On 02/04/2008, Piotr Konieczny <piokon(a)post.pl> wrote:
Cooperation between academics and Wikipedia, with
focus on utilizing
Wikipedia as an educational tool - benefiting students and our project -
is a very important issue indeed. We have two projects that are
dedicated to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Classroom_coordination
I would suggest that talk page of Classroom coordination project may be
better for discussion - it has a higher visibility and transparency.
Finally, with a bit of selfish self-promotion, I will also point to my
article on Teaching with Wikipedia:
http://itdl.org/Journal/Jan_07/article02.htm
<rant>
Academics would contribute widely to Wikipedia from my view, but the
idea that anyone can change the resulting content away from what they
as experts see as the best position, discourages them immediately.
They would rather get information published in a static article where
unknolwedgeables can't make 2+2=5 (for a rather trivial example) where
their expert opinion says otherwise. And yes, there are going to be
some who stay around to police an article forever and a day, but they
are definitely not likely to be the majority. Citizendiums slower
migration status "should" be very enticing to an academic who has
actual papers to write and still wants to contribute to knowledge
without it being destroyed at the will of the mob effectively within
hours or even weeks where the academic had a real life endeavour that
procluded them policing their set of articles for that time. If they
only had one article to police they aren't likely to be in a network,
but I guess they might be more willing to check everyday for a few
months to argue with opposing users who pickup on their subject.
Hopefully the troll finds something better to do or the academic is
lost. Wikipedia doesn't really need academics though. It has lots of
outstanding featured articles which get locked down except for minor
changes... It even has a Conflict of Interest and NPOV policy that can
be used to enforce the mob opinion, unless the academic has the will
power and stamina to deal with idiots far enough to get through the
wikipedia courts of appeal to the Supreme Court of Arbitration.
</rant>
There should be protection for academics... I know expert opinions
have been shunned in the past, but maybe, just maybe, you can get a
group of free culture fanatics to accept that they aren't gods of
knowledge far enough to accept an expert opinion or two as meaningful.
Wikipedia for academics.... maybe not given the inbuilt mechanisms
made specifically for discouraging them. Getting them to use wiki's in
general however is a much easier task though and should be promoted
more widely even if on-Wikipedia networks don't pick up.
Peter Ansell