...factual error was corrected within minutes, and the focus moved on to refinement, clarification and making the article more readable."
To Wales, the experiment was a good example of how a magazine might be able to use its readers to make for more complete journalism.
"It would be interesting to see things that might work well [with] factual articles about whatever," Wales said. "If somebody like Time does an article about an election season and lets people work on it, that might be fun."
But he also said that media organisations need to be careful about who they let interact with their work.
Wales pointed to a recent experiment in which The Los Angeles Times tried a "wikitorial" in which its readers could collaboratively work on editorials.
"It was more or less a complete disaster," Wales said, "because they didn't have a community built up, so they just had tons and tons of random people (involved). They had to take it down because there was too much vandalism."
Kelly Martin, a Wikipedia user who helped edit Jacobs' piece, said the experiment worked significantly better than an earlier trial in which a television station tried to get Wikipedians to co-edit an article.
"The directions and guidelines were far less clear (in the case of the TV station's experiment) and the end result was confused," Martin said. "This one seemed to do much better. I think the community was more aware of it this time, so we had more resources monitoring the article for inappropriate edits."
In any case, while Wales applauded Jacobs' effort, he remains conflicted on whether he would get behind similar projects. Ultimately, he said, it boils down to the Wikipedia community's reaction.
"I'm not sure I would recommend it as a way of explaining Wikipedia," he said. "Maybe it is pretty good. It worked pretty [well], and the community found it fun and exciting."
