It occurs to me that Larry's concerns (and mine) with Wikipedia might be a manifestation of what journalist Frederic Schwarz calls the "Casio Effect": often a new technology comes along to replace a large amount of human effort, but that technology produces, say, 90% of the original quality with 5% of the effort. What often happens, then, is that the people formerly responsible for that effort don't bother making up for the remaining 10% of the quality, but merely settle for what the technology produces. So instead of hiring an expensive human drummer, we use a drum machine; but we end up with a sound that's somewhat inorganic and lacks the little touches of creativity that a human might produce. Instead of hiring a secretary, the exec uses a word processor, and sends out letters that haven't been vetted through the eyes of someone who knows how to smooth out his rough language.
Wikipedia is such a technology. It is probably capable of producing 90% of the quality of a Britannica with 5% of the effort. But we have two problems: first, we aren't even putting in 5% of the effort yet--Britannica has hundreds of full-time staffers and an impressive list of experts. Secondly, we have a lofty goal to produce something even better than Britannica.
Our task, then, is to precisely identify what that missing 10% is, and work on systems to create precisely that, and let Wikipedia do the remaining 90% it does well. At first blush, it appears to me that the basic creation of content is something Wikipeida does well. Creating almanac-like content is does well. And it even seems to be good at ironing out some controversies. And finally, it's good at polishing prose.
But what it doesn't do well is grunt scholarship: meticulous checking of facts and references, proper listing of all the best sources in the field, expert summary of the state of a field and its history, etc.
Nupedia tried to do everything--generate content, expertly review it, publicly review it, finish it for publication, etc. I think that's too much to ask. Perhaps Nupedia could be pared down to a simpler function, and one that would be easier for experts to participate in: instead of creating articles, or even editing them, why not simply let the experts /write reviews/ of articles submitted to them, which then get attached to the articles? Wikipedia authors could, whenever they feel an article is ready for it, ask for it to be submitted to expert review. The expert then just writes what he thinks about the article (you've omitted this, you got that wrong, etc.) and sends it back. The Wikipedia process can then go to work on the article again, with the expert commentary available.
That way, the experts never have the problem of having their names associated with the mediocre work itself--only with the review, which is entirely their own creation and therefore ego-satisfying. And those of us who enjoy the work of writing and polishing have the expert's input to work with. The experts will be providing only the last 10% of quality that Wikipedia can't, and no more.
--- lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote: Perhaps Nupedia could be
pared down to a simpler function, and one that would be easier for experts to participate in: instead of creating articles, or even editing them, why not simply let the experts /write reviews/ of articles submitted to them, which then get attached to the articles? Wikipedia authors could, whenever they feel an article is ready for it, ask for it to be submitted to expert review. The expert then just writes what he thinks about the article (you've omitted this, you got that wrong, etc.) and sends it back. The Wikipedia process can then go to work on the article again, with the expert commentary available.
That way, the experts never have the problem of having their names associated with the mediocre work itself--only with the review, which is entirely their own creation and therefore ego-satisfying. And those of us who enjoy the work of writing and polishing have the expert's input to work with. The experts will be providing only the last 10% of quality that Wikipedia can't, and no more.
That's an interesting proposition. Also, why wouldnot near-expert wikipedians (considering the real experts are on Nupedia :-)) do a rather similar work of "reviewing" articles in which they have not been involved themselves but are interested and knowledgable. Maybe it could help make another 2%.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
On 03-09-2002, Anthere wrote thusly :
--- lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote: Perhaps Nupedia could be
pared down to a simpler function, and one that would be easier for experts to participate in: instead of creating articles, or even editing them, why not simply let the experts /write reviews/ of articles submitted to them, which then get attached to the articles? Wikipedia authors could, whenever they feel an article is ready for it, ask for it to be submitted to expert review. The expert then just writes what he thinks about the article (you've omitted this, you got that wrong, etc.) and sends it back. The Wikipedia process can then go to work on the article again, with the expert commentary available. That way, the experts never have the problem of having their names associated with the mediocre work itself--only with the review, which is entirely their own creation and therefore ego-satisfying. And those of us who enjoy the work of writing and polishing have the expert's input to work with. The experts will be providing only the last 10% of quality that Wikipedia can't, and no more.
That's an interesting proposition. Also, why wouldnot near-expert wikipedians (considering the real experts are on Nupedia :-)) do a rather similar work of "reviewing" articles in which they have not been involved themselves but are interested and knowledgable. Maybe it could help make another 2%.
There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.
They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?) to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention do some planning and quality assurance.
Regards, kpjas.
On 4 Sep 2002, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.
They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?) to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention do some planning and quality assurance.
What happened to this idea? Against this suggestion, so much talk of "experts" appears a wish that collective intelligence will arrive as embodied by individuals and spare the problem of acheiving better organization of it in social form.
I believe, however, that it would be more practical for SIGs to be formed around wider topic areas than those cited above, for example, "History" rather than "the Roman Empire."
Tesla Coil wrote:
On 4 Sep 2002, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.
They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?) to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention do some planning and quality assurance.
What happened to this idea? Against this suggestion, so much talk of "experts" appears a wish that collective intelligence will arrive as embodied by individuals and spare the problem of acheiving better organization of it in social form.
This sounds like a natural extension of the WikiProjects that are already floating around.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 4 Sep 2002, at 9:45, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.
They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?) to rely on in order to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention do some planning and quality assurance.
Another useful side-effect of having such a system could be that these groups could combine together a collection of articles on that topic, put an introduction in and release it as an ebook.
So we could get a series of "The Wikipedia guide to XXXX" ebooks, which we could distribute around to the various ebook sites as well as sites which deal with related topics, that way the wikipedia articles would get a much wider audience and attract people to the wikipedia project.
Imran
lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
<snip background>
But what it doesn't do well is grunt scholarship: meticulous checking of facts and references, proper listing of all the best sources in the field, expert summary of the state of a field and its history, etc.
Perhaps a verified facts page and/or a bibliography page would help encourage the first two.
Facts could be stated, citations, sources etc. could be listed in an acceptable standard format and "signed" by the provider. This would then be tracked as "contribution" and could easily be updated or changed as improvements or errors are noted. Someone detecting an error can either notify the originator (forming a feedback loop for incremental improvement), fix it themselves and change the signature, or some other compromise.
Thus some credit would be given for improving the reliability of our article material (and the community) rather than merely the original text. Volunteers love recognition, it is often their only immediate compensation. Particularly in risky endeavers that may collapse at any time without the long term anticipated payoffs. This credit might be left off the "contributions" page but still presented in the form of a tally. Thus it would be incremented at the edit time and not be a continuing burden on the server. It could be in a YTD format that includes an account aggregate or not as the community feels most appropriate. One might come to know not to attempt to shine on a scholar with ten thousand citatations and sources identified to date. That person will look up a fact on you in a heartbeat!
Likewise, a new policy or guideline that summarizes what is desired (if this is not already available) and some links to exemplary samples. These could also be placed prominently and simply at the front of the suggested ways to contribute rather than the current attempt at humor (my assumption, perhaps someone is attempting to encourage brilliant prose?) requesting brilliant complete articles.
I would tend to expect an expert summary of the state of a field and its history to emerge from a consensus of even mediocre or amateur contributors. If an expert or two is an active participant then it should converge quicker, but not necessarily to a greater ultimate level of completion.
Nupedia tried to do everything--generate content, expertly review it, publicly review it, finish it for publication, etc. I think that's too much to ask. Perhaps Nupedia could be pared down to a simpler function, and one that would be easier for experts to participate in: instead of creating articles, or even editing them, why not simply let the experts /write reviews/ of articles submitted to them, which then get attached to the articles? Wikipedia authors could, whenever they feel an article is ready for it, ask for it to be submitted to expert review. The expert then just writes what he thinks about the article (you've omitted this, you got that wrong, etc.) and sends it back. The Wikipedia process can then go to work on the article again, with the expert commentary available.
That way, the experts never have the problem of having their names associated with the mediocre work itself--only with the review, which is entirely their own creation and therefore ego-satisfying. And those of us who enjoy the work of writing and polishing have the expert's input to work with. The experts will be providing only the last 10% of quality that Wikipedia can't, and no more.
I think perhaps you are making the implicit assumption that the expertise is available as input only in person.
The previously proposed (by others) model, of non-experts keeping quiet and taking notes when an expert speaks, is already widely and easily available. I have a fairly extensive library of professional books written by experts and published for profit that are easily consulted for fact checking or verifying a concept only vaguely remembered or understood from the previous readings.
Other books are widely available to anyone with sufficient interest and cash ranging from 10 to under a thousand dollars. I would suspect an average price for professional books in the U.S. at around 100 dollars.
I suspect that most or at least many Wikipedia contributors have access to similar books or libraries where they can be accessed or borrowed briefly.
Therefore, while I see the rationale for complicating the existing process to attract a special class of contributors that we can already effectively access, I am unconvinced of its benefit to the project. I think we should move slowly and incrementally on this, if possible, and evaluate the results carefully before full scale implementation.
If current estimates of 1% of very active contributors are truly credentialed experts then further growth in participation should bring in plenty of experts in the life cycle remaining to the project.
regards, Mike Irwin
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org