[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1252 - 13 msgs

[sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca]

Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

> Actually, that's not at all what I'm worried about.   ;-)
> 
> What I'm most worried about is that Wikipedia will lose contributors,
> because most of them won't get a choice to decide what's in the "real"
> encyclopedia and therefore lose interest. The closer (the more
> "officially") Nupedia is associated with Wikipedia, the less interesting
> it will be to spend time for Wikipedia, because everything one is doing
> there is just the "foreplay" for the "real thing" Nupedia. 

Ok, got it. ;-)

> I admit that I have my personal problems with the Nupedia editing policy,
> and the way authors are treated there as more or less irrelevant (because
> the important persons aren't the authors, but the almighty editors). I
> once offered two ready 2 page articles on "Sauna" and "Sherry" for the
> Nupedia project. I got an awnser like this (I'm exaggerating here, to make
> my point clear): "It's nice, thank you, but can you please strip it down
> to one paragraph, then we will consider to put it in the editing process
> as soon as we've found an editor suitable to the subject".

Yes, there was some rule about having "brief versions" of all 
articles, in order to cover breadth first, then depth.

> Guess what? I
> never thought of Nupedia any more, and I never heard of them, too. I doubt
> if Nupedia (if revived and taking [[Sauna]] and [[Sherry]] from the
> Wikipedia will ever be able to find someone (or even a group of people!)
> with a university degree in either Saunology or Sherryology that is
> willing to work for free and will "approve" those two articles.

That's one of my big problems with most ideas of expert reviewers. 
Although most people advocating expert review deny equating 
expertise with PhDs, it's quite difficult to divide up all the 
knowledge we intend to cover into neat little topics with lead 
reviewers. Who is an expert in long-haul trucking? In bread 
making? Saunas? Probably not university professors.

> But now back to the subject: Imagine what would happen if the title page
> of Wikipedia wouldn't say any longer: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopaedia", but instead:
> 
> "Welcome to Wikipedia, here you can upload articles that probably will go
> into the free Nupedia encyclopaedia editing process some day if the people
> there like it and have the right approved editors for your subject".

No one is proposing this. The "sifter" type proposal (being 
championed by Daniel Mayer at the moment) involves no changes 
whatsoever to Wikipedia. Whatever the expert reviewers are doing 
with our articles, life for us Wikipedians doesn't change.

Erik's proposal is that Wikipedia itself produce a stable (i.e. 
unchanging) version by linking to specific versions of an article in 
its history. No editorial boards or major changes, save a protected 
Brilliant Prose page.

> Again - If Nupedia wants to use Wikipedia articles (forking them 
> or not) -
> they're free to do it, the License perfectly allows for that. Just go
> ahead and do it - there will be enough Wikipedia editors merging back the
> approved articles to Wikipedia, both will profit from that. (However I'd
> like to see how that's going to work with that silly GNU FDL requesting to
> cite all the history. Merging a history from Nupedia and one from
> Wikipedia in the Wikipedia talk page (where else?) must be fun!)

One of the nasty aspects of the GFDL. I often wish the Creative 
Commons licenses were around when we started...

> But I strongly oppose the Wikipedia *supporting* that in any further way.
> It's like shooting ourselfs in the knee (is that a valid phrase in
> english?).

Very close. In English, we shoot ourselves in the foot. :)

> Apart from that, there are some problems at Wikipedia that
> should be adressed by developers first (performance, searching, just two
> name a few.) I don't see a reason why one should spend development time to
> make Wikipedia suit for the Nupedia editing process.

I completely agree that performance and searching should take 
priority at this point. However, as I said above, no one is proposing 
we modify Wikipedia for a Nupedia-type editing process.

Stephen G.
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Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org