Description: There is increasing excitement about the Worldwide Web as a tool of informal education and as a site and resource for research, including educational research, communities. This excitement is related, at least in part, to the prospect that the Web offers of something approximating to the ideal of the free and democratic marketplace of ideas, perhaps even, in Habermassian terms to the 'ideal speech community'.This paper will first seek to clarify the ideal conditions to which some of the philosophical literature in the liberal epistemological tradition aspires - with reference in particular to the work of Hayek, Polanyi, Habermas and the author's own early work on discussion as well as more recent discussions by eg in Manuel Castells' 'The rise of the network society' - and then test these aspirations against examples of web-based knowledge production which will include the much vaunted, but also much criticised, Wikpaedia. In doing this it will reflect on some of the limitations of the market model of knowledge generation and discrimination. Methodology: The paper will be written in largely analytic terms and in the form of philosophical argumentation, but with concrete examples drawn from the Worldwide Web. Conclusions: The paper will link the older literature relating to the 'marketplace of ideas' with more recent discussion of 'the network society' and examine the aspirations for knowledge production underlying both these concepts. I anticipate finding a number of popular web-based resources wanting in terms of their standing re the requirements which might be set for their epistemological credibility - but also to indicate some of the features which such sites might exhibit in order more satisfatorily to meet those requirements.