On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays. The latest one suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of dedicated editors. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
Greg Maxwell is sceptical of the numbers (since Aaron doesn't give methodology); since Greg is very good at running interesting numbers on the database, I've suggested to each that they contact the other.
It's been a long-standing debate without numbers; hopefully we can throw data into the mix now. I know Greg and Aaron were
Is anyone else writing long essays these days? Where are they kept, and how categorized?
Probably and nowhere I can think of, but they should!
Indeed. It's a shame that some of the good long essays in recent memory are written off-wiki, in places where they can't be improved over time (even if it is a public mailing list). This is an interesting twist on wikification: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Who_Writes_Wikipedia%3F
I hope the text itself goes up there soon. Likewise, for anyone who has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays is surprisingly sparse.
SJ