Who actually writes all the wikipedia pages?

Ive added my 2c on Wikipedia afew times on articles containing false information. Don't forget Wikipedia is free and user contributed, Don't take it as 100% fact as there is some mistakes. Most certainly not saddos though ill say Wikipedia is amazing
 
TJM said:
I've written an article on a local history topic that has 'Featured article' status (i.e. officially not full of ****). I did it because I was interested in the subject and wanted to pull together what I'd read in different sources into a single document; the article is superior in both comprehensiveness and, in my opinion, prose to anything you'll find in print on the same subject.

Turning out a piece of work that has survived a fairly rigorous review process is satisfying, but I equally enjoyed digging through the local archives for nuggets of information that might never have seen the light of day again. I like to think it was a productive use of time compared to stockpiling canned goods and ammunition.
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Maybe I'll start to develop an interest in those sort of things when I'm 65 years old like you.
 
I could understand why people would do it if they displayed ads and paid people to write the articles and you get a percentage of profit from the advert clicks on the article. Then they wouldn't need to have those lame banners begging for money every couple of months.
 
Forums are totally different from wikipedia because it's mostly people just asking questions. The rest of it is arguing, cool bro stories and picture threads.
 
I put maths stuff I learn on it if it isn't already there. Kind if nice to think that people probably use it to learn or revise. The amount I take from wiki I think it only fair to give back even if it is only a little bit.
 
kwerk said:
I could understand why people would do it if they displayed ads and paid people to write the articles and you get a percentage of profit from the advert clicks on the article. Then they wouldn't need to have those lame banners begging for money every couple of months.
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They'd also have 10% of the content and information. Most people that excel in a field of study are interested in the study not for financial gains but for the joy of learning, they are also the sort of well-rounded person that would get satisfaction from sharing this intellect for free so others can prosper from it.
 
kwerk said:
Not waste it typing up extremely detailed wikipedia pages that 4 people will read.
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Anti-oxidants or factors acting on intracellular antioxidants are relevant to pretty much every disease known to us. Oxidative stress either causes a disease, leads to a worsening of a disease or can be used to cure a disease.

Hundreds of people will read those pages and they act as a great way of summarising the knowledge gained by years of meticulous research.

Also, these pages are unlikely to be the fruits of someone who has sat down and decided to bash out a wikipedia page in an evening. Someone who has carried out the research will likely have papers / reports already written, it's not that difficult to condense into a palatable form. Wikipedia is probably one of the best ways to disseminate new knowledge, which is then verified when publish in a journal.
 
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int said:
Anti-oxidants or factors acting on intracellular antioxidants are relevant to pretty much every disease known to us. Oxidative stress either causes a disease, leads to a worsening of a disease or can be used to cure a disease.

Hundreds of people will read those pages and they act as a great way of summarising the knowledge gained by years of meticulous research.

Also, these pages are unlikely to be the fruits of someone who has sat down and decided to bash out a wikipedia page in an evening. Someone who has carried out the research will likely have papers / reports already written, it's not that difficult to condense into a palatable form. Wikipedia is probably one of the best ways to disseminate new knowledge, which is then verified when publish in a journal.
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If I wanted to read about that stuff for a proper purpose I'd go on NIH or medscape or something like that, not an encyclopedia written by the internet.
 
You guys realise that he posts this stuff to get a reaction right? I know its irritating, but thats because its designed to be. If you don't reply, he will get bored and move on.
 
kwerk said:
If I wanted to read about that stuff for a proper purpose I'd go on NIH or medscape or something like that, not an encyclopedia written by the internet.
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Well luckily you're not in the field of scientific research as you won't get anything other than press releases about clinical trials from those sources.

The people that write these scientific entries on Wikipedia are at the top of their field and don't take it lightly. More and more researchers are using Wikipedia as their first-stop for information as the sources in the articles are well referenced.

These pages aren't written with the intention of everyone being able to comprehend them and I really can't see what "proper purpose" you could mean, seeing as you're not a researcher / the target audience.
 
int said:
The people that write these scientific entries on Wikipedia are at the top of their field and don't take it lightly. More and more researchers are using Wikipedia as their first-stop for information as the sources in the articles are well referenced.
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Even my PI goes to Wikipedia for information. It's accessible, easy to access and at least as reliable as most information in the primary literature*.

* - I think people outside of Science fail to realise how unreliable work published in the scientific press is. This isn't a dig, by definition good journals should be publishing stuff from the frontiers of research; the nature of science means that this stuff is constantly changing and each paper only reports on a narrow experiment with a healthy dash of interpretation from its authors. A sizeable chunk of becoming familiar with a field is knowing which papers are reliable and which have turned out to be wide of the mark.
 
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