All fields have reviews, textbooks, popularization books, and encyclopedias ... but there are few scholars or disciplines that see creation of these resources (as valuable as they are) as their primary mission.
For this discussion it's important for us to see that there are many ways in which this is highly functional. Telling craftsmen (people?) to pay attention to end users needs rarely results in better design and it severely disrupts their social structures which are focused on intrinsic values. In contrast, "entrepreneurs"/product creators/etc. are very focused on the match between artifacts and needs -- and their communities have very different ways of organizing and motivating participants. While these distinctions are all a matter of degree, in most cases people (and groups) find it very difficult to be both/and. ... On May 4, 2012, at 2:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: > On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote: >> Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not >> knowledge creation. >> >> While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create >> knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence >> rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization). >> >> We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able >> wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we >> don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know >> how to plan wiring. >> >> Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are >> usually different people. >> > > This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have > review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in > a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the > community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a > review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper, > which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even > textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias. > > Cheers > Yaroslav > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
