The ups and downs of contributing to WoWWiki
Besides news here at WoW Insider, one of my favorite places on the web is over at WoWWiki. The site is a virtual treasure trove of World of Warcraft lore, class information, formulas, and strategies. Back in October the site passed 45,000 articles, and today it stands around 53,000 articles. That's A LOT of content, much more then anyone could possibly hope to read.
Where does all this come from?
The way community wiki's work (wikis like WoWWiki and Wikipedia) is that everyone who reads them can effectively edit anything in them. If you're looking at the strategy for Zul'Jin and see something that's not right, or that needs to be added, you can do it right on the spot. Of course you have to sign up for an account and make sure what you're putting in is correct, but that takes all of five minutes. User submitted content is critical to the success of a wiki, and WoWWiki is (as I'm sure most of our readers would agree) one of the most successful game wikis out there.
There are some down sides to WoWWiki, or a community wiki in general. While everyone can edit, everyone should most definitely not edit. For instance, I'm much more interested in what someone from a guild that's killed Illidan has to say about him then what a 12 year old thinks of his helmet. Another problem is that sometimes the information can be dated or inaccurate, especially after a patch has come about that's changed the mechanics of a fight. My guild often times has a "sanity check" on information that comes from WoWWiki, or any other source for that matter, just to make sure it makes sense in terms of the fight as we know it. Of course, this only leads to knowing the fight better and having an easier time defeating the encounter.
I know there's a lot of other folks out there who use this great tool. What are your thoughts and opinions on WowWiki? Do you contribute?
