[WikiEN-l] Wiki editing prize

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:18:35 -0700 (PDT), Jamie Cooper
<newwikifan at yahoo.com> wrote:

>http://digg.com/design/Centiare_Prize_2007_cash_for_best_wiki_designs

Redux: other methods having conspicuously failed, Gregory Kohs is now
trying bribery.  

His fundamental problem is, in my view, that volunteer article writers
don't see much mileage in contributing to a project where the subject
gets the final say in the content - what is the attraction of
carefully documenting a company, warts and all, if the company's PR
people have a right of veto?  Of course some people will sign up to
promote their own interests, we get that on Wikipedia as well, but
these people do not generally make good contributors because they have
no real interest outside of their own financial gain.

I was on the Centiare front page at one point, because I opined that
the project was dead in the water.  Kohs' riposte was to post a
slightly selective Alexa traffic graph showing a sudden growth.
Extending the axis back a month showed that the peak was no better
than the previous peak, from which it had dropped off very sharply,
and last time I checked Alexa the traffic over the last few months was
low and flat.  Who needs a project which exists to document what
companies want said about themselves?  For this we have Google.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG