Nupedia: I got to reading about Nupedia last night, which was the predecessor to Wikipedia (there’s big article at Slashdot about all this).
Nupedia was actually the anti-thesis of Wikipedia in the sense that its articles were extensively peer-reviewed. It was an attempt to create an encyclopedia as “good” as the major commercial encylopedias.
It lastest three years. Total output: 24 articles.
Wikipedia has been around for four years. Total output: 1.5 million articles; 500,000 in English.
Wikipedia may have some shortcomings, but friction is not one of them.