Patricia Cohen has an excellent story on the raw power of Wikipedia’s gravitational pull on august institutions like the Smithsonian or the British Museum. As a result, the Smithsonian recently hosted a group of Wikipedia editors to try to get more information attached to a long list of entries that were bare. Unfortunately, Wikipedia only accepts citations as a measure of inclusion, not the expertise of the institution’s staff:
Several members of the Smithsonian’s social media staff joined the dozen or so Wikipedia editors and novices who were lured to the American Art Museum last Friday by the prospect of disseminating knowledge, a behind-the-scenes tour and a free lunch. […]
This was the first group editing session for Robert Greenwood, a retired police dispatcher from Catlett, Va., who has been editing Wikipedia entries, mostly on citizen science and ornithology, for more than two years. […]
For the American Art Museum, Mr. Greenwood created an article on art conservation, one of two dozen subjects — digital conservation and the artists Paul Cadmus, Leo Friedlander and Margaret Boozer among them — that the museum had listed as needing more information or new entries.
Museum Welcomes Wikipedia Editors (NYTimes)
