This is true enough, and there were brief experiments at paying people to write in Ossetian and Bambara. At this advanced stage, however, we can look backi at Larry's work as getting the ball rolling to the point where there would be enough material for us to be noticed. There are probably some lesser known languages where paying people for a limited time would have a similar effect.
In the long run we need to recognize that the work done by our hordes of volunteers has most often been damn good. We will always have pockets that are full of problems, and we shouldn't dwell on these negatives in the overall evaluation.
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Ryan Wetherell wrote:
It's not very wiki-like, you're right, but Wikipedia actually began with one of the founders getting paid to write articles.
On 11/26/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Paying people to write articles would be a whole new ballgame, and probably very un-wiki.. There would be no more effective way of creating a class of vested interests with certain visions of how they want the project to look. We all want better coverage, but at what cost?