"David Gerard" wrote
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people.
The concept is probably sound. The trouble would be that academia values (over-values, we might say) the expert in a strictly delimited area. So where would the good syntheses come from?
Charles
----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
On 31/08/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people.
The concept is probably sound. The trouble would be that academia values (over-values, we might say) the expert in a strictly delimited area. So where would the good syntheses come from?
Other academics!!
arXiv.org is reputed to perform a useful role. How's it look from your view as an academic mathematician?
- d.
--- charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people.
The concept is probably sound. The trouble would be that academia values (over-values, we might say) the expert in a strictly delimited area. So where would the good syntheses come from?
Well, assuming this was the right way to go to begin with (as opposed to soem kind of trust metric heuristic) the synthesis of academic and public energy would come from simply giving academics some measure of status - a science gateway for example. Note that this is something that would be disastrous if applied to non-science articles. Anything in the social sciences should be regarded as just below the cutting point, etc.
Ultimately the idea is something meritocratic and not just credentialist; something open and yet somewhat heirarchical; something integrated with the same data, and not segregated.
sv.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Me:
simply giving academics some measure of status - a science gateway for example. Note that this is something that would be disastrous if applied to non-science articles. Anything in the social sciences should be regarded as just below the cutting point, etc.
I should add that, given both the stated limitation to the hard sciences and the normative rigour of those fields, there could be some allowable wiggle room in NOR for experts in those areas. There probably already is anyway, as long as there is a paper to link to, and the area qualifies as research. At least it might be interesting to think about the potential mutual benefits and problems. Maybe this theorising will go somewhere or otherwise it will only let us better appreciate how far WP has come in just a few years.
-s.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
OTOH, I've often wondered if setting up an academic wiki would be something to attract people.
The concept is probably sound. The trouble would be that academia values (over-values, we might say) the expert in a strictly delimited area. So where would the good syntheses come from?
I don't think all academics would be opposed to collaborating, especially on syntheses. Academia values narrow experts in coming up with original research, but there's a widespread feeling, at least in some of the sciences, that more summarization/review would be nice, if done well.
Indeed I'm aware of at least one wiki set up for that purpose. In this particular case it's to summarize current work on reinforcement learning, and set up by Satinder Singh (who is fairly well-known in the academic RL community): http://neuromancer.eecs.umich.edu/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/WebHome
-Mark