[WikiEN-l] Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia

Mon Sep 13 02:17:29 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
>>
>>But is it really necessary?
>>    
>>
>Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and
>librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve
>content for publication. 
>
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active.  
These responses are a sign of success, not of failure.   Your reaction 
to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.  
Contrast this with the view expressed in the Observer article.  Having 
WP generaly accepted by the schools may still be five or ten years down 
the road.  It would not surprise me if some of these teachers who reject 
Wikipedia would then turn around and treat one of the commercial 
duplicates of Wikipedia as authoritative just because it can't be edited 
by everybody.

Reacting to these situations by adding more bureaucracy could easily but 
unwittingly subvert the ideas that made Wikipedia what it is to-day.

Ec