On 8/10/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
I had a very similar thought. The idea that eventually paid academics might be allowed to spend some amount of their compensated time contributing is not unrealistic. Look at all the the programmers that are paid by large corporations to work on open source projects.
Heh, nice thought. When you think about it, if an academic's mission is to spread knowledge about some topic, writing a Wikipedia article or two would probably be a lot more effective than writing a book which very few people will ever read.
Thought his is quite a different thing than a company paying someone to write an article about them (which they would probably not want to be paying for if it was not going to benefit them and thus putting NPOV in question). I think the best option for a company that wants an article on wikipedia is to simply request it.
I'd like to think there are a few companies for whom an NPOV description would still be flattering.
Steve