[Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)

[Stephanie Daugherty]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:39 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Of course we would expect that providers and universities will only be able
> to provide a limited number of users with access. But access rights could be
> awarded on the basis of merit, say, to users who have written at least one
> Featured Article (Exzellenter Artikel, etc.), or have contributed 50 DYKs,
> or what have you. This would actually provide users with a motivation to
> create quality content as well

I object to this strongly. The FA, and DYK processes are absolutely
useless as a measure of an editor's worth to the project. There's
plenty of wikignomes and other mostly unrecognized editors that will
be able to do more than someone just focused on brownie points. The
only thing that should be a consideration is that the editor is
committed enough to use the resources to improve articles, and that
the editor doesn't already have access to the resources another way
(like through their local library). FA and even DYK processes are too
political on some wikis, at least from my experience on en - the
process needs to be aimed at making sure regulars have resources, not
about a reward for some token "achievement".

If we have to base it on numbers, a pattern of contributions over
several months is what we should look for - something that suggests
the editor will keep contributing.

-Stephanie