[Wikipedia-l] Money, money...

Mon Oct 13 06:14:09 UTC 2003

Danny wrote:
>I agree with Steve that we should not pay for knowledge. 
>Having "professional" experts could dictate the direction 
>an article takes--someone can pull rank and say, "Hey, I 
>am the expert. Don't argue with me." 

Then we fire them for breaching two very clear clauses of their employment 
contract; NPOV and working amicably with others. 

But what I am mainly interested in is the hiring of college professors who 
teach a particular language to do what Larry did for the English Wikipedia 
(except in a part time capacity). Why such a specific criteria? Because we 
could suggest to the instructor (or require him/her) to give his or her 
students a choice to obtain part of their grade (and extra credit) by 
translating Wikipedia articles or even create new ones from scratch. This 
would potentially add dozens of Wikipedians contributing to a small Wikipedia 
overnight. 

So an professor who teaches 80 students Arabic at a university could lead his 
or her students into creating many hundreds of articles in a single term. 
Once an article is created by a student, the professor edits it to improve 
usage and grammer and then adds a critique of the article on the student's 
user talk page if needed. Then the student can view the article diff in order 
to see the corrections. Other students could also help improve the article. I 
think that would be a fun way to learn - and teach - a language.  

That much activity should be able to kick-start the Arabic Wikipedia in a 
year's time (which would be a nice cut-off point for the contract). So for a 
few thousand bucks we get a self-sustaining Wikipedia in one of the world's 
great languages. Dirt cheap price if you ask me once the grants start 
comming-in. And they will come-in. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 