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Given the state of higher-ed funding, this is a pipe dream, but... I wish every first- and second-tier university department could make one graduate student the

• stdbrouw 15y ago
  There are some universities that assign Wikipedia articles as coursework: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university... There is a certain learning curve you have to go through when contributing, however, and one that makes sense and has nothing to do with power-hungry editors. Students, grad students or fresh PhDs especially, can sometimes trick themselves into thinking that their niche area of research is the most important thing in the world, and make the coverage of a small subtopic swell out of proportion, or write about it in a way that makes sense for other grad students but not for a broader public. That's something they can grow out of, but not everybody masters the Wikipedia style of writing from the get-go, not even very smart people. Hence, the reason why I think these assignments are so great is because established Wikipedians get to learn students something about writing for a different audience, establishing consensus and writing in group, and Wikipedia gets better content in return. That's the ideal anyway.