[WikiEN-l] Re: A future for Nupedia?

Sun Sep 12 22:45:32 UTC 2004

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:29:46 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>To trot out yet another GNU comparison, most components of GNU and
>Linux have been disparaged by computer scientists and leading
>technologists ("just a hobby system", "no one would ever use it
>for anything important", etc). The interesting thing that happened
>is that over time, some experts (like me) got pulled into the
>projects, and in other cases, the less-expert simply tried
>imitating what experts did, sometimes several times before
>settling on something that worked in practice. The cumulative
>result has shut up a lot of skeptics (and I've had the distinct
>pleasure of some of them saying "Stan, you were right" - aaah...).
>But it did take a long time - GNU is almost 20 years old, and Linux
>is 13, at 3 1/2 years only the true believers worked on them.

Some people seem to have a deep-seated psychological block regrading 
the possibility of an unpaid collaborative project over the Internet 
achiveing anying worthwhile I suspect they have fundamentally 
pessimistic beliefs about human nature: people aren't good at 
co-operating, and no-one would do anything worthwhile unless they 
are paid to do it. It's sad that people have these delusions, 
however, as you point out, over time and with sufficient evidence, 
many will change their minds.

Is this a problem? The success of Wikipedia depends on Wikipedians 
creating articles. Those who don't like the Wikipedia concent aren't 
going to be creating articles anyway, so it is no loss. However, if 
they are in a position to sway others away from using Wikipedia, 
then some of those people who would eventually become Wikipedians 
won't do so, or will do so later. 

>Getting back to WP, one of the things I don't think people appreciate
>is the number of bonafide experts already reviewing WP articles on a
>daily basis. It would be very hard for someone to get something by me
>in the GCC or GDB articles for instance; I know articles in other
>areas also have experts' eyes watching intently.

This is probably most true regarding software, particularly open 
source software. There's a degree of truth in the jibe that 
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia built by Slashdotters.

> It would be a
>pretty low impact simply to have a place to document the existing
>experts (real names with CVs, no hiding behind pseudonyms). The
>recognition alone, even without any special privileges, would attract
>some experts, and the power structure works right - editors will
>tend to defer to the known experts (that happens already) but
>still be able to challenge those who get out of line.

Good idea.

>Going a little further, I could imagine pages having a link going
>to a list of real-name editors who have publicly declared themselves
>to be watching the article.

Yes, in the same way we have a "talk" page attaching to a page.

> Those seeking reassurance can then
>peruse the list to see if they're sufficiently impressed. Conversely,
>it's an incentive to the watchers, whose reputation will suffer if
>the articles they're publicly watching are poor in some way.
>
>Stan

-- 
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than 
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)  