brainwagon

I like Wikipedia. I think it is a great resource, maintained by the efforts of many talented and knowledgeable individuals, even in the face of what amounts to continuous attempts at vandalism.

Wikipedia has been subject to some criticism. John C. Dvorak thought that Google’s involvement in the project spelled its demise. Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger noted some procedural problems in an article for kuro5hin. But few have been utterly as self-serving as, you guessed it, the king of self promotion, Dave Winer:
Scripting News: 6/11/2005

The Wikipedia history of podcasting has been carefully rewritten to eliminate any mention of my work. The open approach has the same problem that the proprietary one has, it can easily be manipulated by people with an axe to grind. It’s nice that they give such prominent credit to Chris Lydon and Adam Curry, but the technical innovation in both cases was my work. And my podcasts were the inspiration for Curry’s. How is WIkipedia going to prevent from this from happening again? That’s a serious issue. It’s not the first time it’s happened. This is why I’ve never been a strong advocate of Wikipedia.

Winer’s problem seems to not be with the project itself, but just that perhaps for a short interval, it doesn’t serve to kiss his ass in the way that he feels he’s due.

Addendum: I’ve removed the Scripting News from my bloglines list, but Winer bleats keep showing up in other locations, like Jon Udell’s blog. Is there no way to escape the Winer whine?