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Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics
holy_calamity writes "University professors don't feel their role as intellectuals working for the public good extends to contributing to the world's largest encyclopedia, the Guardian reports. Wikimedia foundation is currently surveying academics as part of a search for ways to encourage them to pitch in alongside anonymous civilians and raise quality. The main problem seems to be the academic ego: papers, talks and grant proposals build reputation but Wikipedia edits do not."
... their precious time to editing Wikipedia, they should first up find a solution to shield them from the drama some Wikipedia editors, admins and ArbCom members love so much.
I'm a professor of mathematics, and in the past I've attempted to contribute to several math related articles on wikipedia. You know what always happens? Someone reverts all my edits within a day or so. It doesn't matter how meticulously crafted and referenced the added material is, my contribution gets removed.
I stopped bothering years ago, and it has nothing to so with my inflated "academic ego", a ludicrous concept itself. If recognition was largely important to academics, they probably wouldn't be academics!
Maybe it's time for the professors as a whole to grow the hell upMaybe it's time for the professors as a whole to grow the hell up.
Or maybe it's time for morons to realize what professors actually do for a living. Sometimes you take weeks or months of your 'spare' time writing grants. You get a score in the top 6% in your field like my friend just did, and it still didn't make the cutoff for funding in his area. So all that time essentially went down the drain. Now he's writing another grant, to try to keep funding for his technicians, post-docs and graduate students. Oh, and he teaches classes in addition to all the other mentoring duties he has. Then of course there's writing papers for peer review publications. Those things that actually add to your CV and get you recognition in your field.
Think he really wants to spend extra hours of his precious time editing a wiki page, when a 12-year old with an attitude who has been on the wiki longer can just reject his edits or change them? Think again.
"Maybe it's time for the professors as a whole to grow the hell up."
Maybe the professors are avoiding contributing until wikipedia trolls grow the hell up.
Why spend several hours of your time trying to write a careful, well referenced, measured piece if there is too high a chance that you'll come back the next day to find "u r gay" or something like that splattered all over it? Or somebody with little knowledge of your field picking a fight with you and re-writing your article without entering into measured debate before undertaking the edits? Some professors feel it's not worth the time contributing to a space that may require a lot of time fighting over for little gain. They might feel their time is better spent communicating through other media, say for example contributing to a popular science book, explaining what they are doing on their personal website, publishing in the academic media or doing talks in science festivals. Perhaps they feel the debate is of higher quality in these channels?
Other academics do publish on wikipedia though, some academics do feel it's a place they can share ideas, e.g. in community informatics. Here's looking at you Mike and Larry
Or, something like Scholarpedia, perhaps?