On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Sam Johnston samj@samj.net wrote:
Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that
most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;)
Wikipedia is a community and those who contribute to it for egotistic rather than altruistic reasons (even if the two are often closely related) are deluding themselves given they were never promised anything, least of all grandeur. What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? If it is relevant to their field(s) of endeavour then they can draw attention to their contribution themselves (as I do) and if they don't like it then they ought to be off writing books or knols or contributing to something other than a community wiki.
I have "Author at English Wikibooks" listed very prominently on my Resume, and often reference it in cover letters I send out. This is especially true for job listings that require "good communication skills". My work on Wikibooks, even if it showed nothing more then my proficiency in the English language, helped me get my current job. Part of my current responsibilities involve writing documentation, for which I was considered to be very qualified because of my work on Wikibooks.
So I would say that yes, our editors can derive very real benefits from their work on Wiki. I will temper that by saying that it's up to the authors to derive that benefit themselves. We don't send out royalty checks so if authors want to be benefitted by their work here, they need to make it happen and not rely on other people properly applying attribution for them.
--Andrew Whitworth