I can't take it any more.

And so non-selfserving …

Bruhahahahahah.

Look, academia has been having yearly-hire non-tenure track adjunct profs and grad students do all of its teaching "dirty work," for years. You'll recognise a true academic by the way they get together a "seminiar" on something like WP, get it published in an academic journal, have it written for free by others, and then add that publication TO their CVs. All without ever really knowing anything about how WP operates.

How is students learning from Wikipedia any different from how they learn now? Instead of new students being taught by grad student T.A.s and non-tenured flunkies, they'll be taught by me and others like me, writing on WP. It won't advance my academic career, but then I don't have one to advance anyway. And it's not like I'm robbing anybody who actually is in a tenure track-- THEY aren't advancing by teaching anyway. They're advancing by publishing little snippets of data in peer reviewed journals, by getting grant money, and by playing social games.

The worst that will happen in the future is that the students will learn from WP (people like me) and the universities will continue to get the tuition, and hand out the sheepskins for it. If anything, the underlings in academia who do the teaching will have a bit less of a load. But that's fine, since they're never going to see the reward for teaching, as it is. So what's the problem?

The funniest thing about this "proposal" is that some oaf made it who obviously knows nothing about WP, and who obviously never bothered to ask anybody on WP how it would go if they posted summaries of RNA Biology articles as WP articles.

But that doesn't matter. The proposal itself, as printed in NATURE, will go on somebody's CV as an article in NATURE. Even if it never works on WP as they suggest. Which of course, those of us who actually write on WP could have told them. Not that they would have listened. Since having the proposal "work" is not the point. Publishing the stupid proposal in NATURE, is the point.

Greg, you should know academia is as intellectually broke as WP, in most ways. It's really hard to choose one over the other for shear mendacity and assholery.

It's the same with Google Books, Greg. I noticed when typing in "APL programming language", a computer term within Google Books search, up at the top was the Wikipedia article, even though it isn't a book. I double checked this with a number of other science and computing terms and the same thing - the wikipedia article right at the top.

Google abandoned any semblence of relevance about 5 years ago. Today it chucks up a wiki link and something like what what you clicked on lasted time. Unless you have opted-out the search results are now almost totally predicated on your prior choices.

Greg,

Look at the Wikia links …

Bateman is not really distinguishing Wikipedia and Wikia at all.

Jon

Indeed. When I type in "Wikipedia" to Google, the top choice on my list is "Wikipedia Review"

But then, that's just me.

Bateman is the epitomy of the insider "professional academic" who will use all this stuff to get one more entry into his CV, without really understanding it all.

You know its true.

Or he'll follow his own recommendation, edit WP, run afoul of a cabal, get blocked, and then see why having wikipedia contribs as part of your CV maybe isn't such a great idea.

How do I do that? I'm not sure I follow.