New subject: A future for Nupedia?

9 Sep 2004

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  Message: 6
 Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 23:30:32 +0100
 From: Rowan Collins &lt;rowan.collins(a)gmail.com&gt;
 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia? 
Folks,

I would PLEAD with everyone to '''not''' go the road of requiring

academic certifications for approval (or even to value them 
excessively).

Granted, I agree there is some need for an approval/review mechanism, 
but once again GNU/Linux/BSD lead the way:
We should IMHO simply adopt the current common Open Source software 
development practice of having '''stable''' and
'''current/unstable''' 
branches -- ''of each article'', in our case. Periodically, articles 
would be subjected to similar processes like Peer review and/or 
Featured article candidates. They would then (if successful) have a 
certain version declared stable (ie. promoted to the stable branch). 
(The criteria for "stable" should however not be "brilliant prose" but

"factual correctness and NPOV".) This would greatly extend review 
activity as contributors would be motivated to have their contributions 
approved for stable and would thus increasingly participate in review 
processes. Once a sufficient number of articles have stable versions, 
the respective Wikipedia's default user setting could be switched to 
"display stable branch".

But we should not, definitely not, ''require'' academic accreditation 
in any way -- or even attach substantial value to it. Let 
contributions, not certificates be our decisive factors. Accepting 
something because A says it and A is academically accredited as xyz is 
the reverse of an [[ad hominem]] attack -- and it's equally flawed 
logic, IMHO. There are a lot of reasons why under the "academic model" 
of a knowledge economy a lot of potentially good ideas are lost and 
wasted. One example of this might be that an otherwise brilliant head 
may just not be capable of concentrating for hours and months on end 
and thus might never have a chance of becoming academically recognized. 
I thought our core strength was just the very fact that we are able to 
merge each and every bit of input from each and all comers.
As I recently wrote to one of our detractors:

...
 > Many of us believe that it is beneficial to make
it as EASY as 
> possible to contribute to our encyclopedia.
>
> The traditional approach to writing encyclopedias, to aggregating 
> human knowledge, has been to make it as DIFFICULT as possible to 
> contribute. You have to obtain formal certifications and undergo 
> formal training to be even allowed to contribute. This is done in the 
> hope of  reaching and maintaining high standards.
>
> Many of us believe that this however stifles progress as it excludes 
> all knowledge and knowledge-based skills obtained in any other way 
> (than formal accreditation).
>
> We put a process in place that will accept all comers in the first 
> instance -- and combine and distill these collective contributions to 
> reach high standards.
> Our daily growth and quality improvement shows that the traditional 
> approach -- only allowing very few select individuals to contribute 
> -- wastes enormous talent, potential and opportunity for progress in 
> all fields of human knowledge. Thus, one of our core operating 
> principles is to lower any bars to entry as much as possible, if not 
> to outright abolish them. Anyone can contribute. You don't need to 
> provide certifications. You don't need to show ID or a credit card. 
> You don't need to give an email address. You don't even need to log 
> in or create an account. You can edit. Because you have UNIQUE 
> knowledge skills. Dr. Pyotr Anokhin calculated that the number of 
> possible combinations in the human brain was 10 to the power of 799 
> (seven hundred ninety nine). In short, NO ONE on this planet will 
> ever have the same thoughts as you. It thus makes sense for us to be 
> as inclusive as possible. We would be honored to welcome your 
> contribution to our modest but growing record of human knowledge. 
I would be very disappointed to say the least if this community now 
turned around to go the "traditional academic" way and proved my view 
of things wrong.

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com