User:Marathi mulga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm a mid-career engineer-turned-marketer at a large networking company. My wife and I are of Indian descent and work in California. I love to read and spend my free time immersed in the dozens of newspapers and magazines that I subscribe to. I also meditate in the Shri Ram Chandra Mission. My wife follows Art of Living meditation.

I used to be a voracious consumer of Wikipedia on my two favorite topics - History and spirituality. It was a joy to discover battles fought, empires built and destroyed, religions rise and fall, civilizations come and go in graphic detail.

However, the first time I ever tried to make an edit to an article, I realized the downside of Wikipedia's democratic structure to my huge dismay. Wikipedia caters to the lowest common denominator of public opinion. Consensus and not necessarily the facts drive the content here. The last word often goes to tenacity and pugnaciousness, rather than scholarship and knowledge.

When I first started to use Wikipedia, I was sure it spelt doom for the Encyclopedia Britannicas of the world. Now, I'm pretty certain that will never happen. Wikipedia gets its momentum from the price rather than the quality of its service. That inherently means that it will lose when it comes to consumers that value accuracy and richness of content above all else.