I tried to send this from a Hotmail address but it bounced... this is my University email In response to good suggestions about having articles written at different levels, I thought it might be good to share an experience of writing articles for readers at different levels in parallel. At the psychology wiki we have been writing 'general' community written articles, as well as expert written articles (by academic psychologists) in parallel. In general, there is a link at the top of each article informing the reader that there exists a 'general' article, and an 'expert' article on the same subject. This is useful as it allows the reader to switch between the two levels as appropriate. For example see our prototype expert article: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Tree_of_Knowledge_System/Expert_artic le_by_Gregg_Henriques In general I feel it would be a excellent idea to develop expert level articles in parallel to the general ones. Reasons for this include: 1) It distinguishes the project further from WP which is VERY important. Don't try to be another WP. 2) It utilizes the expertise of our contributors and allows them to write articles which would be quickly reverted to a lower level on WP. 3) The 'General' articles will allow non specialists to still understand a subject area, E.g. I would read expert psychology but general maths. It would be a BAD mistake to try and write every article at an expert level as this would alienate the core readership because most of the material would be beyond most of us. Finally, from my experience with Wikia, I have found that large, generalised wikis (by subject) work better than small, specialist wikis, because a large number of contributors is required to keep the project afloat. This is why WP is so successful in terms of numbers, because it is about Everything and Anyone is allowed to contribute. If you think the expertise of the Psychology Wiki would be a valuable addition to the CZ project, would you consider letting us merge with you to develop Expert written psychology articles in parallel with the general articles? Joining up can help projects to survive and flourish where smaller wikis might fail due to lack of numbers. I would imagine that if you went down the expert article/parallel general article route, that many other academics would come aboard, especially because of the editorial controls that CZ is developing. Let me know what you think Tom Michael Psychology Wiki Administrator
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