[WikiEN-l] Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

[Magnus Manske]

On 10/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/10/2007, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>
> > > If you pick the right subject, there are many not-too-obscure areas
> > > where the low-hanging fruit will bury you up to your neck. I've been
> > > doing some checking of our biography coverage and it's surprisingly weak
> > > despite our huge numbers of biographies, I guess because there are an
> > > even more huge number of notable people. Browsing through a PD version
> > > of _Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians_ (1919), we're missing
> > > articles on *almost all* of the people in it! From spot-checking I'd say
> > > we cover maybe 15-20% at best. Similar results can be found if you scan
> > > through the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (UK) or, even more
> > > strikingly, any of the major German biographical dictionaries. And those
> > > are all western examples; our coverage of Indian biographies is even
> > > worse---we don't even have articles on all *current* members of India's
> > > parliament, let alone those from even as recently as the 1990s. So if
> > > you pick the right area, like say "Indian politics", you should find
> > > most of the articles still waiting to be written, with the exception of
> > > a handful of the top-tier most famous people.
>
> > Other areas are scientists. We still are not covering all Fellows of the
> > Royal Society, the US Academy of Sciences or the Australian Academy of
> > Sciences.
>
>
> Do we have suitable red-link lists?

The entries of the Dictionary of National Biography (1903), complete
with partially wikified text now at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/Dictionary_of_National_Biography

Magnus