[WikiEN-l] The expert problem, dissolved

[Sage Ross]

> On 28/05/2011 23:22, David Gerard wrote:
>> It turns out that if you're the encyclopedia that everyone actually
>> reads, the mountain will come to you: people will go to some effort to
>> get their field properly documented.
>>
>> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academics-in-new-move-begin-to-work-with-wikipedia/31523
>>

Here's a quick write-up of my perspective on that conference:
http://ragesoss.com/blog/2011/05/30/wikipedia-and-the-psychologists/


On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> That's a remarkably fair and sensible piece.  We're not even close to a
> tipping point, as far as others in academe seeing things that way. But
> in the schematic "experts" - "Wikipedian generalists" - "Joe Public" of
> where our sustainable editor base is going to come from, it tells us
> pretty much why academic experts are going to feel any need to be
> involved with WP.
>

My impression (admittedly based on a fairly narrow range of
experiences in the area) is that we actually are getting pretty close
to a tipping point. And the key lever we have for tipping things is
better tools and guidance and support for having academic experts
assign their students to edit. The amount of enthusiasm and positive
reaction to the Wikipedia Ambassador Program and the whole concept of
Wikipedia assignments... it seems like a different world than it was a
few years ago.

The new education portal, especially as we refine it and start to add
some technical tools for helping profs evaluation their students'
contributions, is going to be a pretty powerful tool for getting more
experts involved (I hope).

-Sage