On 2/3/11 11:59 AM, Carcharoth wrote: > On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Andreas Kolbe<jayen...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> The next ten years of Wikipedia should be about multiplying the number of >> real-life scholars and experts participating. The Ambassadors program is a >> good start. Once the demographics change, the rest will follow; and until >> the demographics change, all the talking will avail nothing. > This is an excellent point. Though you may get some angst from those > already present who may feel pushed out as they see the culture of > Wikipedia changing (think how hard it has been for some of those > present from the very beginning, or near the beginning, to adapt over > the last ten years). How to manage such change is an interesting > problem.
It's important to make sure we do maintain the aspects of Wikipedia's culture that have made it work, though. I'm a professor in my day job (though I was an undergrad when I became a Wikipedian), and I don't see academia and academic experts as holding all advantages, though they/we do do well in the having-a-lot-of-domain-knowledge arena. What about Wikipedia's culture actually led to an encyclopedia being written, with a lot of good information, and a fairly neutral tone for the most part? That's something Nupedia didn't succeed in, and on the second point is something even most academic-press books don't succeed in--- the median overview book on a subject sneaks in quite a bit of opinion and original research, and sometimes even digs at academic opponents if the editors let them get away with it, which is why you can't really read an academic book without *also* reading a few journals' reviews of it. -Mark _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
