Some might, but others do not. I am a retired academic. I had 40 years in the trade and still do some research and help with teaching. I love the balance of wikipedia. There are quite a few academics here and they do not fall back on their Ph D. We need peopel who know where to look for sources.
On the other hand I can understand why working academics are not interested. It will not get them promotion.
It does tend to be students and retired academics who are most likely to contribute. But to be fair, I think it's the same with other professions. Journalists and other professional writers who I have approached about contributing are used to being paid for their work. It often takes so much work (and luck) just to get paid a living wage to write that I think writers feel somehwat superstitious about writing for free.
I also think that for academics and writers who do want to contribute, wiki may itself be a hurdle for many of them. I've been given lists of work to do from a local historian bc she wanted to help out but didn't have the time and energy to learn how.
On Jan 23, 2008 3:23 PM, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 02:30:07PM -0800, Steven Walling wrote:
IMHO, Wikipedia should - at some point - do a recruiting drive for academics to get more involved with specialist subjects.
I've tried to do that personally. The problem is that academics feel entitled to a certain authority. When they can't remember where they saw
a
source, they inevitably fall back on: I'm a Ph.D, I trump you.
Some might, but others do not. I am a retired academic. I had 40 years in the trade and still do some research and help with teaching. I love the balance of wikipedia. There are quite a few academics here and they do not fall back on their Ph D. We need peopel who know where to look for sources.
On the other hand I can understand why working academics are not interested. It will not get them promotion.
Brian.
On Jan 23, 2008 2:24 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 22:07 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 23/01/2008, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
I'd agree with charles comments above, but let me rephrase my
observation.
Citizendium has, in my opinion, an infinitely larger potential for maintaining its current systemic bias, unlike wikipedia, which is
constantly
correcting this (see things such as User:llrwych's recent devotion
to
the
history of Ethiopia and the like). The very nature of the cz
project
and its
base of contributors demands a bias in the topics it gives
substantial
coverage to.
Start with intellectual and personal elitism, and you're going to
have
that
bias show in your work, just like academia. Also just like
academia,
this
bias doesn't negate the value of the work they do focus on, but
you
still
have to acknowledge that there will always be holes in their
coverage.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the lack of English speaking experts on topics about non-English speaking countries? I'm not sure how serious an issue that is - most
academics
anywhere in the world speak decent English, if they look for them,
I'm
sure they can find suitable experts of Ethiopian history, or
whatever.
Certainly, one would only have to look at specialist universities, for example my own the [[School of Oriental and African Studies]] in
London.
IMHO, Wikipedia should - at some point - do a recruiting drive for academics to get more involved with specialist subjects.
Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
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-- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] mainly on en:Wikipedia. Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity
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