[WikiEN-l] Historian teaching with Wikipedia

[Marc Riddell]

> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> on 4/16/09 3:44 PM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>>> Academics learning how to massively collaborate effectively.
>> 
>> We have been collaborating very effectively for a very long time. The
>> results are the substance of this encyclopedia.

on 4/16/09 8:07 PM, Delirium at delirium at hackish.org wrote:
> 
> It varies by field, but my experience (as an academic) isn't really
> along these lines. I've rarely seen successful collaborations between
> more than 2-3 professors, certainly not "massive". I mean, you don't
> usually see an entire Computer Science department working together;
> often, the people in the same sub-area don't even work together,
> depending on how closely their visions and personalities match. Of
> course, many academics "collaborate" with large labs of grad students,
> but that's a more hierarchical form of collaboration.
> 
> Of course you're right that the overall body of knowledge has come from
> a lot of people, so is collaboration of a sort. But it tends to more
> often be the form of big-chunk give and take, rather than pervasive
> massive collaboration. Someone will write a journal article; someone
> else will respond to it or build on it; and so on. But you won't often
> have 20 people working together to come up with a consensus journal article.
> 
I was startled by the statement, "Academics learning how to massively
collaborate effectively". It sounded like we were just getting the hang of
it.

You are right, Mark, it does vary by field; and the various disciplines
within a field. In my own field of Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy a great
deal of collaboration has been occurring through conferences, meet-ups and
snail-mail mailing lists for a great many years (yes, I go a long way back
:-)). That is one of the major ways the field has developed. Now even more
collaboration is taking place thanks to the internet. I am a part of a group
of psychs who share ideas, theories, techniques and case studies on an
ongoing collaborative basis. And I learn something new every time.

Marc Riddell