Is Wikipedia a failure?

I've been hearing a lot of this talk lately and I have to wonder why it took this long. My confidence in the pedia was shaken when I read that the entry for GW Bush is updated something like once every five seconds. I went to the site and witnessed it myself by just hitting refresh repeatedly. Looks like this might have died down, but at one point every third refresh would return something like "Murderer" and then on the next refresh the White House bot would have things back to normal. Murderer or not, that is not good for an encyclopedia.

Regardless of the quality of the entries in the Wikipedia, I don't think the project is a failure. The software it has produced, and the myriad of knockoffs, may yet revolutionize collaboration software. Lord knows the intranet at my massive multinational employer pops up an article about the wonders of wikis at least once every two weeks. For all the hype, the software is fantastic for collaborating on technical documentation and business plans. At least amongst closed or small groups. And that's the problem with the wikipedia... too many people who don't have an interest in its quality, some of whom probably enjoy destroying what others have built up, have the access and the inclination necessary to have a greater impact than the people who are creating quality content.

The success of the Wikipedia was the creation of a new technology that fosters collaboration in a way that Microsoft Office probably never will. Projects like Writeboard demonstrate the real success and the future of wikis.