Unmoderated forums quickly become dictatorships by the most insane. The fact that the links that float to the top on Digg are consistently bland, general-appeal, and uncontroversial despite the YouTube-like sophistication of its users suggests that the ranking algorithm is pretty far from democratic.
It's not far off of Wikipedia either. A large number of participants in my Wikiproject, including myself, were eventually burned out by dealing with a few too many highly obsessive and misinformed users.
Seriously, go try to edit one the few somewhat-prominent WP articles that aren't locked and see how quickly someone comes up with a BS reason to revert your perfectly good edits. This happens especially often if you edit something political or religious in nature. It's a mess.
Haha, I don't have to try it to know not to mess with politics or religion on Wikiepdia. I don't bother reading those articles either, for the same reasons.
I edit Wikipedia fairly regularly, and have never had anything reverted.
Actually, there was one time when I edited John Dvorak's page to call him a "gasbag". That was reverted pretty quickly, but he did mention the incident on his podcast (which was the point of making the edit). (Also, he is a gas bag. Thankfully I haven't heard about him for a few years now ;)
But really, no legitimate edits of mine have been reverted :)
