[WikiEN-l] Did I miss the great Digital Universe debate?

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 1/9/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 1/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I think the consensus was, "It'll be humorous and perhaps a little sad
> >>to see how little they end up with after blowing $10 million," or
> >>maybe that was just my opinion on it.
> >>
> >>FF
> >>
> >
> >oh I don't know. They could currently afford to spend $11.02 per
> >wikipedia article.
> >
> Which for the average expert is going to mean 5-10 minutes per
> article, only enough time for the most minimal fact-checking, let
> alone making it a "featured article". Even if you pinch down and
> say that a good reference needs only 100K articles, you're still
> only getting an hour or so on each.
>
If the source text written for free is well referenced an hour
wouldn't be too bad.  Of course, what people really seem to be missing
is that the $10 million is merely the seed money.  *If* they can get
some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would
probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money
(through donations, sales, services, etc.).

What did Wikipedia start with, half a million and one paid expert? 
Then Larry was fired for lack of funding.  I'm sure in his opinion, if
Wikipedia could have afforded to pay 10 times as many experts for
twice as long, they wouldn't have the credibility problem they have
today.

Anthony