This piece examines who contributes to Wikipedia.
One the surface, it appears that most of the work is done by a few users:

“I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it’s actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits.” The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from “people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix … or something like that.”

But when you examine the content users are adding, the profile changes:If you just count edits, it appears the biggest contributors to the Alan Alda article (7 of the top 10) are registered users who (all but 2) have made thousands of edits to the site. Indeed, #4 has made over 7,000 edits while #7 has over 25,000. In other words, if you use Wales’s methods, you get Wales’s results: most of the content seems to be written by heavy editors.
But when you count letters, the picture dramatically changes:

few of the contributors (2 out of the top 10) are even registered and most (6 out of the top 10) have made less than 25 edits to the entire site. In fact, #9 has made exactly one edit — this one! With the more reasonable metric — indeed, the one Wales himself said he planned to use in the next revision of his study — the result completely reverses.
. . .
When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site — the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

If this conclusion is correct, the lesson is that to keep Wikipedia growing, it’s pool of contributors must continue to broaden. Casual users must feel comfortable jumping in and posting content.
Recently I created a Wikipedia account and started an article, so I can make an observation on this. It’s really easy to register and start an article. What is a bit more difficult is learning the formatting so the article looks decent. There are ample tutorials available, but I had hunt through several pages to find what I was looking for. Once you figure a tool out, it’s easy to change the article. And the preview screen is nice. The trick is in getting there.
To broaden the contributor base, Wikipedia might work on making the editing/formating instructions easier to find and understand.

I watched a good part of the fourth quarter of the Miami/FSU game last night. ESPN was running a regular broadcast; ESPN2 featured a split screen feed with several different camera angles.
This is the first time I’ve seen this kind of football telecast (saw them do it for basketball last winter). It’s not a bad idea; certainly beats another poker show. It’s somewhat interesting watching the action from the “skycam” or an end zone camera.
What I didn’t like was how they wasted three sections showing the coaches and a player sitting on the sidelines. Some of us don’t have 52″ TVs, so screen space is at a premium. Yeah, we know there are two coaches standing on the sidelines. Perhaps they are wandering back and forth. Maybe one of them is even waving his arms. So what? Do we need to see that the whole game? [Incidentally, the camera people responsible for following the coaches have a really, really boring assignment.]

Jack Cafferty:

[L]ike swallows returning to Capistrano, the politicians flocked to New Orleans on the first anniversary of Katrina to draw attention to one of America’s great failures.
. . .
I find it absolutely amazing, John, that any politician who had anything to do with Katrina had nerve enough to walk into the city of New Orleans today
KING: Quite a few of them there.
CAFFERTY: Oh, yes. Well, they’re shameless, you know.

These days I suppose many (unaffected) Americans equate a good photo op with actually getting something done. Thus today’s show.
Too bad most of these folks were AWOL one year ago today.

Yesterday brought the shocking news that some weirdo really hadn’t snuck half way across the country, killed little JonBenet, and ultimately turned up in Thailand. I’m still trying to come to terms with this stunning development.
And so after a week of breathless TV news reports on what John Mark Karr eat or went to the bathroom, and endless hours of legal pundits speculating on a case that never materialized, we’ve come to this.
I agree with Howard Kurtz:

Will every anchor, correspondent and producer who shamelessly hyped the John Mark Karr story now apologize for taking the country for a ride?
Don’t hold your breath.
This was such a sham, from the opening moments, that it instantly goes down with the greatest media embarrassments in modern history.

Yes, I’d like an apology from all the news people who wasting my time with this garbage when I wanted to watch real news. CNN, MSNBC, and FNC producers: feel free to leave your apologies in the comment section.

I was listening to talk radio on Monday and a bothered caller phoned in. He had seen on Fox News Channel that the UN had passed a “law” (valid in 180 countries) which threatens to punish parents who didn’t let their kids play outside with other kids when they want to.
Worse yet, according to the soon-to-be parent/caller, there’s a movement to pass this law in America!
Really, is it any surprise that people in power can get away with doing all sorts of crazy stuff when we have Americans gullible enough to believe everything they hear (or think they hear) on Fox News Channel and talk radio? If people believe the UN will mandate outside playtime, what purported “threat” won’t they believe?