On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 7:22 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.w...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I've been asked to write a short editorial about this development from > a Wikipedian's perspective and am curious about (and would love to > include) other Wikimedian experiences -- did you use print > encyclopedias as a kid?
I loved encyclopedias as a kid. My parents had a study hour for my sister and myself every school night to work on homework or, if that was do, do something educational. I would do my homework early to spend the hour before bed reading our copy of World Book. > Was a love of print encyclopedias part of your > motivation or interest in becoming a Wikipedian? It was my ability to edit it or complain, really. I registered my account on the English Wikipedia in 2005 after fixing typos here and there for a couple years in order to complain about the Main Page Featured Article, History of Alaska. The article was all messed up from an ill-formatted edit, and I wanted to bring it to attention. I figured it's only fair to have an account to complain. Since then I've been working on support an maintenance to help the content others create. I'm not an article writer, so a fantastic feature of Wikipedia is that there are ways to contribute if this is not your talent. The fundamental difference between this and my beloved paper encyclopedias was that you couldn't ask questions or fix something that was wrong. Those companies would issue an annual update and corrections, but that's a little too late. Placing the encyclopedia in the hands of the wiki format was a brilliant move by Larry Sanger, it gave the encyclopedia geek white-out and a pen. > Is there any value in > them still? Will you miss it? > I will miss it in the way that mine and previous generations value the touch, weight, and volume of books. It's a lot more comprehensible to appreciate the work it takes in writing an encyclopedia when 32 volumes are dwarfed by what you can create with space on the web. You can't physically measure the work put into the words. But I weigh it out to future generations not having this appreciate and just feel old when I imagine myself making this speech in the future to my kid(s). -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
