Just to put my oar in the water:
1) Why Nupedia isn't as "successful" as Wikipedia:
I can only tell you what I think (since I'm in arrears on a Nupedia article). First, I think Nupedia is in some ways the ideal -- partially because my understanding is that expertise can be demonstrated in ways other than credentials. Second, because there's peer review that means something -- review by other people who might know something about the subject. Finally, there's a copyediting standard. Why isn't it more successful? For me, it's two things -- the process is a bit unwieldy (I'd actually have to draft a complete article to submit it, which takes time -- probably a lot less than I spend here, but wikipedia nickels and dimes your time to death) and second.actually, it's really just what I said -- the process is a bit unwieldy -- it's not set up for people who have a few minutes here and there to do a quick edit or addition. Oh -- and frankly, online resources of any kind aren't really accepted yet by moat of academia (at least not the people in charge of hiring and granting tenure).
2) Re: Attracting experts: The estimable Mr. Gilbert said, "if you build it." I agree, but add (a la Mr F. Bauder) they will also leave when they get tired of the aggro. I think expert retention is more the problem -- there has been attrition, though, since I've been here. Let me first say that yes, ego is involved. Credentials do usually represent a huge amount of work and emotional investment, as does teaching a subject. So too with interested amateurs who have their own areas of expertise -- meaning they've done a lot of work and really learned their subjects. It doesn't mean we can't be wrong (Lord knows, I have my moments!), but it generally means we are, well, experts. That means that we do get irritated when we get into edit wars with people who know less and often express it even less well.
3) Retaining good people in general. I think it's part of getting bigger and having no staff -- it's like working in a successful start-up -- the initial employees are really tight and get so used to working together that they cooperate and play to each other's strengths without thinking. As the start-up grows, it starts to get a hierarchy, New people don't have the luxury of knowing who among their fellows is the go-to person for what, and there is sometimes friction. The difference here for me is, I don't think newbies have any excuse for not learning a bit about the old hands -- and I think they also have some responsibility to help make themselves known. I try to encourage people to tell us something about themselves when I say hi, but it might be nice to have a template for user pages with a space for "expertise" and "interests."
3 continued ) It might also be good to have links to Wikipedia etiquette on the user page -- or as part of the login process. DW, the person with shades of French Helganess, is contributing huge amounts, but refuses to respond to queries on whether his/her pictures and sources are PD, or to acknowledge my requests to look at how we've been formatting historical stuff. This is after accusing me of pushing everybody else around (not that I don't make cases for how I think things should be, but I generally have good reasons, and when I haven't, I hope I've given in gracefully.
Still -- the two things that have driven me off on "breaks" in the past (and most likely the future) are the lack of respect for my hard-earned knowledge and a general lack of communal cooperation from a very few (but for some reason, interested in history) people who make me thing "My time is too valuable for this -- I spend way more time fighting to make other people's articles *passable* than writing new stuff."
Anyway, that's my take. It would be really nice to have a few people with some official *moderator* position, but I can see how that could be a problem unless there are volunteers. In the meantime, I just thank goodness for the Vickis and Aprils and Mavs and Stephen Gilberts (etc -- I'm not leaving people out on purpose.) there are lots of good reasons to hang around!
Jules
Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
- Why Nupedia isn't as "successful" as Wikipedia:
I can only tell you what I think (since I'm in arrears on a Nupedia article). First, I think Nupedia is in some ways the ideal -- partially because my understanding is that expertise can be demonstrated in ways other than credentials.
Nupedia may well be wonderful, but I have zero interest in it. I first heard of it a few months before I got involved in Wikipedia; I went to the site, browsed through the FAQs, and got the distinct impression that I wasn't welcome unless I had a PhD.
Perhaps that's an exagerration; after all, this excerpt explains carefully that you don't _need_ a PhD:
If a man who had received a Master's degree in French literature focusing exclusively on Victor Hugo had written five peer-reviewed articles about Hugo, the fact that he lacks a Ph.D. should not stop us from assigning him topics related directly to Hugo.
;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion VIBBER wrote:
Nupedia may well be wonderful, but I have zero interest in it. I first heard of it a few months before I got involved in Wikipedia; I went to the site, browsed through the FAQs, and got the distinct impression that I wasn't welcome unless I had a PhD.
Let me tell you my story. :-)
I completed all the coursework, but no dissertation, in two different PhD programs in finance. (What happened was, I finished one program's coursework and then got accepted to a much more prestigious program and so left the first one with a master's degree.)
I specialized in option pricing theory, and published an academic paper in a real journal. This was not an important contribution to the literature, mind you, but it was a respectable enough publication for a grad student.
Then I worked for a few years as a futures and options trader in Chicago.
So at Nupedia, I volunteered to write a short biography of Robert Merton, a founder of option pricing theory and a winner of the Nobel prize. This is a simple sort of article, anyone could write it, even a complete nonexpert. For someone with my level of knowledge, it would be nothing at all.
When I sat down to write the article, though, I was seized with horrible writer's block. That's astounding, for a guy who does hardly anything but write 8 hours a day 5 days a week. If my collected email output were collected and published in book format, I hate to think of what it must weigh.
The fact is, I was intimidated by the sheer snobbery and credentialism of Nupedia.
And *I* had an inside track. The editor-in-chief worked for me. Everyone on the project knew who I was. I could expect to be given softball reviews and easy acceptance. Even so, I found the process just intimidating enough to find excuses not to write that simple article.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
When I sat down to write the article, though, I was seized with horrible writer's block. That's astounding, for a guy who does hardly anything but write 8 hours a day 5 days a week. If my collected email output were collected and published in book format, I hate to think of what it must weigh.
I know what you mean. What I like about Wikipedia is that I can quickly slap down the bones of an article, without feeling that I have to get it *right*. I can then leave it to simmer, and return to it a few weeks later, admire what others have added to it and mercilessly rewrite my earlier work. Run an article through a few cycles like that and you start to get good stuff. :-)
At 2002-09-03 18:44 +0100, tarquin wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
When I sat down to write the article, though, I was seized with horrible writer's block. That's astounding, for a guy who does hardly anything but write 8 hours a day 5 days a week. If my collected email output were collected and published in book format, I hate to think of what it must weigh.
I know what you mean. What I like about Wikipedia is that I can quickly slap down the bones of an article, without feeling that I have to get it *right*. I can then leave it to simmer, and return to it a few weeks later, admire what others have added to it and mercilessly rewrite my earlier work. Run an article through a few cycles like that and you start to get good stuff. :-)
Yes, and that's the real strength of Wikipedia!
I added a paragraph to the article about surrealism (because I wrote something about it elsewhere where it could go to waste) but it wasn't in the tone of the article. From that I drifted into movies and noticed that genre and style weren't seperated. I tried to seperate that and explain it on the talk page. Someone reacted saying that what I wrote on the talk page should be put on the page itself.
My hope would then be that someone with more editorial skills then me and who would be less distracted by the moods of geniouses would work it into the article.
I think that this is the strength of Wikipedia whatever oldbies say.
(And by the way, I'm probably older than that premature-young-oldbie.)
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