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

[Brian Salter-Duke]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 03:07:53PM +0000, David Gerard 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?

Some. I think [[List of Fellows of the Royal Society]] is incomplete 
and it only has 8 redlinks, 7 of them interestingly in the "A"s.

[[List of members of the National Academy of Sciences]] lists current
members only and is full of redlinks. The members who have died must
also have a lot of people with no articles.

[[List of Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science]] is, I think,
complete and is full of redlinks. That is a real mine for Australian
educators to use.

I have been working through the list in [[International Academy of
Quantum Molecular Science]] and there are still lots of redlinks there.

I find it rare for BLP issues to come up with biographies of not
massively known scientists. Mind you, it is a good job [[Antoine
Lavoisier]] is not alive as I and others are reverting vandalism on that
article all the time. [[Louis de Broglie]] attracts more than one would
think too.

Brian.

> 
> - d.

-- 
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au  
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
           Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity