Someone must have got a whiff of blood from the recent high publicity case of the retired journalist, John Seigenthaler Sr., who was the victim of a libelous 'joke' by Brian Chase, an (ex) operations manager at a small delivery company and subsequently unmasked by Daniel Brandt (aka Googlewatch, Wikipedia Watch). The furore resulted in Wikipedia changing the rules of how the site operates. The latest move in the entire Wiki-saga is a site, http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/, "is currently gathering complaints from the entire Internet community, including individuals, corporations, partnerships, etc., who believe that they have been defamed and or who have been or are the subject of anonymous and malicious postings to the popular online encyclopedia WikiPedia." Hmmm.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. But I suspect wikipedia will have more than one lawyer willing to defend them. Are they really responsible for what is aid on their site? As long as they are taking reasonable steps to remove libellous comments they cannot be expected to be responsible. I doubt it will materialise into a real class action. FFMG