In Effort to Boost Reliability, Wikipedia Looks to Experts
Wikipedia is teaming with universities in a bid to entice professors and their students to beef up its coverage of complicated public-policy topics–part of a move by the online encyclopedia to strengthen editing and fill in gaps in its articles.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which finances and oversees the nonprofit site, received a $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to work with academic experts on Wikipedia articles related to public policy, which could include everything from political theory to legislative history and issues such as health reform and science.
The goal is to get professors–and, in turn, their students–involved in producing more articles on public policy and improving the quality of the articles that already exist, said Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh. He said the site expects experts to both vet Wikipedia existing entries and point out entire topics of importance to public policy that haven’t been addressed on the site.
