<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />[b]Wikipedia U[/b]
NOW Toronto
Socrates, one of the greatest teachers in history, famously denounced the written word because he thought writing encouraged forgetfulness. (“They will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves,” he argued ...



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I think this one might want to go into "news worth discussing".

I hope the person that wins that $1000 takes the money and uses it to fork the medical portion of WP to create a resource that can't be edited by just anyone.

So, once the winner is determined and he (or she, but most likely he) is paid, that will make him a paid editor, and then the article can be savaged by the anti-paid-editing crowd, including Jimbo.

So, say for the sake of argument that as a result of this, several articles become really good. I do mean good, not the WP definition of a GA. Assume too that they have people who are really competent to judge this. Maybe the winning article will be semi-protected and have lots of people watching it to stop it getting ruined. Maybe not, and in any case will they keep it semi-protected forever? I doubt it. Also, presumably the purpose of the prize is not to get just one good article, but quite a few. Will the losing articles get the same degree of protection and attention?

Yes, you are right. I believe it is a bad idea to award a student for writing an article.

BTW once I asked my friend, an academic, the best in his area of expertise, to write an article for wikipedia. He refused. He said that he always is working hard and is doing his best, when he writes something, and that's why he sees no reason to do the job on Wikipedia only to have it later changed by the people who have not a slightest idea what they are doing.