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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."
You're asking an academic to write stuff in the same vein as John D Public.
Our Professors tell us to NEVER use wikipedia except as for a citation. Do you think they're going to then go do their edits? If wikipedia wants academics they'll need a nice clean slate for only academics to play in.
Or, perhaps, academics don't see any reasons to contribute to something that'll erase anything they might add because of Wikipedia's No Original Research clause?
Most I hear from academics is that they got annoyed with Wikipedia once somebody removes their well explained text, around a subject they know a lot about, once too often.
A few weeks back there was a /. article about there were a sizable portion of wikipedia contributors who were just up and leaving because they didn't want to deal with that anymore.
I wouldn't expect a person who spends their days doing research / classes on their topic-of-expertise to have more patience than anyone else in dealing with that.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
... 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.
More to the point, tenure and promotion depend significantly upon recognized publications. I'd speculate that there is zero incentive for an academic to spend time updating Wikipedia, but the traditional conference/journal/book publication path is required for advancement in the academic career.
To represent the disinterest in Wikipedia updates as "academic ego" is extremely misleading.
Anyone contributing something to wikipedia is bound to get disrespected by the moderators with obvious personal causes.
Being overwhelmed by reverts by random internet zealot while having a degree in the field you are trying to work in can be infuriating and pretty hard to live with.
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!
Ph.D. historians (and similarly, all other scientists) really, really hate it when their texts are edited by a highschool dropout who thinks he remembers a history channel feature broadcast three years ago which totally refuted the presented facts and conclusions written by the academic who only studied the subject for a measly twenty years.
Yeah, calling it "ego" implies that it's unwarranted. Professionals/experts in any field (including academics) often get sick of dealing with retards, trolls, under-informed know-it-alls, control-freaks with OCD, and your basic antisocial sociopaths... and Wikipedia has lots of those.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Academics want to get promoted and tenured. Publishing in PEER REVIEWED journals with high citation and impact scores gets you promoted. Writing for online references that may be used by logarithmically more people does not. Change that reality and you can have all the contributors you can handle.
Set Wikipedia to be a peer-reviewed reference. Give citation credit for whole pieces or sections of articles, be able to get accurate numbers of users to the authors and you get useful stuff on their end.
Exactly.
"Hey you guys are really smart, right? Want to come hang out with a bunch of people who aren't? They aren't too annoying until they come by and start correcting you, when they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. C'mon, it will be fun!!"
I don't even like academics but the self proclaimed wikilords trying to attract knowledgeable people is pretty hilarious.
1. Hire a person or two to work @ Wikipedia (I live in town, Jimmy, hire me!) to accept and process documentation from users indicating them an expert on subject matter. So, I submit my PhD in Astrophysics, and I get the Astrophysics Expert flag on my account. I give my resume saying I've been a programmer for 30 years, and I get the Computer Programming expert flag. 2. Use the existing tag cloud-style architecture to tag articles by their subject matter (ie, this article on geostationary orbit goes in Astrophysics). 3. Any edits made by a Verified Expert to an article flagged as being part of their area of expertise must be voted down by multiple Wikipedians before they can be removed.
Research papers, talks, and grant proposals aren't ego. They're what you get paid for. As a tenure track (around here) you have to average about 1 paper a year as your own, or a talk (depends on your field), or both, + supervise grad students who also publish papers. And you pay for all of that with grants which you get from having successful grant proposals. Once you have tenure the 'papers per year' metric drops a bit but the basic 'publish or perish' mantra applies.
Research and writing are work, they take time to do well. If I'm not going to get credit for it I have to do it 'on my own time'. I don't know a lot of people that work for 8 hours a day and then go home and try and do the same thing for another 6 hours for the fun of it. Some profs eat sleep and breathe their work though, but even then, if you have things like families an
With OSS you can contribute, and then write about your contributions or you can 'give it away' (say host on some website) for free. And the author gets credit for both the software and papers written about it. With wikipedia your changes could be tossed if some random admin doesn't like them, or if someone else comes along and decides to change it. Your name never shows up, and you don't get credit for it in any way that would go on a grant proposal or that you can say at a promotion and tenure meeting as meaningful work you've done.
I'm sure if there was a good way to give academic credit for contributions to things like wikipedia it would be a great place for people to start publishing work.
I've seen very few pro-wikipedia comments here but have read many decent wikipedia articles, so I think there may be selection bias going on.
Personally, I have edited various biomedical, biochemical pages and never had any problem. In fact the majority of future modifications only improved upon what I had created. I almost always use wikipedia as a starting point when learning about a subject. Often there is some random fact or connection someone has added to the articles that wouldn't fit well enough for a review article and I would have never thought to check on my own otherwise. Anyone who knows how to do actual research wouldn't really trust even a textbook or peer reviewed article 100% anyway.
I see no problem at all with double checking everything seen on wikipedia before taking it as "fact," this is what people should be doing no matter what the source is. Even if it is a primary source, you need to look at the data and decide for yourself. Of course, if you aren't an expert in an area then it may not be worth the time to double check everything. In that case peer review is more trustworthy than wikipedia, but there should still be a nagging thought in the back of your head that the info is beyond what you should feel "sure" about. Then it becomes important to know your boundaries.
Anyway, I have found reading and contributing to wikipedia a rewarding experience.
"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
Academics don't skip out on editing wikipedia because of ego. Academics skip out on editing wikipedia because they don't have time to do so. Most academics who are involved in research spend so much time writing grant applications and doing other critical job-maintaining functions that they simply don't have time to fight with wikipedia editors to try to improve a page - even if it is a page that directly relates to their own work.
If wikipedia wants more academic work, they need to do it themselves. They should spend more time looking for primary sources, and whenever possible obtaining them and citing them properly. In this case, the NIH actually helps wikipedia's cause as a new rule for NIH funding states that NIH funded research must be published in publicly-accessible, no-fee journals (or copies of the same article must be made available freely through NIH pubmedcentral).
So in other words, wikipedia really isn't in the right to be accusing academics of having "ego" issues. Wikipedia is asking for academics to work for less than nothing, as they would be diverting time away from their own working hours (which is often close to around the clock as it is) to do something that does not help them keep their research moving.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In the same way, "troll" doesn't mean "I disagree". Wikipedia deletionism, and editorial tribalism, is often discussed on Slashdot, and seems to me to be a real obstacle to getting academic contributions. Did I really need to explain that connection, or was it obvious from a moment's consideration?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.