"Converting" the tribe...., "Oh, no, we're not a cult at all..." Options

[the fieryangel]

Off of Liam Wyatt's new blog: How to try to recruit "experts" to the WP cult.

Personally, I think the most effective method of getting experts is not to try and convince people one-by-one to write on Wikipedia. This might work, but it doesn’t scale and its inefficient in terms of evangelist resources. Rather, I argue that we should be targeting people in positions of authority (especially persuasive authority).

reactions?

[Milton Roe]

Off of Liam Wyatt's new blog: How to try to recruit "experts" to the WP cult.

Personally, I think the most effective method of getting experts is not to try and convince people one-by-one to write on Wikipedia. This might work, but it doesn’t scale and its inefficient in terms of evangelist resources. Rather, I argue that we should be targeting people in positions of authority (especially persuasive authority).

reactions?

It might work to generate a population at high-risk-for-stroke if you were looking to study that clinically, but I'll bet your human-use committee would never approve it.

Really, it's unethical. Nice try, though.

[Cedric]

Hmmmm-- it seems his idea is to target the head curators of some major museums and galleries and get them to participate on Wikipedia, as opposed to convincing lower ranking ones (like himself, I'm guessing). An excellent idea. Once the Teenaged Mutant Wiki Admins™ jam their thumbs up the curators' butt 'oles, they will be so pissed off that they put out the word far and wide that no self-respecting institution should have anything to do with Wikipedia, ever, by cracky!

"Oh yeeeeah! He's pretty pissed off now!"

[Somey]

Curators want people to actually visit their museums/galleries in person to see artworks, so they can donate a few bucks at the door and maybe become members. They're not so interested in people who prefer to view artworks in little image files on a computer...

As for making it easier to determine who the actual owner of a particular artwork is, I suspect there are differing opinions in the art world about that. For example, if a painting has been stolen, then presumably the rightful owner(s) would want people to know they were the rightful owner(s), not whoever happens to be selling the painting. But if the painting hasn't been stolen, and is on loan or on a tour of some sort, that could just cause some confusion, and possibly increase the risk of theft. Hard to say, actually.

Anyway, these institutions are hurting, just like publishers are (though not as much). They want people to get out more, not less, and they want people to understand that maintaining and preserving (not to mention insuring and transporting) fine art is not cheap. For many of them, I suspect, this person basically wants to twist the knife.

[thekohser]

Our man Liam Wyatt says he is the Multimedia Coordinator for the "Dictionary of Sydney". There's an article about that project on Wikipedia, and if you ask me, it's a non-notable vanity piece, ripe for deletion.