Hello James, It seems to me (moreover I'm quite sure) that nobody is talking about making content editing more complicate and/or about fancy and nasty distracting stuff like different "bells&whistles".
But now it's standard for any site to have well-structured "facepages" (profiles) to provide for academic the mean to: * properly introduce himself/herself; * get the idea about who is some other contributor/peer; * communicate with other people in well-structured way (structured by groups with particular interests etc.) with modern means to express support of one's opinion etc. Yes, Wikimedia platform provides very flexible and rather mighty (HTML-based) DIY means to organize some profile/facepage but they distract from content creation, do not they (as well as any DIY stuff do)? Yes, Wikimedia platform provides very flexible and rather mighty (HTML-based) DIY-means to organize some "groups of interest" (portals, projects) but... (see above). So my point is not increase of distraction from content (as main object of contributor care, intended care I would stress) but the opposite - significant decrease of such distraction by eliminating the need of DIY self-care (which is not intended at all). The last but far not least: if we really would like to attract more academics we have to change socialization policies and/or traditions as academics (most of them) don't like/appreciate blind (anonymous) peer cooperation. Or we can look at that in such way: if we are talking about credibility of content we have to talk about credibility of contributors as peers in teamwork first. That's why we will need as much of real&exact info on "facepages" as possible plus as much de-"virtualization" by mean of meetups as possible. Look on experience of de:WP. Sincerely, Pavlo On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 2:16 AM, James Heilman <jmh...@gmail.com> wrote: > To attract academics this is and must be viewed as a serious endeavor. > Yes some aspects such as reverting vandalism could have a fun twist > applied to them but the creation of content must remain simple and > serious. Wikipedia already has a problem with its image regarding > credibility. Things that would affect Wikipedia's image must be > carefully considered. I personally do not need further distraction > while I edit. Medpedia http://www.medpedia.com/ has more of a > facebook appearance to it and for that among other reasons I will not > contribute their. We need to keep our goal of writing an encyclopedia > first and foremost. > > -- > James Heilman > MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l