I've watched this topic get debated endlessly here, & I feel some contributors misunderstand the importance of having academics (i.e., people with advanced degrees in their fields who also either teach or publish) contribute to Wikipedia. As with any resource, asking Academics to contribute has its weaknesses & strengths:
Weaknesses: * Training or certification does not mean they are infallible in judgement. There have been countless examples of an academic abusing his or her authority to furtherher/his view, at the cost of delaying the advancement of human knowledge. (Ec & I mentioned 2 some months ago in this maillist: the delay in translating Mayan writing, & the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls.) And anyone who has attended college probably can recite examples of various professors asserting as incontrovertible truth apalling howlers of judgement. (I could quote a few myself, but that would likely lead to OT arguments.)
* Arrogance. By the fact they have arrived at the end of a long road of training, academics tend to be prima donnas; some handle it better than others. I feel this is one reason that some academics have problems dealing with the Internet. It's not so much that they have to respond to every objection -- even if it comes from a crank, a child, or someone quoting an out-of-date textbook -- but that when an Internet group works, it is because its members only care for accuracy & correctness & are equally harsh on anyone who violates these terms whether they are a tenured professor, a crank, a child, or someone quoting an out-of-date textbook.
* Careerism. It's an open secret that competition for academic posts is fierce, if not vicious. And if a person knows that she/he is not the brightest & best in a gvien field, there is a temptation to compromise standards. Instead of Wikipedia receiving the benefit ofexpert knowledge, it may instead be victimized by someone only seeking to advance a career.
Strengths: * Their training or education is systematic, which means they usually know what they don't know. Self-educated people frequently don't realize that, despite their deep amount of knowledge, that what the holes in their nkowledge are.
* By teaching or publishing papers, they confront the problem of communicating the subject. They have dealt with the problem of explaining jargon & complex ideas into words a non-expert can understand, & again, know what points need to be covered for an article on a given subject to be considered complete.
* They usually are up to date on the secondary literature; they know what are important POVs that need to be included. The problem with importing so many articles on ancient Greece & Rome from EB 1911 is not that facts have changed. The ancient Greks are still considered the victors in the Persian Wars, Augustus is still considered a Roman Emperor, Plotinus is still a philosopher. The problem is that in the last 90 years scholarship has turned to other issues that the editors of the EB 1911 did not think of covering, most noteably the social & economic history of ancient Greece & Rome -- which is contained entirely in the secondary literature published since 1911. And much of that secondary literature is in the form of specialized periodicals only available at University libraries -- & sometimes not even there.
In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote
- Arrogance. By the fact they have arrived at the end of a long
road of training, academics tend to be prima donnas;
Amusing argument (though I know what you mean), precisely because the endless tenure-track, US style, is said to militate against women.
Actually, I'd say that arrogance is typical of the high-self-esteem academic subjects, not those that give people low self-esteem. Leave it to others to pick the bones out of that, but it's an important distinction to bear in mind.
Charles
--- Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion is based on an either/or choice. I very firmly believe that this is not an either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who espouse nearly crank theories).
So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area. Each person reading the article would grade the article based on whether or not it covers its topic area well, is a fair treatment (presenting important but non-mainstream views with the appropriate detail and caveats), and whether or not there are obvious errors of fact.
Each would have *equal* veto power over not approving the article by giving it a sub-standard grade in any of several different categories. Conflicts of judgment will have to be worked out among the judges.
Rather egalitarian, no?
-- mav
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This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
But is it really necessary?
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:16:37 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion is based on an either/or choice. I very firmly believe that this is not an either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who espouse nearly crank theories).
So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area. Each person reading the article would grade the article based on whether or not it covers its topic area well, is a fair treatment (presenting important but non-mainstream views with the appropriate detail and caveats), and whether or not there are obvious errors of fact.
Each would have *equal* veto power over not approving the article by giving it a sub-standard grade in any of several different categories. Conflicts of judgment will have to be worked out among the judges.
Rather egalitarian, no?
-- mav
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--- Matthew Larsen mat.larsen@gmail.com wrote:
This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
But is it really necessary?
Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve content for publication.
-- mav
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On 09/12/04 22:23, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Matthew Larsen mat.larsen@gmail.com wrote:
This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all... But is it really necessary?
Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve content for publication.
1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. Therefore we must do this.
It's the jump from 2. to 3. that I'm entirely unconvinced by.
I suggest that a more Wiki-like process - something that plays to our strengths - should be tried before instituting a review board, at least inside Wikimedia rather than as a forked thing.
- d.
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Matthew Larsen mat.larsen@gmail.com wrote:
This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
But is it really necessary?
Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve content for publication.
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right. Contrast this with the view expressed in the Observer article. Having WP generaly accepted by the schools may still be five or ten years down the road. It would not surprise me if some of these teachers who reject Wikipedia would then turn around and treat one of the commercial duplicates of Wikipedia as authoritative just because it can't be edited by everybody.
Reacting to these situations by adding more bureaucracy could easily but unwittingly subvert the ideas that made Wikipedia what it is to-day.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
Ironically, telling students not to use Wikipedia is about the surest way there is to get them to look at it! :-) Sort of like corporate IT departments ordering people not to install Linux...
Many people will become convinced when they go to look at articles on subjects where they're knowledgeable, and find that the content matches what they know. My dad the retired research chemist looked at the Mossbauer effect article and found it pretty accurate, and it even mentioned a few technical details that he'd long forgotten about. He also had a couple relevant personal anecdotes, but alas, no published source to verify against.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
Ironically, telling students not to use Wikipedia is about the surest way there is to get them to look at it! :-) Sort of like corporate IT departments ordering people not to install Linux...
Many people will become convinced when they go to look at articles on subjects where they're knowledgeable, and find that the content matches what they know. My dad the retired research chemist looked at the Mossbauer effect article and found it pretty accurate, and it even mentioned a few technical details that he'd long forgotten about. He also had a couple relevant personal anecdotes, but alas, no published source to verify against.
There's also irony in what you say. People like your dad who are comfortable in their own area of expertise are able and willing to compare Wikipedia to what they know and reach favorable conclusions. The school teacher who lacks the detailed knowledge for verifying our facts seems more willing to reject Wikipedia without evidence. Instead of showing bias toward established resources, teachers should really be guiding children to question everything on the net, and to develop good critical habits.
Ec
Daniel Mayer a écrit:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
-- mav
I am much more optimist than you on the topic. Some teachers are terribly interested in the whole idea, while others just do not care and yet others will stay very conservative and give preference to old traditionnal (and outdated) encyclopedia. There is no one unique position, and things will move forward where the "interested ones" are in position of making things move.
We are not yet 3 years old. We must give time to the most conservative ones and rely on the others. It is not us to adapt and change the spirit I think.
On 09/13/04 02:54, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active. These responses are a sign of success, not of failure. Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
If you don't suppose they are correct, why do we need to throw a spanner into the works of Wikipedia to mollify them? You haven't demonstrated the burning need to follow a course of action you here admit isn't actually necessarily justifiable.
- d.
--- David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
If you don't suppose they are correct, why do we need to throw a spanner into the works of Wikipedia to mollify them? You haven't demonstrated the burning need to follow a course of action you here admit isn't actually necessarily justifiable.
We need a way to select content for the print/stable version and to make sure that that content is good quality and can be trusted.
-- mav
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On 09/13/04 09:06, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
If you don't suppose they are correct, why do we need to throw a spanner into the works of Wikipedia to mollify them? You haven't demonstrated the burning need to follow a course of action you here admit isn't actually necessarily justifiable.
We need a way to select content for the print/stable version and to make sure that that content is good quality and can be trusted.
Yes, but, as I stated before, "we need to do something" and "this is something" do not mean "we need to do this".
You're proposing adding a reified layer of appointed experts. I strongly suggest we are unlikely to go wrong by taking a much more gradual approach. e.g. the current proposal for reference tagging within the wiki markup, which would make articles far more checkable; the rating system already in play on test; approaches which would use the wiki method rather than seemingly invalidating it.
- d.
On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 19:54:49 +0000, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
You're proposing adding a reified layer of appointed experts. I strongly suggest we are unlikely to go wrong by taking a much more gradual approach. e.g. the current proposal for reference tagging within the wiki markup, which would make articles far more checkable; the rating system already in play on test; approaches which would use the wiki method rather than seemingly invalidating it.
I certainly agree with David here. I certainly do not think that we should compromise the way Wikipedia works just to satisfy doubters.
As Wikipedia slowly improves, those voices will get quieter. Over time, more and more topic-specific experts will take an interest in Wikipedia and will be monitoring articles on their topics. Give it a few years, and the quality will improve immensely. There is no need to run before we have mastered walking.
Some additional software support as David describes would definitely help, but the biggest improvement will come with more eyes.
-Matt (User: Morven)
Mav wrote
Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve content for publication.
Well, of course, on the first point, no one responsible is going to give out advice to _trust_ WP if they know anything about the Internet, wiki, how voluntary projects run. Any more than 'believe something if you read it in a newspaper' holds water.
The second point carries more weight with me. It's odd that people would pay money for _less_ information than they could have for free, online. It becomes less odd if egregious blunders have been cut away. Yes, let's think about filters. I don't doubt that there are experts who would gladly take money for reading WP articles. Turning a profit on the resulting publication would be another matter.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
The second point carries more weight with me. It's odd that people would pay money for _less_ information than they could have for free, online.
I just wanted to add that for me, a huge part of the motivation for what we are doing is people who are not going to be able to get online reliably for years or decades to come. Paper is still the cheapest way to distribute content in many parts of the world.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
I just wanted to add that for me, a huge part of the motivation for what we are doing is people who are not going to be able to get online reliably for years or decades to come. Paper is still the cheapest way to distribute content in many parts of the world.
Is that really true? Computer equipment is becoming so incredibly cheap that printing out (and shipping) a paper encyclopedia looks pretty expensive in comparison. Maybe if there is a lack of electricity paper is still a good idea for now, but given how bulky paper is, and how expensive printing is (especially if we do frequent print runs), I can't see it being the case for too long that it's cheaper to distribute a gigantic 20-volume set of books than to distribute a single DVD-ROM (or possibly even a CD-ROM with compression of pre-rendered pages, and perhaps some downsampling of images), *even* if we have to distribute a way to read it too. If you take into account periodic updates---mailing out a single CD-ROM that can be read on the same device versus distributing an entirely new 20-volume set of books---the books start to look even more expensive.
I personally like paper, but digital stuff is just so much cheaper I can't see paper being the *cheap* option, unless for some reason donations of printing and shipping services turn out to be easier to come by than donations of low-end computers.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
I just wanted to add that for me, a huge part of the motivation for what we are doing is people who are not going to be able to get online reliably for years or decades to come. Paper is still the cheapest way to distribute content in many parts of the world.
Is that really true?
So I am told by people "on the ground" in Africa. There is a desperate need for books that kids can take home. Many people have to travel two hours or more to reach a location with a computer. Don't underestimate how bad things are there.
It is very likely that our content will be more useful as WikiReaders on topics of specific interest to those customers than as a straight general encyclopedia.
--Jimbo
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion is based on an either/or choice.
Mav, either you misread me, or I failed to communicate my point properly.
I spoke of 2 qualities: expertise & willingness to "play nice". My conclusion was to state that I value the willingness to "play nice" over expertise -- if forced to choose. In the vast majority of cases, we aren't faced with such a stark choice.
I very firmly believe that this is not an either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who espouse nearly crank theories).
That was my point, too.
So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area.
[snip]
Okay, I was talking about Academics in general on Wikipedia. (And I suspect now I'll be hearing from the academics currenting busy contributing to Wikipedia.)
Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print Wikipedia, the response I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for forking Wikipedia even in the slightest to make the content more acceptible -- which is what any approval board would end up doing. Then the project seemed to go into hibernation. Then it seemed that a group was working on it. Now it appears we are back to discussing what should be done.
I'm withholding further comment until it's clear (well, at least to me) what is going on with this version of Wikipedia. I'm just as happy as anyone to opine about something, but I'd rather work on the print version of Wikipedia than be one more voice in this neverending discussion. (And those who are doing the work will most likely appreciate the lowered noise level.)
Geoff
--- Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print Wikipedia, the response I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for forking Wikipedia even in the slightest to make the content more acceptible -- which is what any approval board would end up doing. Then the project seemed to go into hibernation. Then it seemed that a group was working on it. Now it appears we are back to discussing what should be done.
What? How do you come to that conclusion? There *will* be no fork at *all* - the only thing that will be done is selecting one version of an article that is approved in some way. Any future approved version would be based on the development version (that is, a regular Wikipedia article which would be in perpetual development), not the last stable version.
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
What? How do you come to that conclusion? There *will* be no fork at *all* - the only thing that will be done is selecting one version of an article that is approved in some way. Any future approved version would be based on the development version (that is, a regular Wikipedia article which would be in perpetual development), not the last stable version.
I can imagine at least one scenario that would lead to a bit of a fork, although whether it's a bad thing is not clear:
Imagine that we have experts of some sort working on an article. They hash out between them and the others editing an article something reasonably neutral, and it becomes the "stable" version. A few months later, they come back, and the article has been editing by 500 people in the meantime and become mostly a mess. They decide to take a few of the good facts and improvements from the new version and "backport" them to the previous stable version rather than dealing with the mess of the development version, because frankly the last stable version was better (except for the few facts that were duly incorporated). That'd be a fork of sorts, I suppose.
Of course, something similar happens on occasion already, which has been the subject of some revert wars...
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I can imagine at least one scenario that would lead to a bit of a fork, although whether it's a bad thing is not clear:
Imagine that we have experts of some sort working on an article. They hash out between them and the others editing an article something reasonably neutral, and it becomes the "stable" version. A few months later, they come back, and the article has been editing by 500 people in the meantime and become mostly a mess. They decide to take a few of the good facts and improvements from the new version and "backport" them to the previous stable version rather than dealing with the mess of the development version, because frankly the last stable version was better (except for the few facts that were duly incorporated). That'd be a fork of sorts, I suppose.
If an article had drifted into becoming an utter mess, then doing exactly as you state would be a *good thing* since it improves the article (the amount of backporting is the key issue; better efforts to do that will result in less of a chance for conflict).
But my point is that all the editing would still be on just one Wikipedia version. The *only* time this would be different would be for final minor formating changes needed for print; most of which could be automated:
Such as changing links to articles that are contained in the print version to have (See: for-bar) at the end of the sentence the term is in and changing links to articles *not* in the print version to plain text. Moving/removing tables and images would also have to be done for print.
-- Daniel
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On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print Wikipedia, the response I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for forking Wikipedia even in the slightest to make the content more acceptible -- which is what any approval board would end up doing. Then the project seemed to go into hibernation. Then it seemed that a group was working on it. Now it appears we are back to discussing what should be done.
What? How do you come to that conclusion? There *will* be no fork at *all* - the only thing that will be done is selecting one version of an article that is approved in some way. Any future approved version would be based on the development version (that is, a regular Wikipedia article which would be in perpetual development), not the last stable version.
By "fork", I mean a second version that is clearly different from the first. Even if Wikipedia 1.0 is nothing more than a snapshop of Wikipedia on a given date, it will be different from the dynamic, growing Wikipedia -- & thus technically a fork.
But overlooking this case, there are other ways that Wikipedia 1.0 will become a fork -- although a transient one. The most important one is thru the process of review. The very fact that articles are being reviewed by a group for that purpose implies that some articles will not make the cut; & unless the review committee is willing to reject them without comment & simply hope that contributors will expend the necessary work properly to pass review, this process of rejection will inevitably lead to some Wikipedia 1.0 material being different from the dynamic Wikipedia. (The specific case I forsee is that some editors will feel that it is at least as easy to make the desired revisions as to ask for them in the Talk pages, make the changes to the 1.0 version, but forget to also make them to the dynamic version. No matter how well intentioned, there will be mistakes & slip-ups.)
And then there is the case where the January 1, 2005 version of an article is flagged as approved, but changes are made so that the January 2 version is clearly different. Will the review group then consider this new version, or ignore it, justifiably assured that they are finished with that article? We will then end up with a 1.0 version assembled from articles that were never gathered together at one time.
Frankly, even if the changes to Wikipedia 1.0 are limited to correcting misspellings, grammatical errors & other minor changes like these, there will *still* be significant variation between 1.0 & the dynamic versions to consider them branches of the same project.
Unless one & all is afraid to allow this possiblity to come to pass & either (1) wait for the Featured Article project to produce enough material for a Wikipeida 1.0, or (2) submit a snapshot of the dynamic Wikipedia as 1.0, we have to accept as inevitable that we will have -- for a brief while -- a fork. Then after 1.0 is published, a number of Wikipedians will then make the effort to fold back all worthwhile differences from 1.0 into the dynamic branch -- from which 2.0 will emerge.
That is why I say that there will be a fork.
Geoff