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I like Wikipedia, both the concept and to a lesser degree, the execution. I use it often, but basically as a launching point for more searches on the Web. Some of its more political material tends to slant one way or the other. But anyone who stops and start their search for knowledge at a single point, be it Wikipedia or any other source, deserves what they get in my opinion.

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I agree with this quote as far as how you should use Wiki, and enjoy using it myself for many quick lookups, but would not depend on it for being exhaustive let alone authoritative. But MMMMM has a point regarding quality. There are two problems noted in the article, factual correctness and literary quality of the writing.

If you take a field of knowledge you are interested in and wish to add/edit, then mostly it can only be done based on your own personal knowledge and is limited by copyright constraints which prevent users from just plagiarizing autoritative texts which are often copyrighted. It seems to me from reading Wiki articles on lots of different topics, that except for a few scientific topics, there is not a lot of contribution from eminent professionals in those fields who possess not only the requisite knowledge, but also the desire to take the time to contribute. And as far as the quality of writing goes, the only way to raise that would be to have dedicated users who are good writers and edit new and existing topics soley for the purpose of insuring a more well written article, something that the users who put forth the effort to originally contribute something might resent.

Wikipedia is a worthy project still very much in its infancy, but it does seem the process issues need revision to allow for editorial input for better writing quality, and review by professionals in various fields to check the accuracy of facts.

And regarding the politicized topics, I have seen plenty of conflict. Using a US political example, in an overall topic of US politics, all political parties and streams of thought should be represented, but in a specific party topic, members of other parties should not be allowed to give dissenting views about a rival party's platform, when that should appropriately be given in their own party's article.

It would seem to me, that the best way to insure quality in the long term, would be to establish partnerhips with a globally representative group of universities who would have students and grad students overseen by professors regularly contributing and editing various fields. Perhaps this is already being done, though I am not aware of it.