Hello all,
Olaf Simons, a literature researcher and Wikipedian, wrote a mail on the mailing list of the German chapter about his experience both as a researcher and as a Wikipedian. I find his experience very insightful and got his allowance to forward the mail here, because I think these experiences are could also be very interesting for the folks here. We had here also from time to time (and not before long) discussions about the relations between researchers and Wikipedia. I will give a shortend summary in English about his mail, please use a translator for details (after all, I believe this is an international mailing list).
Olaf wrote about two incidents where he got into conflict in his two roles. * In the first case he was the main author of the article Roman (novel) [1] in de-wp. Some time later after he worked on this article he was asked by an print literature encyclopedia (Enzyklopädie der Frühen Neuzeit) to wrote an article about the novels of the time between 1470 and 1800. He reused his earlier article from de-wp, shortend the content very strongly and submitted his article. Only at the last editorial process the publisher noticed that the article is "copied" from Wikipedia. Although the no texts are directly copied from de-wp (and Olaf was the author for both articles), one can notice that the argumentations are very similar. After the publisher discovered the similarities he rejected the article from Olaf.
* In the second case Olaf rewrited the article Aufklärung (Enlightening) [2]. While he was working on the article other Wikipedians gave their own inputs, which Olaf thought could be problematic or at least debatable. He found himself very reluctant in tell his colleagues that the article on Wikipedia was written by him, because it is now a mixed product and contains content that he may not support, and his colleagues would not be so precise to find which part was exactly written by him and which part by the others. And he fears that his colleagues could think that he follows certain schools although he is not.
I think it is very important for us to understand the difficulties academics face if they want to join the Wikimedian community. And maybe we should rethink about our strategy and approach on working with academics.
Greetings Ting
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufkl%C3%A4rung
-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Betreff: Re: [VereinDE-l] Bericht zur Verleihung der Zedler-Medaille und Academy Datum: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:02:56 +0100 (CET) Von: Olaf Simons olaf.simons@pierre-marteau.com Antwort an: Mailingliste des Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. / mailing list of Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. vereinde-l@lists.wikimedia.org An: Mailingliste des Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. / mailing list of Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. vereinde-l@lists.wikimedia.org
... Vorallem in Bezug auf die Gewinnung von Autoren aus den Wissenschaften, was mE bisher nicht recht gelungen ist. Andererseits scheint die Veranstaltung bei den Partnern durchaus beliebt zu sein (immerhin zB BASF und RoG dabei).
Ich denke, wir sollten grundsätzlicher darüber nachdenken, welche immensen Probleme Wikipedia Wissenschaftlern stellt, Zwei kann ich Euch kurz notieren:
Ich schrieb, kein Geheimnis, den WP-Artikel "Roman" - vielleicht bin ich jemand, der das beruflich tun sollte. 2005 trat die ''Enzyklopädie der Frühen Neuzeit'' an mich heran mit der Anfrage für sie den Artikel "Erzählliteratur (ca. 1470-1800)" zu schreiben. Das tat ich (weit kürzer als im WP-Artikel), meine Seiten durchliefen die Redaktionsschritte bei Metzler unbeanstandet, bis ich in der letzten Situng vor dem Druck wie ein kleiner Student als Wikipedia-Plagiator aufflog. Man hatte in meinen Seiten nicht direkt Wortgleichhheiten aber doch eine ähnliche Argumentation wie im Wikipedia-Artikel gefunden. Es ließ sich aufklären, dass das kein Wunder ist - der dortige Artikel ist von mir, aber es war für die ''Enzyklopädie der Frühen Neuzeit'' danach doch unmöglich, den Artikel zu drucken. Man wird ihn wohl durch zwei Artikel zu Roman und Novelle ersetzen, ich bin da als Autor tot. (Noch bange ich, dass sie in Reclams demnächst erscheinenden Lexikon ähnliches feststellen, ich schrieb auch dort in einem kleinen Lexikon auf Einladung den Artikel Roman, mühte mich diesmal redlich, den Text so schwer zu machen, dass niemand bei Wikipedia gegenliest).
Geschichte 2: Ich schreib vor einigen Wochen den Artikel "Aufklärung" neu und hatte zwischenzeitlich immense Bauchschmerzen. Edits kamen hinein, bei denen es mir das wissenschaftliche Genick gebrochen hätte, hätte man sie meiner Person zugeordnet. Man kann sagen: ist doch kein Problem: Die Versionsgeschichte klärt's - ist aber doch eines, da niemand so genau nachsieht. In Fachkreisen kann man den Artikel mir zuordnen, ich muss da seitdem einen heiklen Balanceakt durchführen: Wie stelle ich sicher, dass nur in die Passagen merkwürdige Edits einfließen, die man mir ganz sicher nicht zutraut? Das Problem ist dabei extrem diffizil: Ich bin auch dann als Fachwissenschaftler bedroht, wenn Edits anderer WP-Autoren sich mit Fußnoten aus der Sekundärliteratur absichern. Zum Thema Aufklärung gibt es Fragen und Fachliteratur, zu denen ich besser nicht Bezug nehme. Unter Fachkollegen sterbe ich, wenn mir auf einer Konferenz Leute begegnen und sagen: "Ich wusste gar nicht, dass Sie dieser und jener wissenschaftlichen Richtung angehören, vermutete, Sie finden solche Argumentationen suspekt..." Allein die Tatsache, dass Wissenschaftler irgendetwas nachweislich behaupten rettet mich nicht als wissenschaftlichen Autor, der selbst für eine bestimmte Position einstehen muss...
Die zwei Geschichten zeigen, dass es in der Praxis extrem heikel für den einzelnen Wissenschaftler werden kann, in Wikipedia zu veröffentlichen. Ich schlug deswegen vorlängst schon einmal vor, ganz anders über den Wissenschaftler bei Wikipedia nachzudenken. Wir sollten nicht unbedingt Wissenschaftler als Artikel-Autoren gewinnen. Wir können ihnen nur bei harmlosen Einträgen wie bibliographischen oder naturwissenschaftlichen einige Sicherheit bieten, sic da nicht selbst zu prostituieren.
Nachdenken sollten wird darüber, wie Wissenschaftler publizieren müssen - und ihnen bei uns eine adäquate Plattform geben: so etwas wie eine Wissenschaftliche Reihe, in der Konferenzbeiträge erscheinen, und die bei uns im Druck wie auch online verfügbar werden. Für Wissenschaftler spricht nichts dagegen diese Beiträge unter eine Commons-Lizenz zu stellen. Sie erhalten auch bei Rodopi, Metzler oder Reclam nichts für ihre Arbeit. Wichtig ist für sie, dass klar ist, was sie wann schrieben. Was andere danach mit ihnen machen, ist egal. Sie an uns anzubinden, ihre Beiträge in WP auszuwerten, sie mit WP zu vernetzen, wäre ein Gewinn. Wikiversity wird nicht die Lösung dieses Problems sein. Wir müssen über den WP-Tellerand sehen und begreifen, unter welchen Bedingungen und welchem spezifischen Leistungs- und Konsistenzdruck Wissenschaftler agieren müssen. Hier sehe ich bislang (Kompass 2020 las ich mir durch und erschauerte) nur ganz prekäre Gedanken eines Zuschnitts der gänzlich vorbeigeht an den realen Problemen der gewünschten Interaktion.
Die Zedler-Medaille – ich fuhr nach Frankfurt, um zu sehen, was ich von ihr denken soll. Inhaltlich ist sie prekär. Wikipedia spannt die Mainzer Akademie, BASF und Reporter ohne Grenzen ein, um seine eigenen Autoren zu ehren. Als Event ist sie indes gelungen: Es muss uns darum gehen, derartige Institutionen an uns anzubinden. Faktisch spielen diese mit, weil wir ein kleiner Mediengigant sind und sie sich selbst mit uns schmücken. Die Win/Win-Situation deckt das Unternehmen, doch das allein kann uns eigentlich nicht genügen, um das einmal so heikel zu sagen.
Olaf
-- Dr. Olaf Simons Forschungszentrum Gotha der Uni Erfurt etc. _______________________________________________ VereinDE-l mailing list VereinDE-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/vereinde-l
On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:13:56 +0100, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello all,
<...>
I think it is very important for us to understand the difficulties academics face if they want to join the Wikimedian community. And maybe we should rethink about our strategy and approach on working with academics.
Greetings Ting
Just today accidentally Daniel Mietchen started the page on exactly the same topic
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Top_ten_reasons_why_academics_do_not_contribu...
Input is highly welcome.
Cheers Yaroslav
We at Wikipedia are not by ourselves going to reform or replace the reward structure of the academic world.
The suggestion I have recently been making, is that when someone in the academic world wants to write something general, they publish one version under their name , at least on their own website, but more formally if applicable, and use another to start or add to or replace a Wikipedia article, and then not get too concerned what people do with it in detail, but keep an eye on it in general.
It would really be great if a few people publishing review articles, or, even better, textbooks, were to do this. they should think of it as a supplemental opportunity to diffuse their work very widely--especially in translation, for very few are likely to themselves prepare multiple language versions for publication? once a good article is in one Wikipedia, others will copy it.
And the response to user case 1 (the deWP article on Roman (novel) ) is to suggest to the publisher that they regard it as a rough draft--and, of course, to say so at the start.
On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:13:56 +0100, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello all,
<...>
I think it is very important for us to understand the difficulties academics face if they want to join the Wikimedian community. And maybe we should rethink about our strategy and approach on working with academics.
Greetings Ting
Just today accidentally Daniel Mietchen started the page on exactly the same topic
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Top_ten_reasons_why_academics_do_not_contribu...
Input is highly welcome.
Cheers Yaroslav
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 05:37, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
We at Wikipedia are not by ourselves going to reform or replace the reward structure of the academic world.
The suggestion I have recently been making, is that when someone in the academic world wants to write something general, they publish one version under their name , at least on their own website, but more formally if applicable, and use another to start or add to or replace a Wikipedia article, and then not get too concerned what people do with it in detail, but keep an eye on it in general.
It would really be great if a few people publishing review articles, or, even better, textbooks, were to do this. they should think of it as a supplemental opportunity to diffuse their work very widely--especially in translation, for very few are likely to themselves prepare multiple language versions for publication? once a good article is in one Wikipedia, others will copy it.
And the response to user case 1 (the deWP article on Roman (novel) ) is to suggest to the publisher that they regard it as a rough draft--and, of course, to say so at the start.
I would go a step further.
The most important part of the scientific work in relation to the free knowledge corpus is not their direct involvement in Wikimedia projects, but the license compatibility of their works. It is even better for them to make the work on their site and leave Wikimedians to include the work on one of the Wikimedia projects, as they will be credited for their work inside of Wikipedia, too.
In other words, much more important part of our work is to spread the idea and know-how among scientists how to share their knowledge.
At the other side, as time is passing, Wikipedia will rely more on encyclopedists than on various experts. "Encyclopedists" in our case are core Wikipedians, those who spend a lot of time on Wikipedia and who are dealing with fixing articles, maintaining the project etc.
In other words, our recruitment base are not well formed scientists, but high school students who are interested in Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) per se. After five years on project, a former high school student -- probably a university student or even a fresh employee -- is much more experienced encyclopedist than any regular scientist who spent his life in research. Simply, a couple of years of daily dealing with various encyclopedic articles creates an expert in encyclopedistics.
What do we need to do is to find a way how to educate those high school students more efficiently. While it is not going so bad -- at least, our process created the biggest encyclopedia in the human history -- it could be and it should be much better.
In relation to the scientists interested in free knowledge, we could make their life easier. For example, we could host specialized encyclopedic projects for various fields, as well as for various universities and institutes. Such projects should be driven by scientists, according to their [mostly social] standards. The only rule related to those projects should be the license compatibility. And our encyclopedists would be transferring their works to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
On 27.11.2010 01:41, Milos Rancic wrote:
In other words, our recruitment base are not well formed scientists, but high school students who are interested in Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) per se. After five years on project, a former high school student -- probably a university student or even a fresh employee -- is much more experienced encyclopedist than any regular scientist who spent his life in research. Simply, a couple of years of daily dealing with various encyclopedic articles creates an expert in encyclopedistics.
I do not agree here. High school (and most undergraduate college students as well) lack the access to scientific literature and/or the experience to use it to compile NPOV descriptions. OTOH most graduate students, young professionals and scientists lack the time and the focus to contribute regularly. In this part of life, they are building a family and a career.
The most important base for recruiting should be retired professionals, teachers, scientists. They have the background and the time. Many will like the intellectual challenge and enjoy to pass on their experience.
High school students are our readers, don't confuse them with our autors.
Ciao Henning
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.netwrote:
The most important base for recruiting should be retired professionals, teachers, scientists. They have the background and the time. Many will like the intellectual challenge and enjoy to pass on their experience.
Why would people with these expertises be useful? Wikipedia is very frustrating to people with expertise in a field, because Wikipedia places zero value on their expertise. Nothing in their experience base can be used unless it's already in print somewhere ... so how is their experience useful? I'm not calling into question the [[citation needed]] policy, but instead the idea that domain experts (professional, teachers, scientists) are needed to improve Wikipedia.
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 15:32, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
On 27.11.2010 01:41, Milos Rancic wrote:
In other words, our recruitment base are not well formed scientists, but high school students who are interested in Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) per se. After five years on project, a former high school student -- probably a university student or even a fresh employee -- is much more experienced encyclopedist than any regular scientist who spent his life in research. Simply, a couple of years of daily dealing with various encyclopedic articles creates an expert in encyclopedistics.
I do not agree here. High school (and most undergraduate college students as well) lack the access to scientific literature and/or the experience to use it to compile NPOV descriptions. OTOH most graduate students, young professionals and scientists lack the time and the focus to contribute regularly. In this part of life, they are building a family and a career.
The most important base for recruiting should be retired professionals, teachers, scientists. They have the background and the time. Many will like the intellectual challenge and enjoy to pass on their experience.
High school students are our readers, don't confuse them with our autors.
We already have a couple of generations of former high school students trained to be encyclopedists. And those who stayed with us are among the best ones. On the planet. I witnessed so many times that a university student with a couple of years of expertise has superior encyclopedic methods in comparison to many experts.
Unfortunately, retired experts have to be much more extraordinary than high schools students to be incorporated into the Wikimedia culture. Good knowledge of computers and good nerves obviously make wider gaps than learning policies and encyclopedic and [hopefully] scientific methods.
Incorporating new generations into the community is painful task. But we don't have other options.
Encyclopedic work is like any other. It needs a lot of practice to be mastered. And there is no better place on Earth to master it than Wikipedia.
Ideally, encyclopedists shouldn't be experts in particular fields, but experts in writing encyclopedia: those who are able to compile known facts into readable articles, according to the encyclopedic rules.
If we are talking of what would ideally be the cases, we would want people who are experts in specific fields and also expert in writing about them and also expert in the specifics of working in Wikipedia. We have a few of them. We should work equally in supporting people coming to this from any possible direction: People who come with some degree of knowledge in a subject that interests them can learn it; people who come without knowing how to do research can learn how to do that, people who come without the ability to write clearly at a relatively elementary level can learn to do this, people without specific experience in Wikipedia can acquire it.
What is needed is primarily the willingness to learn. Subject experts who insist on writing at a higher level than our readers can understand on the principle that anyone who wants to read them should learn the subject first can not work effectively here if the persist in that attitude, but should stick to specialized encyclopedias. Academics who refuse to learn to write clearly should stick to the academic journals where their style is accepted. People who do not adjust to working in a collaborative environment with people of different skill levels, should write somewhere else where they can work independently, elsewhere. Those who refuse to learn the basics of our specialized conventions cannot usefully continue here. Amateurs who refuse to learn the basics of a subject they insist on writing about cannot contribute usefully in that area.
But those whose strength is in one aspect can be useful in that aspect. Librarians have the skill to find sources in any subject area. Copyeditors can makes good prose in any subject they can read. Editors in the traditional sense can organize material even in unfamiliar fields. Experts who cannot write can still correct errors. Even unskilled amateurs without the ability to write themselves can at least say what material it is that they need better explained. And at the extreme, those who do not understand our conventions make the best outside critics.
What is absolutely impossible is people in any background who insist on ownership of the work. When academics complain we cannot provide this they are correct. We cannot provide this, and with our basic structure and assumptions never shall be able to. Nor should we even try to accommodate this: we do not have am monopoly on channels for providing information. Only if we were the only way ideas could be communicated would we need to make provisions for all possible different ways of providing it, however idiosyncratic.
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 15:32, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
On 27.11.2010 01:41, Milos Rancic wrote:
In other words, our recruitment base are not well formed scientists, but high school students who are interested in Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) per se. After five years on project, a former high school student -- probably a university student or even a fresh employee -- is much more experienced encyclopedist than any regular scientist who spent his life in research. Simply, a couple of years of daily dealing with various encyclopedic articles creates an expert in encyclopedistics.
I do not agree here. High school (and most undergraduate college students as well) lack the access to scientific literature and/or the experience to use it to compile NPOV descriptions. OTOH most graduate students, young professionals and scientists lack the time and the focus to contribute regularly. In this part of life, they are building a family and a career.
The most important base for recruiting should be retired professionals, teachers, scientists. They have the background and the time. Many will like the intellectual challenge and enjoy to pass on their experience.
High school students are our readers, don't confuse them with our autors.
We already have a couple of generations of former high school students trained to be encyclopedists. And those who stayed with us are among the best ones. On the planet. I witnessed so many times that a university student with a couple of years of expertise has superior encyclopedic methods in comparison to many experts.
Unfortunately, retired experts have to be much more extraordinary than high schools students to be incorporated into the Wikimedia culture. Good knowledge of computers and good nerves obviously make wider gaps than learning policies and encyclopedic and [hopefully] scientific methods.
Incorporating new generations into the community is painful task. But we don't have other options.
Encyclopedic work is like any other. It needs a lot of practice to be mastered. And there is no better place on Earth to master it than Wikipedia.
Ideally, encyclopedists shouldn't be experts in particular fields, but experts in writing encyclopedia: those who are able to compile known facts into readable articles, according to the encyclopedic rules.
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On 27.11.2010 18:12, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 15:32, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
On 27.11.2010 01:41, Milos Rancic wrote:
In other words, our recruitment base are not well formed scientists, but high school students who are interested in Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) per se. After five years on project, a former high school student -- probably a university student or even a fresh employee -- is much more experienced encyclopedist than any regular scientist who spent his life in research. Simply, a couple of years of daily dealing with various encyclopedic articles creates an expert in encyclopedistics.
I do not agree here. High school (and most undergraduate college students as well) lack the access to scientific literature and/or the experience to use it to compile NPOV descriptions. OTOH most graduate students, young professionals and scientists lack the time and the focus to contribute regularly. In this part of life, they are building a family and a career.
The most important base for recruiting should be retired professionals, teachers, scientists. They have the background and the time. Many will like the intellectual challenge and enjoy to pass on their experience.
High school students are our readers, don't confuse them with our autors.
We already have a couple of generations of former high school students trained to be encyclopedists. And those who stayed with us are among the best ones. On the planet. I witnessed so many times that a university student with a couple of years of expertise has superior encyclopedic methods in comparison to many experts.
There are great people in any age or demographic group. But the highly motivated high school students don't need recruiting, they will grow from reader to author on their own. I'm talking about active recruiting and refer to the allocation of funds by the WMF for this purpose. And I strongly believe that we can get the most bang for the bucks by addressing retired professionals.
Unfortunately, retired experts have to be much more extraordinary than high schools students to be incorporated into the Wikimedia culture. Good knowledge of computers and good nerves obviously make wider gaps than learning policies and encyclopedic and [hopefully] scientific methods.
In the bigger languages, the low hanging fruits are already covered. We really should concentrate funds to improvement of existing articles and expanding only in underdeveloped, usually highly arcane topics. For both we need people with knowledge and understanding. The latter usually only comes with experience.
Ideally, encyclopedists shouldn't be experts in particular fields, but experts in writing encyclopedia: those who are able to compile known facts into readable articles, according to the encyclopedic rules.
That was true in the beginning. Today we really need more specific knowledge and understanding.
Ciao Henning
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