[Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

Sun Oct 12 07:13:18 UTC 2003

Perhaps I'm completely cynical, but the variety of suggestions about
hiring experts to keep watch, or college professors, or
"known-neutral-and-knowledgeable" folks is a bit troubling and un-Wiki.
(And for those who know what I do for a living will find it ironic. :) 

If this route is considered, we should ensure no greater authority will
be conferred upon this class of contributors.  So far, the suggestions
by Delerium and Mav have been innocent enough, but could be dangerous if
it becomes related to ownership, entitlement or keeper-status of certain
topics.  

In the most extreme case, it reminds me of "The Simpsons" episode where
the Mensa chapter of Springfield take responsibility for running the
town (with their so-called "genius") only to have things go horribly
wrong, and have Stephen Hawking come by to chastise them. :)

-Fuzheado

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 2:24 PM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] $6,000 goal reached!

Delirium wrote:
>For example, a good use of funds (in my mind)
>would be to pay researchers a minimal token 
>salary for adding information on relatively 
>un-fun but need-to-be-in-an-encyclopedia topics. 

With a large enough grant we could hire college professors part time to 
contribute to selected topics. Yes, that would be neat. 

One thing I would love to see happen would be a college (or even high
school 
for that matter) Latin instructor work with his or her students on
creating a 
whole bunch of Latin articles. Heck, he or she could also work on a
Latin 
textbook too!  

We could have year long contracts and move from language to language
among the 
smaller Wikipedias. /That/ would majorly kick-start many language
Wikipedias 
that might otherwise languish for years. I'm a firm believer that one of
the 
major reasons why Wikipedia took off was due to the fact that Larry
Sanger 
was a full time paid editor of Wikipedia during its first year. 

A webpage designer and usability experts could also be hired to revamp
our 
user interface. With enough money we could get a lot of the
less-than-fun 
stuff done that would otherwise take a long time relying only on
volunteers. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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