[WikiEN-l] Citizendium hits 5000 articles

[Steven Walling]

IMHO, Wikipedia should - at some point - do a recruiting drive for
academics to get more involved with specialist subjects.

I've tried to do that personally. The problem is that academics feel
entitled to a certain authority. When they can't remember where they saw a
source, they inevitably fall back on: I'm a Ph.D, I trump you.

On Jan 23, 2008 2:24 PM, Ian A Holton <poeloq at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 22:07 +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > On 23/01/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I'd agree with charles comments above, but let me rephrase my
> observation.
> > >
> > > Citizendium has, in my opinion, an infinitely larger potential for
> > > maintaining its current systemic bias, unlike wikipedia, which is
> constantly
> > > correcting this (see things such as User:llrwych's recent devotion to
> the
> > > history of Ethiopia and the like). The very nature of the cz project
> and its
> > > base of contributors demands a bias in the topics it gives substantial
> > > coverage to.
> > >
> > > Start with intellectual and personal elitism, and you're going to have
> that
> > > bias show in your work, just like academia. Also just like academia,
> this
> > > bias doesn't negate the value of the work they do focus on, but you
> still
> > > have to acknowledge that there will always be holes in their coverage.
> >
> > If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about the lack of
> > English speaking experts on topics about non-English speaking
> > countries? I'm not sure how serious an issue that is - most academics
> > anywhere in the world speak decent English, if they look for them, I'm
> > sure they can find suitable experts of Ethiopian history, or whatever.
>
> Certainly, one would only have to look at specialist universities, for
> example my own the [[School of Oriental and African Studies]] in London.
>
> IMHO, Wikipedia should - at some point - do a recruiting drive for
> academics to get more involved with specialist subjects.
>
> Ian [[User:Poeloq]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>