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Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics

Posted by samzenpus on from the professor-pitch-in dept.

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."

2 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Isn't it obvious? by LurkerXXX · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Isn't it obvious? by recrudescence · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or, something like Scholarpedia, perhaps?