Lets say you're on Wikipedia and . . . you want to know about the really crazy
I am a Wikipedian. I edit sporadically these days, after being really active when I first started editing. Before I began editing, I read whole books about the history of Wikipedia and its internal processes. Because of the anarchy of how Wikipedia started out, with the typical Wikipedian having NIL research and editing experience (not even the research and editing experience implied by getting an undergraduate degree at a research university), you can find plenty of crazy on Wikipedia already.
which seems to have fizzled out, was an archive of pages deleted from Wikipedia, in an attempt to make volunteer Wikipedia editors ("Wikipedians") more accountable for deleting articles. The result of the Deletionpedia experiment was to show that most content that is deleted from Wikipedia well deserves to be deleted, and probably doesn't serve any reader in any useful way anywhere on the Internet.
The Internet is already flooded with counterpoints. It's bad enough that in important subjects (for example, medical research) most of the best published literature is not available on the Internet (it is still behind publisher paywalls), while a lot of scam artists flood the Internet with websites that exist only to sell something that cheats consumers.
I do look forward to seeing how Ward Cunningham's experiment develops. MeatballWiki introduced some thoughtful discussion of online communities to the broader online world,
and that was enabled by the innovation of wiki sites, that any user could edit a webpage already posted on the site. There is a place for wikis, and some wikis are very helpful,
I don't think any of what you say particularly supports your final point. The internet is flooded in counterpoints, but few of them are on Wikipedia, or in Wikis. And none of them are as visible as Wikipedia's take on things. I think people are increasingly relying on Wikipedia to provide The Truth(tm) -- mostly because it's gotten so damn good at delivering it, the JFK examples notwithstanding.
Counterpoints seem to survive in ideological communities that have their own closed world view and their own knowledge databases which are considered to be definitive.
I am a Wikipedian. I edit sporadically these days, after being really active when I first started editing. Before I began editing, I read whole books about the history of Wikipedia and its internal processes. Because of the anarchy of how Wikipedia started out, with the typical Wikipedian having NIL research and editing experience (not even the research and editing experience implied by getting an undergraduate degree at a research university), you can find plenty of crazy on Wikipedia already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
And of course blatantly false assertions about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have already stood on Wikipedia for a long time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html...
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apolo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy...
The Deletionpedia experiment,
http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page
which seems to have fizzled out, was an archive of pages deleted from Wikipedia, in an attempt to make volunteer Wikipedia editors ("Wikipedians") more accountable for deleting articles. The result of the Deletionpedia experiment was to show that most content that is deleted from Wikipedia well deserves to be deleted, and probably doesn't serve any reader in any useful way anywhere on the Internet.
The Internet is already flooded with counterpoints. It's bad enough that in important subjects (for example, medical research) most of the best published literature is not available on the Internet (it is still behind publisher paywalls), while a lot of scam artists flood the Internet with websites that exist only to sell something that cheats consumers.
I do look forward to seeing how Ward Cunningham's experiment develops. MeatballWiki introduced some thoughtful discussion of online communities to the broader online world,
http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OnlineCommunity
and that was enabled by the innovation of wiki sites, that any user could edit a webpage already posted on the site. There is a place for wikis, and some wikis are very helpful,
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page
but the last thing the world needs is more content forks for crazy points of view that get edited off of Wikipedia.