That "naive openness" of Wikipedia that the author describes is a huge part of its success. If a top-down form of editing is sought, there are encyclopedias for

That "naive openness" of Wikipedia that the author describes is a huge part of its success. If a top-down form of editing is sought, there are encyclopedias for that. Wikipedia already has its groups of elites (deletionists come to mind), and we've had plenty of articles posted to HN about them. But I can't see any good reason to call Wikipedia a failure, as the author attempts to do. If Wikipedia were an obscure site, with few articles of interest, then one could entertain the thought of failure.