There's a thought provoking post by Chris Anderson on probablistic systems - and some good debate in the comments and trackbacks. One of those led me to this post by Wiggy:

This is a battle. Wikipedia is under attack by those who wish to discredit it, and show it to be a flawed model. If they win, the Internet effectively loses the one thing that makes it so powerful and those who wish to drip-feed us their opinion, their agendas and their media whilst at the same time prohibiting our own, well, they win. They win, the rest of us lose. This war is going to last for decades. Those dealing with it right now have my ultimate respect, and it should go without saying I'm fighting for the Wikipedians. I hope you do too.