Wikipedia part 2

In the second half of the book, The World of Wikipedia: How We Are
Editing Reality, by Andrew Dalby, I was quite surprised to find out that
it runs like one big giant blog.  Dalby starts off the second half o
his book by giving the reader reasons as to why we love Wikipedia, why
we do not trust it and lastly why we will trust it. This view of
Wikipedia is foreign to me as a reader and not a contributor. Dalby
sites time after time examples of vandalism and mistakes and how they
were handled. What I did find interesting were the reason we love and do
not trust Wikipedia. Dalby states plainly each reason and then goes on
to write, sometimes in too lengthy detail, examples of the specific
reason.
For example, the first reason we love Wikipedia is the virtual world it
has created. Jimmy Wales in an interview states, "We, the people of this
virtual world, can be shy and anonymous as we like, and yet our work,
good and bad, is listed and others can explore it." (pg. 120) We have
talked about this in class, about how small the world is now due to the
Internet, and here is a website that allows you to write a page, along
with scientists and professors. Which brings me to the fifth reason; we
are all equal in this virtual world. (pg. 136)
This reason goes along with another reason we love Wikipedia,
"...because it lets us write whatever we want." (pg. 130) Alas, with
this reason comes excessive editing, vandalism and poor research skills.
Which brings me to the reasons why trusting Wikipedia is sometimes very
difficult to do, how do we know without extensive research if there are
mistakes in the information we have found. Many users, including myself,
go to Wikipedia looking for information, not to write or edit an
article. The information is handled by a community of writers and
editors, the reader hopes the editors knows of which they speak or in this case post
on Wikipedia. What I like about Wikipedia is you can search footnotes
and sources at the bottom of the page, but I doubt many people have the
time or the desire to search all of them.
I think Wikipedia has become too large to be monitored effectively for
mistakes. The staff would have to be massive to support the searches
that need to be done to correct all the mistakes and vandalized pages.
What is in the future for this website that has become invaluable to
many? Will we have to pay a fee to use Wikipedia or is it so big now
that the mistakes to harm its popularity?