I found this very interesting, descriptive and narrated screencast from John Udell. Through it, Udell describes one particular Wikipedia entry (the heavy metal umlaut character) and how it moves from a non-detailed entry, to an exhaustive and well-organized piece of knowledge on this obscure topic. Through Udell’s description, he demonstrates how wiki vandalism was addressed and how typographical issues and knowledge were negotiated.
If you are not quite sure of how a wiki works in practice, this animation is worth your time.
Thanks Alec for the further explanation of Wikipedia. I didn’t really understand how the definitions changed, but after watching the explanation, this definitely made it more real. I am a really visual person, so this helped me make sense of it. Thanks.