Wired to Geeks: Come Talk About Yourselves

First there was the Wikitorial, and now Wired is giving it a try by posting a news story for readers to edit.  The subject: Wikis!  The original, unedited story begins:

Wikipedia has hit the big time.

The massive user-generated and edited site is not only the biggest encyclopedia in the world, it's also gotten the attention of the media elite, been lampooned by the Onion and Comedy Central and will come packaged with MIT's $100 laptop project.

But what are the lessons of Wikipedia and what bodes for the future of wikis beyond Wikipedia? Will open collaboration be the exception or the rule?

Wow, pretty shocking stuff, Wired.  Apparently I'm not the only one who's less than enthused about the topic.  After one day, only two people have edited the page besides the original author.*  I suspect the wiki-folk are abuzz somewhere about this experiment, but just not on the page itself.

Link to the wiki page: Wired Wiki.
Link to Wired story about the story: Wired News: Edit This Wired News Story.

Correction!  There have been 103 edits to date.  I was looking at the history for the "original unedited" version, which had been edited nine times by three users.  Confused?  Me too.  I blame SocialText's horrible navigation interface.  (Hey, wasn't Social Text the name of the journal that hosted the Sokal hoax?  I wonder if this coincidence means anything to anyone.)

Anyway, here's the opening to the current, edited story:

Wikipedia has edited its way into the big time.

The massive user-driven site is now by far the biggest encyclopedia in the world. It has recently attracted the attention of the media elite, having been lampooned by The Onion and Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert -- who in turn gave birth to the term "wikiality". Wikipedia may also become familar to children without access to the internet as its extensive database will come pre-packaged with MIT's $100 laptop in the One Laptop per Child project.

But is there a future for wikis beyond the encyclopedia model? Will open collaboration be the exception or the rule?

I usually try to restrain myself from criticizing other people's writing, because I'm no example, but this is truly crappy writing.  Of course I could go edit it myself if I really cared -- Wired even trotted out the obligatory "If you don't participate you can't complain about the results" in their teaser to the article, presumably being a bit tongue-in-cheek.