A few posts back Peter linked to several philosophy-trained editors who had left Wikipedia, representing them as examples of the problems he has identified.
I think it's worth reposting here what one of those editors gave as his reasons for leaving:
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1. No one is accountable, nor does anyone feel responsible, for the accuracy of Wikipedia articles, since they are unsigned and have no official authors.
2. There is virtually no incentive to work on them.
a. Doing so is extremely time-consuming. People who write traditional encyclopedia articles also expend a lot of time. However, they are typically repaid in one or more of three ways: with money, with recognition or prestige, and with the chance to gently support what they see as the right view of the subject. However: b. One is paid nothing to write or edit Wikipedia articles. c. One gets no recognition or prestige, since the articles are unsigned. d. One gets no chance to forward what one sees as the correct views, because of the NPOV policy. e. Finally, one can't even link to one's own relevant papers on the subject, since there seems to be an unofficial policy to automatically delete such links. So the deal is: spend hour upon hour doing web editing, and you can be sure of getting nothing in return.
3. Genuine experts in a subject are usually people who have other demands on their time--often professors, for example, who could spend their time working with their own students or doing research in their field that they'll get credit for. So just thinking of these factors a priori, it seems unlikely that many experts would contribute to Wikipedia.
4. It's true that if someone sees an error in an article they can fix it. But it's also true that others can introduce new errors. And the people most likely to see errors and not introduce new ones, are the experts who seem to have no incentive to contribute. --owl23211:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
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So what can we learn from these clearly stated objections, and how do they apply to the general problem of articles in the humanities?
Nathan