2, why, or any of the smaller wikis. They're catalogs. This goes for the other outstanding open-content sites - Source Forge, Slash Dot, and to a certain extent RSS too. The "egg" on the rest of Wiki Dom's faces is only there because they tried to frame themselves after a newsgroup or mailing list.

It's plain then that any catalog could be Hyper Successfully wiki-ized. Likely candidates are street directories, yellow pages, art galleries, and so on. Hmm. Would you believe a Wiki Game? --Peter Merel.

Okay, and what do we make of the critique of Wikipedia by the Encyclopedia Britannica people in John's article? Is there any problem with quality control in any area that we see? I innately buy the Wiki model, once it is working. But making it work in this case has clearly meant locking of contentious pages, giving considerable power to the "core group" as John calls them. Has anyone highly qualified come on to Wikipedia and been edited down by the less qualified? How much does identity matter in a situation like that? I admit I am ignorant of the details. But interested. I will read the Meatball pages below before adding more! -- Richard Drake

It struck me that Math World serves as a useful comparison and contrast with Wikipedia. I know that Math World welcomes contributions, but not in the same way a wiki does; I wonder whether Math World would have been as successful or reliable if it had been more like a wiki. And I wonder what Wiki Wiki would look like today if the PPR had been more like Math World. -- Scott Moonen

Since the principal antagonists in the recent debates have been Wikipedia and Britannica, it might also be useful to look at another "top-down" source, Bartleby, which differs from Britannica in some important ways. First, like Wikipedia and unlike Britannica, Bartleby is not a commercial venture, being a public service of Columbia U. Second, like Britannica, Bartleby is a "top-down" encyclopaedia. Unlike Wikipedia and Britannica, Bartleby does not attempt to be catholic in its coverage, for the most part limiting itself to the humanities. (This last point, I think, is not relevant to the debate, which focuses on approach rather than scope.)

Regarding the top-down model, Britannica and Bartleby also subscribe to the Great Books theory: Britannica, with its "Syntopicon"; Bartleby, which calls itself "Great Books Online" and is indeed a great source for standard references, from the complete Harvard Classics to Gray's Anatomy. People who like Mortimer Adler and Harold Blum subscribe to the Great Books theory. People who like Roland Barthes and Noam Chomsky will probably prefer the "pure wiki" model.

So, with these differences and analogies in mind, I propose the following: that the top-down versus bottom-up, Britannica versus Wikipedia debate is a bit precious - that if a better understanding or a Neutral Point Of View about a subject is the goal, whether synthesis or consensus, then one is well-advised to consult both a wiki and a standard top-down reference. Now, which one should have the last word might still be up for debate! -- Jack Rice

See CategoryWikipedia, especially Wikipedia, Wiki Pedia Is Not An Encyclopedia and Wiki Pedia Is Not Typical.

The moment Wikipedia Beats The New York Times has to be historic. Although no doubt the statisticians at the NYT will be checking this one for a while.