[WikiEN-l] Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

[Delirium]

David Gerard wrote:
> I can see something like this working if the area is carefully
> selected. There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here
> before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just
> waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an
> article. Someone with university-level research facilities should be
> able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much
> more time.
>   

If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas 
where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been 
doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak 
despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an 
even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version 
of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing 
articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say 
we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan 
through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more 
strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those 
are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even 
worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's 
parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if 
you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find 
most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of 
a handful of the top-tier most famous people.

-Mark