
Science and Wikipedia - breily
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=402
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michael_dorfman
Strange article.

The author writes: "Given that Wikipedia’s stated vision is to give _every
single person in the world free access to the sum of all human knowledge_ ,
you might guess it was started by scientists eager to collect all of human
knowledge into a single source. [...] Even today, contributing to Wikipedia is
regarded as a low-value activity by most professional scientists."

What he seems to be ignoring is that the means that Wikipedia chose also
allows "read/write" access to that "sum total of human knowledge," and that
part of the reason that scientists might regard editing Wikipedia as a "low-
value" activity is that their contributions stand a significant chance of
being reverted or mangled by pretty much anyone with a keyboard.

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michael_nielsen
I wasn't ignoring that. I've asked numerous scientists why they don't
contribute. The common answer given by every single one of those people was
the answer I give in the article - essentially, contributions to Wikipedia are
not something they can put on their CV. One of these people also raised the
read / write point you mention, and, for him, it was the more important issue.

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michael_dorfman
Sure, but how can you put something on your CV when it can disappear (or be
edited beyond recognition) 5 minutes after you post it? Wikipedia has a
fundamentally different process than traditional publishing-- so while the
goal of "free access to the sum of human knowledge" may sound similar to the
goals of the academy, the reality is very different.

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michael_nielsen
Your comment nicely summarizes the point of my article. The obvious conclusion
to draw is that there is something quite wrong with the way the academy is
going about things.

Edit: As a tangential point, Wikipedia uses version control, so all edits are
preserved in a version history. Not that it matters in this case - Wikipedia
edits aren't journal publications, and so most academics would prefer to keep
them off their CV.

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michael_dorfman
Interesting-- I thought the obvious conclusion to draw is that there is
something quite wrong with the way Wikipedia is going about things.

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michael_nielsen
So you think that Wikipedia isn't useful?

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michael_dorfman
It's useful, in the way a public bathroom is useful-- you're glad it's there
when you need it, but the experience really depends upon the behavior of the
last guy to use it before you.

I'll take peer reviewed (or even just professionally edited) content over
Wikipedia, anytime. But, it's certainly better than nothing.

