I agree. I think finding programmers will be a breeze. The issue here is that I don't think that Jimbo Wales has learned from the Wikipedia experience. There, the only solution to black-hat SEO was to either turn the outbound links off or destroy their value. Does Wales honestly believe, in the wake of Digg, DMOZ and Wikipedia, that this people-driven system is going to be more resistant to gaming than an algorithm-driven system? If he does, he's living in fantasy-land.

I believe it's definitely going to be much harder than Wales thinks. However, what's interesting here is that he really does have something in Wikipedia that most would-be Google-killers lack - an amazingly strong *social* backing and ideological defense mechanisms that work to deflect examinations of problems with quality, and to put critics on the defensive. It's not at all certain that'll transfer to search, but it's something worth watching, IMHO.