[WikiEN-l] Historian teaching with Wikipedia

[Delirium]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 4/16/09 3:44 PM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>> Academics learning how to massively collaborate effectively.
> 
> We have been collaborating very effectively for a very long time. The
> results are the substance of this encyclopedia.

It varies by field, but my experience (as an academic) isn't really 
along these lines. I've rarely seen successful collaborations between 
more than 2-3 professors, certainly not "massive". I mean, you don't 
usually see an entire Computer Science department working together; 
often, the people in the same sub-area don't even work together, 
depending on how closely their visions and personalities match. Of 
course, many academics "collaborate" with large labs of grad students, 
but that's a more hierarchical form of collaboration.

Of course you're right that the overall body of knowledge has come from 
a lot of people, so is collaboration of a sort. But it tends to more 
often be the form of big-chunk give and take, rather than pervasive 
massive collaboration. Someone will write a journal article; someone 
else will respond to it or build on it; and so on. But you won't often 
have 20 people working together to come up with a consensus journal article.

-Mark