Wikipedia as a media literacy challenge

Proposal for 'History Flow' sparkline graphics for Wikipedia 
  Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.

Matt Jones has sketched a fantastic visualisation that develops Clay Shirky's page history suggestion for Wikipedia ("I wrote a little script that fetches both a Wikipedia page and grabs 4 relevant facts from that page's history: number of edits, number of editors, and the first edited and most recently edited dates, and put that info just below the page title, like so.")

I've been following the Wikipedia vs Encyclopaedia slap down on Many-to-Many with great interest but I'm pleased to see the discussion move on from a rather academic debate about authority and edge towards a consideration of the real issue here: media literacy, i.e. the ability of regular folks, including but not limited to students, to "access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts."

Making meta data like Clay's "trust profile" immediately visible and understandable to readers of Wikipedia - through good information design - should make the information on Wikipedia easier to evaluate and use appropriately.