[Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

[David Gerard]

On 29 August 2010 17:18, Peter Damian <peter.damian at btinternet.com> wrote:

> In the case of newspapers probably yes.  In the case of encyclopedias,
> I think not.   There are severe problems with the Wikipedia coverage of
> philosophy which you wouldn't find here, for instance.  And so for the
> humanities generally. When I make this point on Wikipedia, the answer is
> usually that Wikipedia is for pop culture, whereas encyclopedias are for
> 'proper culture' or 'high culture' or whatever.  I don't really understand
> this
> distinction.


The answer is probably that we're not finished yet and need more
participation from people interested in writing encyclopedically in
the area.

Basically, the answer is interested contributors bothering to put in
the effort, same as any other area. Hard work over the course of
years, as usual.

There are things that could be done. Professors who set students to
editing can help the content along very nicely. Getting the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy released under CC by-sa would increase the
quality of the world's phiosophy knowledge nicely (it's not like it's
a commercial website).

Think of our successful areas and why they are successful. Our hard
science articles are generally excellent, and sometimes almost
readable by humans. Why are they good? Why did people with the
requisite knowledge bother writing stuff up? How can we duplicate this
in other lacking areas?


- d.