Wikipedia receives state funding in Germany.
For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia
Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside
part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in
Wikipedia. Over the next few years, several hundred articles will be
written on this issue.
"A number of key words already have excellent entries in the German
Wikipedia" within the field of renewable resources, explains Andreas
Schütte. Schütte is the executive director of the Renewable Resources
Agency (FNR), which receives funding from the German Ministry of
Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection to conduct research on
renewable resources with an eye to launching products on the market. At
the same time, Schütte says that a number of key words in the German
Wikipedia have very short descriptions, are not up to date, or are
missing entirely.
Entries on this topic are to be improved under the direction of the
private-sector Nova Institute. The Institute plans to get external
experts to write entries on renewable resources for Wikipedia. These
experts will first receive training for Wikipedia because collaboration
in the community project has its pitfalls. The Institute is therefore
looking for someone well versed in Wikipedia to handle project
coordination. The project partners have issued a call for tenders for
that position. Wikipedia experts can send in their applications immediately.
The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in
other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project
director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are
usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even
on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there
continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain
anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can
publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will
therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.
more...
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/91733
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