The article linked below,
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/doomed-why-wikipedia-will-fail.ars
summarizes the case a law professor, Eric Goldman, made at a recent conference for why Wikipedia is, in essence, doomed to fail. Goldman contends that Wikipedia, great as it is, "seeds of its own destruction" - that as the site grows in popularity, and in credibility, the very thing that has made it great - the fact that users can relatively easily add to and edit its content - will also bring it down.
Goldman's point is pretty simple, and it's a good point: there's a tradeoff between the reliability of the data on Wikipedia and the ease with which users can change this same data, and this is a difficult line to walk. But I don't think this point is new, surprising, or inherently problematic for the site's future. This tradeoff has been inherent in the concept of Wikipedia since its inception. As the site has grown, and as it continues to grow, the ways in which this balance shifts will always be a huge part of its strategy, and of subsequent decisions about its operations.
Of course, there's potential for Wikipedia to really mess up managing this tradeoff - and that could absolutely cause its downfall. But there's also plenty of potential for the site to adapt its strategy as it grows, and to continue to morph into something different, bigger, and better. A lot of businesses - most, arguably - contain "the seeds of their own destruction." The same practices that help them grow become unsustainable once they're big. I think it's quite silly to think that a business is "doomed," just because it will need to change to succeed.
In the future, I think Wikipedia could head in either direction of this tradeoff - it could be easy to post to, but not a reliable source, or its content could become much more tightly managed, and its facts more reliable. I think there's room for both types of knowledge-sharing on the internet.
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