Wikipedia: Anarchism in microcosm?

[resisting arrest with violence]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0504-27.htm

[apathy maybe]

An interesting article. While it is true that the more monitered entries are accurate, often times ones that are out of the way are not.

If you don't know what Wikipedia is, goto wikipedia.org or en.wikipedia.org and browse around. A couple of articles to start with are en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism.

[(R)evolution of the mind]

If the vandals are successful, they'll more or less confirm the common wisdom that people are too evil and miserable to be allowed to govern themselves.

But if Wikipedia grows into the greatest reference work ever made, it will suggest that great things are possible when you merely let people go and see what happens.


Efforts like Wikipedia can indeed confirm within the current system that people can still work together. But something like Wikipedia failing is not proof that people couldn't work together if the material conditions were different. Many vandals are frustrated people with nothing better to do.

Another contemporary example of "anarchy and gift culture in a microcosm" is the world of free software development.