User talk:Wolf530/Educating Academia

Wrong emphasis

While there is nothing wrong with the basic idea of creating a meatspace Wikipedia boot camp, the emphasis is wrong. Academics aren't kept away from contributing because of technical inexperience; they're warned off by the bad press, which in turn is generated by the hostile, confrontational atmosphere and the lack of dedication to verifiable truth. Academics expect an academic atmosphere and peer review. We can certainly provide the former if we stop acting like a playground full of bullies. We need to demonstrate that collaborative editing is a good substitute for the latter.

You and I both know that anyone can edit anonymously or pseudonymously; but to an academic (publish or perish!) it is a basic assumption that you publish under your own name. While you might get an academic to swallow the "pool" anonymity of WP, to submerge his edits in the whole, he is still going to feel that he is staking his professional reputation on every edit he makes.

In order to welcome academics into WP, we must change our culture; we cannot expect to change the academic's psychology or greatly improve his skill set. John Reid 19:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I can think of a number of my own college professors who would probably enjoy participating, but are simply unaware of Wikipedia or believe that trying to learn how to edit is too difficult. Nonetheless, the point is not solely to educate them on the technical aspects, but also to encourage them to learn the wiki way of editing, and also show them that editing does not mean just making changes and forgetting about them. One of the strengths of our community are those people who participate, watch pages, and also follow up to ensure that articles are progressing the way they want them to. Someone who's used to "old world" (non-web) type stuff isn't going to notice or understand how to use the "Watchlist." These are simple things that can be taught easily.

The goal is not to change the psychology of someone in the academic field. It is to teach them something -- and teaching is a world they understand. Furthermore, you don't have to "greatly" improve someone's "skill set," you just have to get them to understand the basics. What it comes down to is that Wikipedia is seen as something of a walled garden to people who aren't techno-savvy. If we can help them find the door to the garden, the cost of trying to get in decreases dramatically.

Finally, there's no point in sitting here trying to argue that WP needs to change it's attitude and culture: that's not going to happen anytime soon and certainly not without a sea-change in the way the wiki works. This idea is a simple way to get new people involved who have a value to our community. We can worry about changing WP's attitude later. Right now, let's work on what we can do easily. --Wolf530 19:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree. The community wikistress level is very high; the time is ripe to propose substantial changes in the way we do business with one another. This old cart is starting to break down; fixing it up is an immediate need. John Reid 04:14, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's incredibly shortsighted that the only two responses I've seen so far are people who are not interested in getting people from Academia involved in Wikipedia. We're talking about trying to get more users who actually have real education in the subjects we want to build our wiki with instead of random spammers and vandals.

"Wikistress" has nothing to do with this project. This project has to do with trying to recruit valuable minds to help build Wikipedia. Furthermore, if "the time is ripe to propose substantial changes in the way we do business" -- can that not be done concurrently? Is only one project allowed to run at a time around here?

If we spend the next five years wishing and hoping that attitudes will change, we're going to miss a lot of good opportunities to bring new people into our community.

We really don't need anymore negative opinions on this page. Right now I'm just looking for folks who are ready to be constructive and help make this project a success. --Wolf530 16:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)