Here is a new addition to the main site. It is an opinion written by JokeCat on 9/22/06:

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the parent organization of the Wikipedia, and a host of other Wikis such as, Wikiquote and Wiktionary. The Bomis company for a time ran Wikipedia until it became a part of the Wikimedia non-profit Foundation.

A goal of Wikimedia is to: develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.

It seems a laudable goal. Who could be against knowledge? I can think of two points though to consider. The first is the phrase, free of charge. Is free knowledge better than knowledge you have to pay for? Maybe it is. Perhaps it is true that societies problems are explained by a lack of knowledge and so we should promote free knowledge, or at least not be against it.

Still this sounds a bit like free housing, free healthcare, and free education, things that arguably are better provided by the market. I can’t help thinking about the tragedy of the commons, where no one real cares what happens to it, because problems with the commons are spread over so many owners. It like littering at a public park, the person responsible for the litter does not have to pick it up. It is like polluting an ocean and not having to pay for it, the impact to the one individual who does it, is so minor.

Wikipedia is a commons. It has vandals that run around and try to mess it up. Wiki, not unlike the Keystone Cops, chases after them. The vandals of Wikipedia don’t have to pay for the cost they inflict.

The second point is, what is open content and why is it better? The traditional model is books owned by specific entities. Are we moving to the point where authors and publishers feel less inclined to produce books because information is so readily available elsewhere?

Ayn Rand was a great fan of private ownership, as are the libertarians. What would she say about a media commons? I imagine she protected her books. She thought of the world as divided into two groups. The producers, and the parasites. In Atlas Shrugged, the producers said in effect, the hell with it, and moved off to live by themselves. In this case, those producing knowledge could be argued to be the heroes and heroines. The parasites would be those not giving value for value. Those living off the work of others. Is that the case with the users of Wikipedia? I don’t know.

In a way, free knowledge has no value, because you are not trading value for value. You just pick it up off the street like you found a quarter. Perhaps this is all beyond the works of Rand, as the world changes. Still I wonder what she thinks of Jimmy Wales?