An Experiment on Collaboration

Open-source projects will replace all businesses in the future! Alright, that's probably not true, but some open-source projects enjoy immense success. We must be careful, however, not to accept something because the majority claims it is true. Wikipedia serves as an illustrative example. All of us Internet-savvy folks know that we can rely on it as a relatively reliable source of information for millions of topics. The selling-point of the website, namely that anyone can edit its information, brings up an interesting discovery: collaboration from multiple separated sources can increase accuracy of information. What happens, however, if said collaboration produces a result not consistent with reality? The accuracy of the result may no longer matter, because many of us have already established Wikipedia as a relatively reliable source. To an extent, we therefore rely on the experience and credentials of anyone who has edited the information. I believe that the majority of Wikipedia is indeed reliable, but even so, please do your own thinking before deciding to go with the crowd.