wisdom of crowds

From what I gather over the internet, open source materials are the next big thing. I am referring to a knowledge base that is built from public contributions. The pros and cons of building an entire system based on public knowledge are obvious. You can have great suggestions however you must first filter through the dumb ones.

Two heads think better than one. To some degree that statement is true. I think a group can come up with more creative ideas than just one person. But what if you have a stupid group?

I think that social networks and any company actually, can take advantage of public knowledge and opinion if they do it right. They can open the dialogue to the public and filter through the ideas to find good ones. After all, the public is their customer and you always want to please your customer. For example, Microsoft launched Windows 7 BETA to get feedback before releasing the final version. From what I hear (I'm a mac) it is paying off. You can even see that they incorporated that into their TV marketing with the actors saying "Windows 7 was my idea". When it comes to improving a product using public knowledge to improve it is a smart thing to do. However, when it comes to providing concrete knowledge (wikipedia) I'm not sure how smart that really is.

I feel that whenever I read something in Wikipedia I always have to question it's validity. Depending on the topic, I will do further research just to confirm that what I read on Wikipedia is true. I think it's nice to have the public contribute but I'm still uncomfortable when it comes to accepting it as fact since anyone can say anything.