On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:22:07 Mark Christensen wrote:
I'd suggest that we start out with some very basic
things: inviting
experts to get involved, intentionally looking for experts who do get
involved and working hard to make their entrance into the wikipedia
community enjoyable, cultivating an atmosphere of congeniality and
respect for experts and motivated amateurs alike.
This poses the question: how do we invite experts to get involved?
I've often thought of approaching, say, Barry Jones (former Australian
politician, quiz champion, author of several reference works, and
general smarty-pants) to contribute, but how to pose the invitation
in such a way as to make it sufficiently inviting?
My current thoughts are thus:
1) Make sure we have completed short articles on all the
Australian Prime Ministers, for example.
2) Write him a note (and send it to him by snail-mail, because a)
it's probably easier to find a snail-mail address than email, and b)
the effort expended might demonstrate that we're serious,
inviting him to review those articles
and comment - and point out that if he wishes, he can simply
edit them online.
3) Watch and see what happens.
The key points are:
a) That there is something already there I can point him
to, so he can see that contributing would be useful.
b) Get the idea that he can contribute directly, with no
extra effort, in sideways.
Barry Jones I've picked on as a likely case because he was
writing books about a free public network as an information
repository back in 1980, but I'm sure there are plenty of others.
What do you think?
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel rgmerk(a)mira.net
Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless :
http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------