[Wikipedia-l] Certification

[Peter Lofting]

At 8:03 AM -0800 11/1/02, Larry Sanger wrote:
>  > An endorsement list would be the ultimate way to go, showing
>>  names/URLs of individuals or bodies who have accepted the page as
>>  OK/useful, along with a rating value. Amazon.com book ratings could
>>  be a first model - open to all with a star rating. Note that such a
>>  list could also reflect variation in evaluation and people could then
>>  follow links to those endorsers who diverged in their rating to find
>>  out why.
>
>But how on earth can we attract the "knowers" of the world to so much as
>think about Wikipedia for one hot second, without giving them some
>guarantee that they won't be wasting their time?  And how *do* we give
>them that guarantee?

Your comment contains both the assumption that I see as constraining 
your POV and also the key criteria that IMHO will encourage "knowers" 
to pass by:

(1) Your assumption appears to me to be that knowers won't come to 
the site unless it already contains the highest quality knowledge and 
you cannot guarentee that so you are in a catch 22 view of the 
problem. It sounds like you're living through the night before a big 
examination and are terrified of failure!

I would point out that people's motivations are many and varied - 
including 'knowers', and imagining a wider variety of reasons other 
than just wanting ready-perfected look-ups can ease this catch 22 
view of things. e.g.

	- joy of knowledge - people love anything on their chosen subject
	- joy of sharing - people love sharing with others
	- joy of teaching - people love being able to give of themselves
	- joy of refinement - people love being able to perfect (ie. 
correct a page)
	- joy of recognition - people love being seen and acknowledged
	- joy of absorbtion - people love being absorbed in their subject
	- joy of learning - people love finding out new views and 
facets of knowledge
	- joy of children - people love helping the next generation

etc... All these can be strong motivations that do not require 
perfect knowledge to be already present on the site.


(2) The key criteria for 'knowers' to engage in your site is not that 
things are perfect , but that they don't have their time wasted.

That means that there needs to be honest and accurate advertising of 
the status of information and the process by which it is edited. Then 
people can choose whether to invest their time - for whatever reason. 
You will lose people rapidly if their contributions are wasted in 
some way - ignored, bounced, defaced, etc.

Cheers

P