The idea of Wikipedia happens to be that people put new knowledge into Wikipedia.
Wikipedia unfortunately happens to have quite a few social problems that discourage academics from participating in it.
Winning a Wikipedia discussion while you disagree with what the textbook says but are right but the average Wikipedia author thinks you aren’t is a painful process.
The high school student with a textbook on his side and enough time has a good chance of winning a discussion against a good academic who knows something about the topic.
Unfortunately, that’s as it has to be; you can’t win unless there’s a source that trumps the textbook, no matter what your expertise. As I said elsewhere, an expert can sometimes help more by providing that source than by direct editing.
The idea of Wikipedia happens to be that people put new knowledge into Wikipedia. Wikipedia unfortunately happens to have quite a few social problems that discourage academics from participating in it.
Scholarpedia.org and Citizendium.org are projects that try to get it right.
To what problems are you referring? Academics can edit Wikipedia like anyone else.
This is exactly the problem :-)
Winning a Wikipedia discussion while you disagree with what the textbook says but are right but the average Wikipedia author thinks you aren’t is a painful process.
The high school student with a textbook on his side and enough time has a good chance of winning a discussion against a good academic who knows something about the topic.
Unfortunately, that’s as it has to be; you can’t win unless there’s a source that trumps the textbook, no matter what your expertise. As I said elsewhere, an expert can sometimes help more by providing that source than by direct editing.
Here’s a fairly representative Crooked Timber thread. (Crooked Timber is a blog run more or less exclusively by academics.)