[Foundation-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions

[Thomas Morton]

On 22 February 2012 12:44, Mike Christie <coldchrist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:05 AM, Thomas Morton <
> morton.thomas at googlemail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Realistically *we are all part of the problem*. You, me, etc. because the
> > problem is the entire ecosystem. Even stuff we think is polite and
> sensible
> > might be incomprehensible to a newbie. Simple things like linking to, or
> > quoting, parts of policy instead of taking time to write a simple
> > explanation. The use of templates. The resistance to listen to arguments.
> > It all adds up into a confusing user experience.
> >
> > This is not a new problem; many online communities suffer, and have
> > suffered, from it.
> >
> > All of the things I mentioned are useful once your dealing with editors
> > aware of the workings - it's not "new and scary" at that point and acts
> as
> > a useful shortcut to streamline our interaction. The key thing to work
> on,
> > I think, is easing newbies into that process without bombarding them with
> > too much of it at once.
> >
>
> This is part of the reason why I have been advocating that the education
> programs take an active role in encouraging the academics who teach classes
> on Wikipedia to become contributors themselves.  If we can provide
> high-quality one-on-one mentoring to academics in the workings of Wikipedia
> we could increase the percentage of users who have a foot in both worlds.
>  Editors without subject matter expertise will always be needed but to
> solve some of the problems on Wikipedia, particularly those regarding undue
> weight and comprehensiveness of coverage, we have to attract experts and
> help them become editors.


That sounds like a great idea! I've always wondered about how our eduction
programs focus on students, but not on the academics that teach them - or
on professional organisations.

During the last Board elections one of the things I kept saying is that we
need to focus on subject matter experts; be they academics
or professionals and get their input.

Tom