Wiki-Philosophizing in a Marketplace of Ideas: Evaluating
Wikipedia's Entries on Seven Great Minds University of Guelph-
Humber A very conspicuous part of the new participatory media,
Wikipedia has emerged as the Internet's leading source of all-
purpose information, the volume and range of its articles far
surpassing that of its traditional rival, the Encyclopedia
Britannica. This has been accomplished by permitting virtually
anyone to contribute, either by writing an original article or
editing an existing one. With almost no entry barriers to the
production of information, the result is that Wikipedia exhibits
a perfectly competitive marketplace of ideas. It has often been
argued that such a marketplace is the best guarantee that
quality information will be generated and disseminated. We test
this contention by examining Wikipedia's entries on seven top
Western philosophers. These entries are evaluated against the
consensus view elicited from four academic reference works in
philosophy. Wikipedia's performan