Are you saying that there is something within Wikipedia's scope/methodology/etc that makes it more relevant to a scientific/academic audience - in other words, what is creating this "forced marriage"? Is there something within Wikibooks/Wikiversity's scope/methodology/etc which is holding it back from being as "successful"? I'm curious about how you define, and gauge, "success" and "relevance" - but I'm really most interested in whether you see a particular aspect of particular projects as the *driver* for academic relevance/success.

I think in the first place Wikipedia gets its academic relevance through the public relevance it de facto has. Wikipedia became the most popular encyclopedia and is a very important source of information for many people. That includes scholarly knowledge which leads to a kind of public pressure. The high relevance and importance that Wikipedia has among the public can hardly be ignored by scholars. Whatever somebody might think about the principles and quality of Wikipedia, nobody can ignore the high relevance this encyclopedia has, I believe. If for example somebody from outside the scientific community wants to get information about Neuroscience there is a high chance that he will simply search with Google for that term which will almost for sure lead him to the Wikipedia article on Neuroscience. Therefore this article might be the first impression a person gets about the discipline.

 

So regardless of the functional principles of Wikipedia and the conflicts they cause for scholarly communication (e.g. the not clearly visible authorship, the lack of quality control etc.), Wikipedia has at least a high PUBLIC relevance and maybe already a quite significant relevance in academics. A study by the German HIS shows for example that the majority of German students uses Wikipedia as an information source and generally believe that it is a trustful source. Also in research there seems to be a growing relevance. The Journal “RNA Biology” for instance, wants its authors to publish abstracts of their articles in Wikipedia (Nature commented that with the title: “Publish in Wikipedia or perish”).

At the same time Wikipedia needs scholarly expertise to enhance its quality, which is why the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to motivate scholars to engage themselves in the projects. This is why I believe there is this kind of “forced marriage”. Of course there are many conflicts between academics and Wikipedia but in the end both cannot really ignore each other. I know colleagues who are absolutely against Wikipedia and they have good reasons. But this won´t stop people to use it.

 

Wikibooks and Wikiversity do not have this high public relevance yet, so they do not force scholars so much to react. At the same time they offer interesting possibilities for scholarly communication which Wikipedia doesn´t have: For example, original research is possible in Wikiversity, Wikibooks allows a more obvious authorship etc. However, from our observation it seems that these projects do not have a high relevance for scholarly communication yet.

 

So to put in a nutshell, I believe that the driving force of scholarly engagement is the public success of Wikipedia, which the other projects don´t really have yet. Therefore they play a minor role for scholarly communication so far (which might change of course).  

I hope I could clarify my point a bit and didn´t cause even more confusion ;)

Best,

 

René

Thanks,

Cormac