On 8/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think it's reasonable to distinguish people who
do X for a living,
but have chosen to do X for free for us, and people who do Y for a
living, but have chosen to do X as a hobby. In some ways it's a much
greater sacrifice for a professional to work for free.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this does ride the line between
"thanking someone for professional-grade work" and "valuing someone
for their accreditation as a proxy for valuing their content". If that
makes sense.
More pragmatically, amateurs don't need much
encouragement to work for
us. I contribute photos to Wikipedia because I enjoy it, and because I
want to - not for any kind of recognition. Also, since "amateurs" are
Wikipedia community members, there are other ways of recognising them
internally - talk page messages work well. "Professionals" come from
outside the Wikipedia community, so should be recognised in a more
external way.
Just the same, we want to make sure we don't end up looking like we
undervalue "amateur" contributions either, since they no doubt make up
the bulk of our contributions. Making a big hub-bub because someone is
willing to donate the scraps of their day-job to Wikipedia might rub
some the wrong way, if you get what I'm saying.
Again, I don't necessarily disagree that there aren't reasons to
encourage professionals, I'm just saying it's something I'd want to
tread carefully when it comes to even "expressing gratitude". A lot of
contributors here are very anti-authority (in a broad sense, not just
in the limited sense of state power) and one of the key aspects of
Wikipedia's content model is that you don't need any sort of
accreditation to participate.
That being said, there would be advantages to emphasizing professional
contributions as well. Aside from potentially attracting people who
can contribute very high quality content without much difficulty, it
could also raise the status of Wikipedia in the professional world
(I've seen lots of discussions between academics where they deride
Wikipedia's content as "amateur hour" without knowing that lots of
academics contribute to Wikipedia).
Though as we all know just because someone is professional does not
make them a good contributor (in the case of academics, it may just
encourage them to throw their hands up and say "I'm sick of arguing
with these idiots! Don't they know I'm a professor?", which I've seen
happen a few times. That's not meant to be an anti-academic comment,
but I think that most academics don't spend very much time trying to
explain themselves to people outside of their specific disciplines,
are not used to people challenging their authority or doubting what is
considered in their line of work to be a basic fact, and as a
consequence don't deal with "free for all" settings like Wikipedia
very well), and we should not hold our breath for the majority
professionals to endorse Wikipedia (it will never really happen, not
as long as "edit this page" remains).
FF