Re: Talking to Jimmy Wales about discussion

Nathan Awrich wrote:

Hi Will,

Thanks for your interest. I think Jimmy and Thomas have made the standard
points above - that our aim is to provide a source of accessible and
comprehensive information. It isn't a primary teaching tool. We aim to, for
instance, contain all the material you might find in a standard general
chemistry textbook (as an example). What we do not do, though, is provide
this material in a manner suitable for actually learning general chemistry.
We also, obviously, don't provide an instructor.

One of the key benefits of the Wikipedia development model is that it allows
for improvements by people who are not terribly well informed, on the
assumption that in time enough people will have enough aggregate knowledge
that the general quality of our articles will be high. The editors who might
respond about a subject on the talkpage of a random article can't be assumed
to have complete knowledge, or even to know much of anything at all. They
might still make valuable contributions to the article, but you wouldn't
want to ask a question (say, about breast cancer) where an accurate answer
would require a broad depth of knowledge on related subjects.

On the other hand, we do have the reference desk. General subject questions
are often answered there, and perhaps that is a form of the tool you're
looking for? Kind of a Wikipedia-style Google Answers?

Nathan