[WikiEN-l] Subscription idea

[Alec Conroy]

On 12/21/08, Thomas Larsen <larsen.thomas.h at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  This is an interesting idea indeed. However, I'm not sure it would
>  fly, for two reasons:
>
>  1) I doubt many receivers (of journals, etc.) would be able to
>  understand them well enough. Academic papers aren't always easy to
>  understand, especially for a non-expert, and they could be, God
>  forbid, _misunderstood_.

My experience is 100% to the contrary.   By and large, we're not
exclusively laypeople-- often we ARE the experts.  Our math articles
are written by math experts, our chemistry articles are written by
chemists, our physics articles are written by physicists.

Plus, however difficult it is to understand articles, it's all the
more difficult to try to write without any access to them, going
exclusively by popular press accounts or abstracts.  The results of
having access are almost guaranteed to be better than the current
situation, where some editors do have access, some editors don't have
access, and so it's hard to double-check each other's work.

>  2) Service providers would, I think, be unwilling to catch on to this
>  idea, given the low image of Wikipedia in many areas of academia.

I'm skeptical the service providers will think much beyond whether its
in their own self-interest (be that purely financial, charitable, or
PR).

My experience, however, is that everyone in academia LOVES Wikipedia--
a few old fogeys excepted perhaps.  But people who like to learn love
a giant encyclopedia that's free and has entries on everything.

Academia loves wikipedia-- they just don't like it when it's used for
something it's not.  A master carpenter loves having a power
screwdriver for home repairs--  he just doesn't want to go to his
jobsite and find his apprentices clumsily trying to use the blunt side
of a power screwdriver to hammer nails.

Alec