I was on an ABA panel discussion once that debated whether lawyers should contribute to Wikipedia. The irony is that while lawyers use wikipedia for all sorts of things, experienced lawyers rarely contribute. (Wikipedia's legal pages are full of inaccuracies inserted by well-meaning but naive law students.) The thought was to have certain articles written and maintained by lawyers, or an ABA committee, with perhaps an ABA logo attached. The problem was that as soon as anyone else makes an edit, that badge of respectability is meaningless. An article curated by an expert also runs contrary to the purpose of a wiki.
I would caution against many of these articles so dominated by a single person. They may be great. They may be 100% accurate and full of lots of interesting detail, but they do not necessarily have a broad base to support their upkeep once that one person moves on. I've also seen some rather messy arguments where the original author takes subsequent edits very personally. There is advantage to not allowing one person or group to become too attached to a particular article.
I really think that Wikipedia needs a "Golden" overlay; The ability to select to see the last revision marked as good by some 'authority' instead of the 'live' version by default. This would be a good mix of the benefits of a wiki, and the assurances of authority.
Ya, but at some point that turns wikipedia into encarta. The power of wiki is the ability for the crowd's opinion to dominate. But where the crowd is just plain wrong on a subject the expert must swim again against the tide. They end up lecturing to a bunch of people who really don't want a lecture.
Say "I'm a fighter pilot" and you can edit the F-15's page to your hearts content. But "I'm a lawyer with 40 years constitutional law experience" means nothing if you plan on contributing to anything on the "landmark decisions" list. That is the domain of law review students and their pet cases.
I cannot count the number of times I've found myself typing out half a lecture's worth of information in reply to an online article, only to delete the entire thing before posting it. Certain subjects just cannot be taught in a public forum. That's why lawyers discuss such things in special schools and private email lists. (Email lists are like 90+% of what the ABA does.)
This really is the way to go. Wikipedia is to a large extent simply a detailed 'index' to the best content available online and in paper form. As such it's a great starting place, but the authoritative material should be on reputable sites - and creating that material can be carefully curated by credentialed experts. If it's done well then links from Wikipedia will come, or can be added, and are unlikely to be deleted.
My original point was that I believe Wikipedia has a strong bias towards the best content available online and that they're weaker when potential content is only available in paper form. Which I suppose speaks to the ongoing OCR / paper -> digital backend effort to mass digitize legacy books and present them in a accessible manner.
I'll admit I'm basing this opinion only on my usage of Wikipedia and noting some glaring gaps or lack of depth in niche historical articles.
I would caution against many of these articles so dominated by a single person. They may be great. They may be 100% accurate and full of lots of interesting detail, but they do not necessarily have a broad base to support their upkeep once that one person moves on. I've also seen some rather messy arguments where the original author takes subsequent edits very personally. There is advantage to not allowing one person or group to become too attached to a particular article.