[WikiEN-l] Writing for the Pedia

[Geoffrey Burling]

As one of those responsible for associating the phrase "low-hanging 
fruit" with Wikipedia, perhaps I should say a few words.

I won't argue that there is no end to what articles Wikipedia could be 
written, or can be written with a surprisingly small amount of work. 
For example, a few weeks ago I thumbed through my copy of the 
Petersen's Field Guide to the Sea Shells of the Pacific coast, 
intending to compare the species it describes to unwritten articles. 
I began -- & stopped -- with Abelone, having found in 10 minutes a 
few dozen candidates. These articles would be stubs, but fairly 
informative ones. I could probably take at random any 5 books from 
my own collection and use them to create a dozen non-stub articles. 
I don't write that as a boast; I suspect that most of you on this 
mailing list could do the same thing.

But we're different from the average person who wants (or is told) 
to write an article for Wikipedia. For one thing, most of them are 
high-school students or undergraduates, & the information that 
Wikipedia has already is far more comprehensive than what the average 
teenager could identify, research and write about in an afternoon -- 
let alone knows exists. Further, it is  probably far more comprehensive 
than the average adult in those respects. I'd say that the average 
subject coverage in Wikipedia has reached the level where anyone who 
wants to improve it either has to know something about the subject 
(in contrast to the usual research technique of a Google search, 
consulting an encyclopedia, or half-heartedly looking through the 
card catalog of a public library), or is motivated to actually learn 
something about the subject.

Maybe this is an indictment of the educational system, but I think 
it is, in one sense, an affirmation of an observation Jimbo once made, 
years ago: writing an encyclopedia is an unusual hobby. Not everyone 
is interested in actually learning about a subject: most people, I 
have found, are content to use the first hit on Google, the news report 
from their favorite television channel, the definition in their 
dictionary, the current revision of a Wikipedia article.

I suspect this is related to the fact that although the English language 
has upwards of 400,000 words, the vocabulary of the average fluent 
English speaker is around 15,000 words. One can't expand that number 
by harvesting a few thousand words from a dictionary; one has to 
actually learn the meanings of these words & learn how to use them. 
But one can get along quite well with those 15,000 words.

That is the reason for my metaphor; most people are willing to settle 
for the low-hanging fruit & wind-falls; only a few will bother to use 
a ladder to get to more of the fruit, & even fewer are willing to climb 
to the tops of the trees to get every last one. I'd like to think that 
this majority at least will do a good job of gleaning, & maybe help 
improve the most read subjects to FA status. This is a more positive 
vision than one where, because writing an encyclopedia is such an 
unusual hobby the finite & small number interested in that hobby 
scratches has joined Wikipedia, the stress caused by the free-for-all 
Wikipedia can often become has driven most away, & the community has 
dwindled to one Admin & five malcontents working to get him banned 
for 3RR violations.

Geoff