From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net
On Aug 31, 2006, at 12:55 AM, stevertigo wrote:
Noting certain deficiencies in areas of advanced physics
- bleeding edge stuff in particular seems to be a bit disorganised.
Few qualified editors and things are no doubt lonely at the top. Does the fact that Wikipedia is 1/10 Pokemon and sex/porn articles chase away scientists? What would WP look like if NOR was lifted for certain science articles?
That is the premise of Wikinfo, but those guys don't show up the way the cranks do.
You mean, you don't get the scientists but you do get the cranks?
A lot of that will be that Wikipedia has an incredibly powerful brand name. (c.f. the New York Times comparing mathematics to Wikipedia, not the other way around.) So even a friendly fork designed to take much of the same material but operate on it with notably different policies will have trouble getting contributors, because everyone will come here first.
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people. It could use Mediawiki and GFDL and have similar content guidelines to Wikipedia, just use signed articles, allow article ownership and allow original research. The academic barrier would guard against non-accredited cranks if not the accredited ones ;-) Such a thing even be usable as referenceable source material for Wikipedia articles. I'm not saying this is a good idea, for Wikipedia, for readers or for civilisation in general, but I do wonder if and how it would work.
- d.
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people. It could use Mediawiki and GFDL and have similar content guidelines to Wikipedia, just use signed articles, allow article ownership and allow original research. The academic barrier would guard against non-accredited cranks if not the accredited ones ;-) Such a thing even be usable as referenceable source material for Wikipedia articles. I'm not saying this is a good idea, for Wikipedia, for readers or for civilisation in general, but I do wonder if and how it would work.
I think stuff like that already exists in certain fields. I seem to have already come across one for semantics when I was looking for the semanticwiki.
It makes sense to split by fields too - there's really no reason for linguists to share a wiki with medical researchers. Except that since every field has a cross-over area with several other fields, and...you can see what I'm getting at.
Steve
On 31/08/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people. It could use Mediawiki and GFDL and have similar content guidelines to Wikipedia, just use signed articles, allow article ownership and allow original research. The academic
I think stuff like that already exists in certain fields. I seem to have already come across one for semantics when I was looking for the semanticwiki. It makes sense to split by fields too - there's really no reason for linguists to share a wiki with medical researchers. Except that since every field has a cross-over area with several other fields, and...you can see what I'm getting at.
arXiv.org (mathematics and physics) allows uploads of preprints. Anyone can register to upload and submit an upload, but they need your institutional affiliation and your institution's offical report number. Presumably there is something arXiv-like for other fields.
I wonder if a wiki format would help. A culture of ownership of articles can work on a wiki - where others may add or correct things and the main author may overtly or tacitly approve.
- d.
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/31/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people. It could use Mediawiki and GFDL and have similar content guidelines to Wikipedia, just use signed articles, allow article ownership and allow original research. The academic
I think stuff like that already exists in certain fields. I seem to have already come across one for semantics when I was looking for the semanticwiki. It makes sense to split by fields too - there's really no reason for linguists to share a wiki with medical researchers. Except that since every field has a cross-over area with several other fields, and...you can see what I'm getting at.
arXiv.org (mathematics and physics) allows uploads of preprints. Anyone can register to upload and submit an upload, but they need your institutional affiliation and your institution's offical report number. Presumably there is something arXiv-like for other fields.
I wonder if a wiki format would help. A culture of ownership of articles can work on a wiki - where others may add or correct things and the main author may overtly or tacitly approve.
It would certainly seem a sensible place to implement flavour-of-the-month, stable revisions...
(you'd need a stronger form than the one Brion says we're looking at, though - perhaps only allowing the original author or an assigned coauthor to approve changes? But same concept)
I wonder if there's anyone who might be interested in trialling the idea.
On 31/08/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 31/08/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
arXiv.org (mathematics and physics) allows uploads of preprints.
[...]
I wonder if a wiki format would help. A culture of ownership of articles can work on a wiki - where others may add or correct things and the main author may overtly or tacitly approve.
It would certainly seem a sensible place to implement flavour-of-the-month, stable revisions... (you'd need a stronger form than the one Brion says we're looking at, though - perhaps only allowing the original author or an assigned coauthor to approve changes? But same concept) I wonder if there's anyone who might be interested in trialling the idea.
There is the 1.0 CD project, which is adding articles to the list one article (or version) at a time. You don't need a separate wiki for that - just a list of links.
- d.