This article can be read in its entirety on Genealogy's Star blog by James Tanner, by hitting here
The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a marvelous resource. It has the potential to become a standard universal wiki-based family tree. However, there are serious issues with any large wiki-based project that must be addressed to maintain informational integrity. There is a precarious balance between open participation and accuracy. Most large, online cooperative websites, such as Wikipedia, are source centric. In addition, However, Wikipedia actively notifies users when information is unsupported by sources or is incomplete. Here is a quote from the article, Wikipedia: Quality Control.
Quality control is essential to Wikipedia. To maintain articles of acceptable quality, it is necessary to improve the quality of existing material, and remove material of irreparably poor quality.
The article further points out the following:
But mistakes sometimes occur. These, and the damage done by the bad apples mentioned above, need continuous attention. The three ways that Wikipedia maintains its quality control is as follows: (a) A great deal of Wikipedia's volunteers' effort is applied to quality control. Wikipedia has an elaborate disciplinary system for handling vandals and other troublemakers, and a dedicated force of system administrators to enforce the Wikipedia community's decisions and policies – admins even have the power to block a bad apple permanently. (b) Once material is added to Wikipedia, an army of volunteers organized under various departments check and recheck it to make sure it conforms to the high standards set forth in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (which were established specifically with the creation of quality articles in mind). There are departments for everything from typos to factual errors. For a list, see Wikipedia:Maintenance. (c) And Wikipedia even has robots, automated users that monitor for errors and correct them automatically. For example, these days most vandalism is fixed by Wikipedia's robots, or our content editors, who are watching your every move. Be careful.
