> this will spur a bunch of additional attention which will cause the student's changes to be refactored into something that the previous editors would find acceptable, and much of the student's research will be incorporated into the page.
So, maybe the blog post isn't such a bad thing after all?
It's not a bad thing for this specific article, no, but if going to the press becomes a dispute resolution strategy, that'd certainly be a bad thing for the health of Wikipedia as a whole.
That said, I don't think the blog post author did anything wrong or anything. Her experience sounds like it could have been a frustrating one. I just don't particularly believe the general conclusions that are quick to be drawn from these one-off experiences about the health of Wikipedia and its viability as an encyclopedia.
Perhaps we just need a better method of dispute resolution on wikipedia - something like a button on the page. It's not always obvious to newbies how to get other editors involved when there is a content dispute between two editors.
So, maybe the blog post isn't such a bad thing after all?