Larry,
Thanks for your great commentary. It is refreshing to get an infusion of perspective from someone who understands what is going on here, but also has some distance.
If our encyclopedia project doesn't get an infusion of that expertise, the quality of the result will suffer accordingly, which is a lot.
I think you are right on target. To write a world-class encyclopedia requires expertise, period.
The problem is that, with several notable exceptions, highly-educated people aren't drawn to Wikipedia.
Again I think you are dead on. The people who are drawn to Wikipedia at the moment are excited more by the concept rathet than by the content. If you take a bunch of people like me who believe in "free as in freedom", there will be some experts in some fields just by random chance, but the odds of our tiny band containing someone with the expertise to write a top-notch article on, say, existentialism are small.
If we really want to make the best encyclopedia in the world (the original stated goal of Nupedia, by the way), we must discuss a pressing question that I suspect very few people on this list are disposed to take very seriously: how can we arrange for our free encyclopedia movement to be led by representatives of the creme de la creme among the world's scholars and scientists?
I can't speak for the rest of the list, but I am disposed to take this question very seriously. Wikipedia won't become world-class until it is led by the best of the best. We need to consider very carefully how to get experts on board, or else suffer perpetually from mediocrity.
I also agree totally with the sentiment of you subject line, namely that the free encyclopeida movement needs to be like the free software movement. By all means let us learn from success. But your suggestions on how Wikipedia might be moderated by experts would make it LESS like the free software movement. The free software movement doesn't have anything analogous to what you suggest. For example, look at the way the Linux kernel is moderated. If I understand correctly, they did not say this:
"We need a first rate expert in asynchronous I/O to moderate all patches that are being submitted, decide which to include and exclude, and to do whatever extra coding is required to bring this area up to snuff. Let's sit down and think how we are going to get one. What incentives can we provide to draw Expert X into the project?"
On the contrary (again if I understand correctly) what happened was more like this:
"Among the ranks of our current contributors, we have some guys who are actively working to address this issue. All other contributors in this area, except for the most active and most expert, are contributing only by tweaking and debugging the major contributions. For clarity, let's just give a semi-official status to what has naturally occurred, and say that so-and-so is in charge of moderating submissions in this area."
In short, the expertise was already there, and the moderation was already occurring naturally. I submit that the same thing will happen with Wikipedia. That is to say, in answer to the pressing question of what we need to do to attract experts, I would say we need to do exactly what we are already doing. The current trajectory is fantastic. No course corrections are called for.
Why would free software naturally attract more expertise than a free encyclopdia? Obviously there is the maturity of the project to consider. The fact that Linux is an outstanding OS has much to do with attracting outstanding contributors. But what about contributions in the infancy of a project? Is there something that makes software design inherently more of an expert activity than writing informational articles?
I contend there isn't. Having worked as a programmer for several years, I can vouch for the fact that ninety percent of programmers stink at programming. It is decidely NOT an activity which, if you can do it at all, you can do it well. It boggles my mind that so many crappy IT professionals are pulling down large paychecks, but I consider it a temporary phenomenon of the transition to a society-wide computer infrastructure. The efficiences of automation are so great, and expertise so scarce relative to society's needs, that idiot programmers can still do well financially.
The question is why contributors to open source software projects are overwhelmingly from the top ten percent of programmers that do know what they are doing. Is there something about software that makes quality easily recognizable? Is it an "objective discipline" and therefore not analogous to writing encyclopdia articles?
My own opinion on this matter has shifted. In the past I was curious about the possible success of open-source-like tactics in non-objective fields, but I couldn't quite persuade myself that they would work out. Contributing to Wikipedia has taught me otherwise. I can't explain to you why Wikipedia is working, but I can directly observe article after article getting better. Objectively better! Wherever people turn their attention, good things happen.
Nor have I seen any asymptotic leveling out. Yes, individual articles temporarily plateau when the primary contributor runs out of steam. Yes, there may be a pause when the driver of an article realizes that that is about as far as a schmoe such as himself can take it. But those articles are routinely and naturally picked up later by new people joining the project.
If you personally are distressed about your philosophy articles having hit a brick wall, reflect that they are stalled only because you did a reasonable job on them. Had you done a shoddy job, you would have likely seen more activity, but since your work was basically OK it goes untouched for now. This situation is only temporary. As Wikipedia snowballs, the rising tide will lift all boats.
Semi-decent articles are only immune to editing until someone with just slightly more expertise comes along. I say slightly more, because contributors with vastly more expertise may well consider an article not worth saving. The person who is attracted is not the absolute expert, but the relative expert who thinks, "Hmm, solid start, but X needs to be added and Y needs to be fixed and the whole thing refactored." This contributor then makes the article as good as s/he can, setting the stage for a slightly more expert person to be attracted. Eventually Wikipedia will rise to the level at a few of the foremost experts in the world are duking it out in their respective arenas.
My only counsel is patience. The quality (not just the size) of Wikipedia is improving as we speak. Better quality attracts people with more expertise. It is a virtuous cycle. I say that it will work in the long run, not based on some wild hypothesis, but because IT IS ALREADY WORKING in the short run.
Peace, -Karl
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