On 23/01/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

On 23/01/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote: If they haven't already, I imagine they will work out a system for subjects that Universities don't offer degrees in (although plenty of people have degrees in Media and could well write quality articles about the Simpsons). At first, they are likely to concentrate on traditional subjects, but once they've got those to a decent level, I expect they'll move onto the less traditional stuff.

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. On Jan 23, 2008 2:24 PM, Ian A Holton <poeloq(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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(a)bigpond.net.au> wrote:

That is supposed to be the point of "CZ-live". It means an article has not just been copied, but modified at least to some extent. But if a WP article is good, why should it not be expected that one in CZ will be somewhat similar? The point of free content is it can be reused. The goals of filling up all red links and getting only high-quality articles can't be optimized simultaneously. The main problem there is the same as the main problem as Wikipedia--not enough good people willing to do hard work on important subjects. On Jan 23, 2008 5:40 PM, Meg Ireland <megireland99(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

On Jan 23, 2008 5:24 PM, Ian A Holton <poeloq(a)gmail.com> wrote: I've been trying to do this, within my field. This went out to most historians of science in the Americas and the UK: http://hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2008/NewsJan2008Ross.html . I've gotten a fair number of emails about it, all of them positive so far. Some of them said they planned to get involved, though I haven't seen much on-wiki activity from them yet. Academics can be receptive to the idea, especially if an appeal to edit is coming from a colleague. If you're involved with any sort of professional academic society, try getting a short letter about Wikipedia into their newsletter or main professional news outlet; the editors of such things are likely to jump at the chance to publish something about Wikipedia related specifically to their field. -Sage (User:Ragesoss)