Taran Rampersad has a wonderful essay describing his view of Wikipedia as a contributor following his mention in an Associated Press story on wikis.

This prompted me to think about why issues of accuracy, reputation and completeness have been raised so strongly over the last couple of months.

Few question that Wikipedians have developed something of value and produced it in a new way that is counter-intuitive. But now that it is so great, the questions turn to what role it plays in our world.

Wikipedia is part of a larger media ecology that is trying to figure out how to co-produce with it. Yochai Benkler’s framework for production according to social, firm or market signals, clearly implies that Wikipedian are responding to social signals as commons-based peer production (not Marxist!).

The market doesn’t understand how to react to a price signal of zero and or the lack of a contract or firm to deal with — which raises questions of how to value it according to traditional norms. Especially because other media and organizations largely treat it as pure content. Citation is not participation, and there is value to be had in the act of creation, not just usage. As Wikipedia readies a print version, with contracts for sake of publishing and pricing for purchase, it adapts to the existing ecology.

My point is that the grey area in the media value chain is between modes of production, where Creative Commons is developing bridges, and the resulting market fiction consternates the old and new.

Which brings me back to Taran’s appeal, of can we harness the energy of other media that currently concentrates on debasement. Part of the answer is licensing, but that takes time. Part of the answer is in how the media closest in form of freedom, blogs, can draw attention to areas of Wikipedia where attention is what’s needed for production. Case in point is Ethan Zuckerman’s call for attention.