Dear Eugene, well well well, nothing is ironic, only men are. You may have something against the word "educated", but other mails of this thread say exactly what I wrote: that the content of Wiki is not the result of the knowledge of "anyone" but of educated people (the better is become, the more). Of course, also these people may be wrong, but probably not much more than in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But this is only a comparative figure - the question are: - what and how much is missing - do the writers name the sources. In Wikipaedia I am missing the sources and very often content. As others said, it might be a start - but you better return to other media and sources four sound work. Getting back to the original question and matter, there was the museological question "Is the Wiki model also a model for museums?". As I said, as long as museum curators do not give up their ICOM duties, there might be a lot of collaboration with people outside the museum to produce exhibitions and exhibition labels. The question, if the Wiki editors are paid, is not the original question and not of importance (even, if I mean that people doing lots of work should be paid and might be paid.) Going a little bit into the financial details of Wiki, you may find the following information: The Board of trustees and the Wiki regional "Chapters" are not paid, but their assistants and some specialists. As the costs for Wiki in the 3rd quarter of 2005 were $198,000.00, is seems that the costs for Wiki have risen to 800,000.00 a year. Article validation From Meta Jump to: navigation, search Article validation (AV) in general refers to proposed mechanical systems by which editors may be assisted in exerting correctional editorial decisions upon articles, while keeping any current open or "democratic" creation and editing of articles. Currently the only mechanism for "validation" is the open wiki model, which allows users to alter, adapt, reform, or revert changes made during a previous edit. The wiki model is synonymous with openness --ie. one wherin corrective measures are post-active (done after the fact), and while the wiki model has led to a great deal of success in building an encyclopedia from scratch, the growth of the project has exceeded the size of its core editorship, and in controversial areas has been seen as an obstacle to producing a "stable" or "professional" encyclopedia. In essence, AV is a plan to move toward implementing a functional mechanism which would change the modus operandi of Wikipedia away from the idealistic concept of the completely open model, and give an important tool by which trusted editors can be mechanically assisted in repelling vandalism. Because such a change could theoretically have an impact upon the very philosophy by which Wikipedia has thus far succeeded, it is necessary that such mechanism be well though out, openly corrected, and thoroughly explained. Who can Validate? set up a validation committee (a group of trusted, interested wikipedians) - requires separate "validator access" for those who have been approved to serve on these validating committees? any user or group of users satisfying some statistical requirement (combination of time since registration, # of article edits, # of total edits) any user or group of users Any user, but different users validations are worth different amounts, based on trust metrics. (I'm doing some more research into this now, and will post back if I come up with much.) Lbs6380 </wiki/User:Lbs6380> 04:07, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) --- As promised: my ideas <http://www.dxdt.org/~luke/wiki/index.php/Rating_Users>. Feel free to copy them here and play around with them. Administrators (who are trusted members of the community), and any user who have been marked as trustworthy by 3 administrators. automatic validation: after a certain # of (qualified?) users have edited the article after a member of a certain group has edited the article after the version has remained current for some time (therefore assuming the previous edit was legitimate and not vandalism) separate validation restrictions for different kinds of validation (e.g., creating factual-validation committees for each major category, based on experience/expertise) (Note that few of the above presently relate to the level of knowledge about the subject of a 'validator', merely of their longevity or ability in wiki editing. This may not be appropriate for some subjects --VampWillow </wiki/User:Vampwillow> 11:28, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)) [edit </w/index.php?title=Article_validation&action=edit§ion=21>] How to Validate? #Validation via extra metadata - let users add input about various facets of an article, and summarise that in terms of whether and how thoroughly the article has been validated. #Validation by committee - have an editorial board which selects topical committees which go around setting a single 'validated' flag on articles once they have reached maturity. #Weighting and averaging reviews - Require en:supermajorities <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/supermajorities> among trusted reviewers for key aspects of articles; use a crude trust metric to decrease the leverage of mischievious reviewers. Wikimedia staff From Meta Jump to: navigation, search The Wikimedia Foundation </wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation> currently employs three members of staff. Everyone else involved with the projects is a volunteer, including members of the Board of Trustees </wiki/Board_of_Trustees>. General Wikimedia Assistant </wiki/Wikimedia_Assistant>: Danny Wool </wiki/User:Danny>, full time as a Wikimedia Assistant </wiki/Wikimedia_Assistant> to work in the Florida office as of September 2005. Hardware Kyle Anderson </wiki/User:SolarKennedy>, employed as a part time hardware manager for the Tampa servers, replacing Chad Perrin who resigned in August 2005. Software Brion Vibber </wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER>, Wikipedian and full time employee (as of summer 2005). Brion is also Chief Technical Officer </wiki/Chief_Technical_Officer> Interns Two interns are currently employed in the Wikimedia office. Rasha al Ameer <http://www.journalism.umd.edu/Humphrey/fellows.html> is working as an intern at Wikimedia's head office in Florida approximately one month. Her primary interest is in building up the Arabic language Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ar:Arabic_language_Wikipedia> and proposes to help us organize a conference in the Middle East. She is Lebanese and is financed by the United States Department of State <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State>. With her language skills and connections, this is a wonderful opportunity to bolster Wikipedia in the Middle East and fulfill our mission as an education tool for millions of people there. Mónica Guerrero is an officer intern who will be working with Danny Wool. She is a Peruvian student, doing an M.A. in Latin American Art at the University of South Florida. She speaks English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Her work involves much of the day-to-day office operations that are so overwhelming. Danny is hoping that Monica can help bolster our relations with the Spanish Wikipedia community, particularly in any potential projects involving Latin America. See also Budget </wiki/Budget>. Retrieved from "<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_staff>" Meetings/August 14, 2005 From the Wikimedia Foundation Budget The following budget was drafted by Daniel and approved by the Board. This budget is only for the third quarter, which ends at the end of September. Hardware : $125k Hosting : $16k Travel : $7.5k Domain names : $1k Office expenses : $2.5k Miscellaneous : $1k CTO : $12k Hardware assistant : $1.5k Promotion : $500 Legal insurance : $1k Legal expenses : $3k Executive assistant : $5k Audit : $2k Chapter startup : $2k Reserve (10%) : $18k Total : $198,000.00 Meetings/February 7, 2005 From the Wikimedia Foundation < Meetings </wiki/Meetings> Jump to: navigation, search A finance meeting was held on IRC on February 7, 2005. Present from the Board </wiki/Board_of_Trustees>: Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouard, Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell Also present: Daniel Mayer (Chief Financial Officer <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chief_Financial_Officer>) [edit </w/index.php?title=Meetings/February_7%2C_2005&action=edit§ion=1>] Summary of meeting $130k budget approved. See Budget/2005 </wiki/Budget/2005>. Developers and employees Brion Vibber will be employed using money which is being donated for dedicated RSS feeds <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Syndication_feeds> and similar deals. Chad Perrin is being employed as a hardware assistant for one day per week. $1500 is budgeted for this in the first quarter of 2005. Brion may be asked to complete the proposed membership task. Jimmy will to try to recruit more developers at FOSDEM 2005 <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FOSDEM_2005> in Brussels later this month. [edit </w/index.php?title=Meetings/February_7%2C_2005&action=edit§ion=6>] Other expenses Jimmy is working full time working on Wikimedia from the Wikimedia offices, as is Terry Foote half time, so office expenses are now being budgeted for. So much in the moment to the "democratic" model getting to its edges. Best regards Dr. Christian Müller-Straten (As many readers of the lists have at least Ph.D. degrees, I find it quite funny to be called "the doctor". I am no medical doctor. The degree in some countries in Europe becomes part of the name.) Verlag Dr. Christian Müller-Straten / MUSEUMS AGENTUR Kunzweg 23, 81243 München, T. 089-839 690 43, Fax -44 Mails werden mit täglich aktualisierter PANDA-Software geprüft. [log in to unmask] Are your institution and exhibition already listed under http://www.museum-aktuell.de? Last count for January 2006: more than 181,000 hits. For 2006, we expect 2 million hits. "Eugene Dillenburg" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb: How ironic that the doctor insisting on the need for educated authority is, in fact, mistaken about the two issues he argues. :-) No one in this thread has suggested that museums surrender all control over content, merely that they collaborate with visitors. The thread was inspired by a journal article which discussed collaboration, not surrender. I believe we all agree with Dr. Muller-Straten on this point, and can put this particular debate to rest. As for wikis, Jeremy is correct. ANYBODY can write an article, and there are NO paid editors. This is not a "fairy tale;" it is fact. Some simple research (such as reading the links Jeremy provided, or joining a wiki) will demonstrate this. Eugene Dillenburg Exhibit Developer The Science Museum of Minnesota ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . 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