On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:28 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
a) "but for the shouting," many major
Wikipedia areas, especially in core
areas of human knowledge, are becoming effectively finished.
<
much of the initial excitement about Wikipedia,
speaking very
impressionistically, appears to me to have been due to the fact that there
was so much to do.
now, in such a short time, there is so much less to do.
that isn't just a negative for Wikipedia--it's a negative for everyone.
I am a college professor. At one time, it was fun to have students scope out
areas of knowledge and either write or consider writing Wikipedia entries
for areas of study.
Now, I have the opposite problem. For many topics I teach (but by no means
all) I must tell my students to avoid Wikipedia, because it produces the
instantly demoralizing effect: "it's all been done/said already."
Mathematics and Classics both share an interesting approach to this:
they strongly encourage students to work through the standard
references, proofs, demonstrations -- on their own, and ideally
finding a more elegant way to present a known idea, or a more general
statement that applies to more than one specific.
Students spend a great deal of their learning-time finding
crossreferences across topics, or working through a classic exposition
step by step, from first principles. This has the benefit that
elegance and clarity, rather than "comperhensive coverage" becomes the
standard -- and this is something constantly improving. students very
quickly find any errors in the work of their predecessors, as this is
also prized. And in the areas where there is truly no improvement to
be made, a close reading and recreation of the work has great value in
itself: as a model of clarity for others to follow.
Modern mathematics is quite a joyful and not a demoralized field; we
could do worse than follow in those pedagogical footsteps.
Sam