On 2/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote:
If you look at RC, new articles, etc, you'll see
thousands of editors
working away. A great many of them are just rambling on about their
boring high schools and deservedly-obscure garage bands (or adding
userboxes), and there are quite a few who never go on to do anything
more substantive. So we have plenty of participants, just not enough
of the kind that add much value to the project.
To some extent it's unavoidable - there will always be more high
school students than experts in quantum mechanics - but it's not
clear to me that large numbers of the very average is an adequate
substitute for smaller numbers of the scholarly-minded. To abuse
an analogy, the bazaar only works when people actually bring
goods and money.
Ok, so there are two possible scenarios:
Wheat and chaff: 1 in every X contributors is a useful contributor. If
we want more useful contributors, we need more contributors overall,
and put up with the chaff, and develop strategies so it doesn't get
too annoying (with respect to any chaff reading this list :))
Amateurs and professionals: If you host a karaoke night, Pavarotti
doesn't show up. Useful contributors and pokemon fans are two
fundamentally different beasts (with respect to Pokemon fans).
Attracting more amateurs won't bring in more pros, and may even drive
them away.
Who wants to offer their opinion on which model is more accurate?
Steve