On Jan 5, 2005, at 6:40 AM, Ronald Chmara wrote:
My older brother despises some wikipedia sections that are written in
his field (cultural anthropology, with specific emphasis on the paiute
people), as he is an expert in that specific area, and finds the
articles "shallow", "without depth and nuance", and "lacking in
a
deeper explanation". They are written by "non-experts", and thus make
"factual and comprehension errors".
The articles are also written for *use* by non-experts.... So, I asked
my brother how many pages it would take to correct the errors, and he
pointed me towards his latest body of work, over 500 pages, and that's
just the historical *sites* of the paiute.
So, what is wikipedia? Is it *meant* to be the equivalent of an
encyclopedia, with terse explanations? Is it meant to be a vast
repository of all that is known, without omissions of fact, or
omissions of a given POV?
-Bop
The solution is to get your brother to contribute. And one of my
activities is to encourage academics to contribute to wikipedia.
The emergent nature of wiki text is that it is very sensitive to
initial conditions, a given article will converge on an acceptable
form, very much based on the quality of the large inputs of expertise.
This is what is wonderful about Wikipedia - it is an active audience
for writing, constantly checking errors, pushing for readability,
asking questions, making demands. The more experts we can get to
contribute the large initial drafts of articles, the more that process
can go to work to turn them into linked and smoothly written material.
Given a good starting point the process produces higher and higher
quality over time, in no small part because the bar is upped
constantly, and the wiki community is there to make the changes needed.