geni wrote:
On 1/9/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
The most concerning aspect for us is the potential to drain away activity in science and technical areas, leaving WP to evolve into the "free encyclopedia of garage bands and manga trivia". (You laugh, but consider vandals gradually blanking math articles that are not on any active editor's watchlist, and not noticed in RC because of the continuous flood of recategorization edits.)
Stan
Doubtful. They are looking to recurite PhD plus. A lot of our science articles are writen by students and people with BScs.
Somewhere in the verbiage they mentioned the PhDs as leaders accepting contributions. Students (including a professor's own students) and talented amateurs could find themselves more motivated to tweak a high-quality high-reputation article rather than to try to turn an almost-English stub into something minimally coherent.
DU has a lot of hurdles, but they know all about WP and are seeking to capitalize on our weakest points. We shouldn't get too complacent.
Stan