Weird science on Wikipedia: "The Leidenfrost effect is a phenomenon in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer which keeps that liquid from boiling rapidly. This is most commonly seen when cooking; one sprinkles drops of water in a skillet to gauge its temperature—if the skillet's temperature is at or above the Leidenfrost point, the water skitters across the metal and takes longer to evaporate than it would in a skillet that is above boiling temperature, but below the temperature of the Leidenfrost point."

Wikipedia.org is the fifth-most-popular Web site in the world, with roughly 325 million monthly visitors. But unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting.

That could have significant implications for the brand of democratization that Wikipedia helped to unleash over the Internet -- the empowerment of the amateur.

Makes me wanna read Asterix again...

Respoding to a report of a study entitled "Wikipedians are a bunch of egocentric introverts" Tom Ewing picks up on a straw man and adds this gem:

In fact this is one of the awesome things about Wikipedia - the fact that it’s a project which has yoked a lot of individual bads (egocentricity and pedantry) into a gigantic collective good. Wikipedia is unique in that it’s a community that actually works better the more nit-pickety and humourless its members are! God bless it.

Classic video where Jon Udell looks at the evolution of a relatively obscure Wikipedia article and in doing so uncovers how the Wikipedia community collectively writes, edits and manages the site. It's about 7 minutes long.

Not sure why this tab is open in my browser but it looks like something I might want to investigate. The quote "all things that can or should communicate through the network will communicate through the network" makes me tingle in special places. Oh yes.