Seth pointed us to The Technium recently, and there’s a wealth of considered opinion there. Believing the impossible has struck me deeply – a piece on how Kevin Kelly had thought Wikipedia would never work but, despite the flaws of human nature, it keeps getting better. The following comment in particular has kept me thinking:
It turns out that with the right tools it is easier to restore damage text (the revert function on Wikipedia) than to create damage text (vandalism) in the first place, and so the good enough article prospers and continues.
Most solutions seeking to prevent malicious behaviour do so by limiting opportunity – passwords, permissions, encryption, etc in the connected world and locks, alarms, security guards, police & incarceration in the physical world – and people with motive invariably find a way around them.
Wikipedia has instead incorporated a simple, single function that has all but eliminated the motive (‘to have my vandalism seen by others’), allowing them to make their content freely editable by an anonymous public. This may look obvious in retrospect – good solutions invariably do – but it’s a remarkable achievement.