User:Peter Damian/SEP vs WP

SEP vs WP
It has long been an article of faith for many here that the traditional model of author-owner, peer review, editorial management and fixed release versions has been superseded by Wikipedia. If you argue about this, people point to the failure of Nupedia to grow in the rapid way that Wikipedia did in 2001.

But actually there is a good example of an online (and free) encyclopedia developed using the traditional model, namely the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I joined Wikipedia in 2003 and I have watched the SEP grow. It now has over 2,000 articles. How does it compare to Wikipedia? The table below shows some of the SEP entries under 'A' which I took in the exact order they occur in the Stanford Encyclopedia Table of Contents. The first column is a link to the SEP article, the second to the Wikipedia article if there is one.

Judge for yourself. My view is that the traditional model wins hands down, at least for the complex and difficult subjects engaged by the SEP. Should Wikipedia be like the SEP? I don’t think so: the SEP is aimed at philosophy undergraduates and is difficult and challenging for the average reader. But I think Wikipedia should be more like the SEP. And how would we do that? I returned to Wikipedia recently, as you all know, and the task is daunting. Many of the original editors in my subject area have left, and parts of it look like a ghost town in the Old West. Many of the articles have deteriorated.

Why is this? In particular, why don't specialists of the calibre who contribute to SEP also contribute to Wikipedia? My sense (from contacting the editors who I worked with before 2009) is mainly that there is no resumé value in working on Wikipedia. By contrast, although the SEP does not pay its authors, having an article published there is career-enhancing. Perhaps that's selfish of them – I would argue not, given they must publish or perish – but if quality is the goal, and surely that's what the project is about, should we not give some consideration to a more 'mixed model'? One possibility might be for specialist writers to contribute a 'stable version' of a Wikipedia article which could be linked to from the current Wikipedia version. If we could establish an editorial board for each subject area, they could review submissions. Non-professional editors could submit too, of course.