[Wikipedia-l] Philosophy articles on Wikipedia to review (fwd)

[lsanger at nupedia.com]

Dear all,

I sent the following to the main North American academic philosophy
mailing list, PHILOSOP.

It would be fantastic if you could take a moment to post something similar
to other academic mailing lists.  I think we're definitely to the point
where we can get a lot more academics on board.

Larry

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 17:43:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: lsanger at ross.bomis.com
To: PHILOSOP at louisiana.edu
Subject: Philosophy articles on Wikipedia to review

Hello,

This is an informal call for review of encyclopedia articles about
philosophy.  I will try to keep this short.

Begun last January, "Wikipedia" ( http://www.wikipedia.com/ ) is a
"wiki"-based encyclopedia.  This is a collaborative, open, community-
edited encyclopedia, led by me (I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy last
year).  It has since grown to over 14,000 entries (with over 2,000 more
added each month) and has been the subject of coverage by the New York
Times and MIT's Technology Review.  The contents are "open content," which
means roughly the contents will always be freely distributable in any
medium.

Wikipedia is loosely associated with the more straight-laced peer reviewed
project Nupedia ( http://www.nupedia.com/ ).  The pair of websites
together constitute the world's first serious open content encyclopedia
project.

So far Wikipedia has managed to attract quite a few active academics (but
none in philosophy, alas--I'm hoping to attract a few here).  To be
accurate, however, most of the participants are fairly articulate computer
programmers, students, and professionals from around the world.  The
quality of articles is uneven in places, but constantly improving--and,
everything considered, surprisingly good for a project that is as
completely open as it is.  We edit each others' work, and the results are
not perfect, but encouraging.

We could use a few philosophers to help vet (and develop) articles written
on philosophical topics.  A few articles that I think particularly need
some careful attention from philosophers are these:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Scientific_method
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Atheism
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Postmodernism

There are a lot of other articles, that (unlike these) *I* wrote; I simply
pasted the contents in from old lectures, and these need work.  Anyway,
many other philosophical articles have been started; nearly all of them
are works in progress that need your input.  The central philosophy
jumping-off page is this:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Philosophy

And if you want to learn more about the project in general, see the
welcome page and the FAQ:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Welcome,_newcomers
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_FAQ

Finally, if you're very skeptical about the very idea of Wikipedia, please
see this page, which I wrote specifically for the skeptics:

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia/Our_Replies_to_Our_Critics

Thanks for your attention!

Larry Sanger, Ph.D.
Wikipedia main organizer  http://www.wikipedia.com/
Editor-in-chief, Nupedia  http://www.nupedia.com/