Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany 157
tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does (Score:5, Interesting)
The best suggestion I've seen is that Wikipedia can go the way of Linux distributions. For those who are willing to do their own fact-checking, they can get the straight dope from Wiki, warts and edit wars and all. For academic distributions, editing boards can decide what to accept from the live articles. It naturally won't be all of Wikipedia, just what pertains to the topics that the editing team think are appropriate for the distro. MIT may pull in a ton of science articles and leave out the articles about countries, TV shows, music, etc. Harvard Business School may concentrate on business history, applicable case law, and other subjects encompassed in the curriculum but find the material MIT covers to be factually correct but outside the interest of the course. These distros can then filter edits through a peer review process to make sure they agree with what's entered. The reputation of the editing board is on the line in these distributions and factual inaccuracies here would incur as much shame as if the error occurred in a peer-reviewed journal.
To extend the comparison to open source, one could consider the academic distros to be the stable fork, straight wiki would be the beta version. The respect and prestige accorded to the various editing boards will be a matter of public opinion. Because the board members are not just anonymous yahoos on the net but people with careers and reputations, the overall quality of work should be higher. And, seeing as all of this knowledge is "open source," original research appearing in an academic distro can always be ported into the real wiki.
I do not think any of this is starry-eyed optimism or unrealistic hippie idealism, I think it is quite realistic and the hard parts have already been demonstrated for the skeptics.
Citizendium (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to (Score:5, Interesting)
The neo-Nazi party, the NPD - and others - are not banned. In parts of Germany they have elected members and considerable power and influence. They differ only slightly from the Nazi party - and that is only because aspects of what they believe in are censored by German Law (The censorship laws are actually part of the problem - they drive neo-Nazi's underground and mask their true numbers). In my experience, as one who is not German but has lived in Berlin for many years, the rise of the neo-Nazis is much greater than the average German in the street realises. There is a significant and growing problem with extreme right wing behavior modern Germany. The Nazi's seem to be smarter this time round. They are making legal changes much more slowly this time, but it is happening.
Seemingly small things, like the decision to mark the site of Hitler's bunker, or the decision to remove the Palast Der Republik in favour of a rebuilt Schloss, are all giving the extreme right more power and influence.
Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.
Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that. However, that is simply a function of the fundamental problem with Wikipedia -- cabals rule all. In this, Germany is no different to Microsoft, to Scientology, to the Ayn Rand lovers in the WikiFoundation itself, or indeed to any and all with an agenda and resources.
The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is its delusions of authority, and its designs on the same. If people stopped taking it seriously it would be one hell of a lot more useful and authoritative.
Re:Defending Germany's POV (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a nice way to muddy the waters of our very existence. Taking your approach leads down the road of questioning even the most basic and well established theories and facts about life, the universe and everything. Nothing in their funding stipulates the advancement of a certain POV, they are essentially funding scientists at large (within Germany anyway) to contribute whatever their professional views are to Wikipedia, which can eventually lead to a sort of peer reviewing process in a public forum. Nothing prevents dissenters from disputing any material presented on a Wikipedia page, the hope is that over time these battles of authority will result in a more authoritative Wikipedia, and will perhaps also let them refine an authority-based editing system. The only ones that should be afraid of a rational discourse in a public forum should be those without a rational basis.
Re:absolutely terrible development (Score:1, Interesting)
Comparing Germany today to 1930 (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I go to a public showing of the nazis (yes, the courts have to allow it unless there's a very good reason not to; right of public assembly is sacred after all) there are at least 10-50 times as many people demonstrating against them as there are nazis. That feels good. No actually it's terrible that there's even just ONE nazi standing there, shouting seriously stupid things. It breaks my heart that yound and old people are among them. The old one will die out naturally, but the young ones are just desperate, which really is a shame. At least the government has quite some money put into projects to show kids what happened in the 3rd Reich and to root out the cause of frustration. Not enough in my opinion, but they don't stop with it at least.
Germany has not forgotten. Not at all. Come over here and you will see. Ask Jews who live here now, even they will tell you that. We have many, many museums, pieces of art, historic sites and whatnot treating the 3rd Reich critically, none of which try to glorify anything that happened back then - it's the brutal truth.
As to Wikipedia: No, there's no danger of Nazis hijacking it. Firstly, it's not at all in their area of interest (why would they care about environmental issues?) and secondly there are about 83 million Germans who are no Nazis (out of 83.x million) who will report/fix any hijacked site.
And it's great that our government does this - others should do the same. Knowledge for the people for free in an accessible form. Great!
Re:absolutely terrible development (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:absolutely terrible development (Score:3, Interesting)