This page is completely out-of-date. The Nupedia Project is currently inactive.
Please consider submitting any very well-developed Wikipedia articles for which you're mainly responsible to Nupedia!
Note: the following is out of date and should be rewritten (anybody?) so as to reflect the existence of the Nupedia Chalkboard. The best Wikipedia articles can be pasted into the Chalkboard--we at Nupedia hope you'll do that, in fact. Just try to determine the authorship of the Wikipedia article first, please. --LMS
Note: the previous is out of date, since the chalkboard says "For the time being, please do not put any more articles here. If you like, try wikipedia instead.". It's unclear to me what this might mean.
Background
In March 2001, the leadership of Nupedia began serious consideration of the idea of working more closely with Wikipedia, or else setting up a Nupedia wiki. Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of Nupedia, seriously advanced for discussion the idea of switching Nupedia's editorial process to a less bottleneck-ridden, wiki type of process.
The general sense that Nupedia arrived at is that, while some changes in Nupedia's editorial process might be warranted, we should wait several months before making any change. In the meantime, however, many Nupedia editors and peer reviewers were very receptive to the idea of Wikipedia articles being submitted to Nupedia. So we'd like officially to encourage you to submit articles for which you're mainly responsible to Nupedia.
How to get started
Tips
- When in doubt, ask for help by e-mail from Larry Sanger (lsanger at nupedia.com) or from the relevant area editor.
- If we don't have an active review group in the area your article would be filed under, while it might be accepted under a different area, it might not. If the article is five paragraphs and under, and treats a "nonspecialist" topic (e.g., most topics in geography would work), then submit it under the General and Other heading.
- Generally speaking, you'll have a slightly better change to have your article assigned since it already exists. Still, to avoid embarrassment, it would probably be best to ask the relevant editor in e-mail if he or she believes an article is ready for Nupedia, or if it needs further work.
- Bear in mind that Nupedia, unlike Wikipedia, has a very thorough review process, which requires patience and thick skin. It will help considerably if you familiarize yourself with the (presently-outdated) editorial policy guidelines.
- We strongly encourage you to develop Nupedia articles, or proposed Nupedia articles, on Wikipedia! You can get much useful help here, particularly if you let it be known to the others that an article could become a Nupedia article.
What about multiple authorship? How do we work that out?
Obviously, articles created on Wikipedia have something akin to multiple authors. So, I suggest that on a /Talk page for the article, you present the idea of submitting the article to Nupedia. Some people have made very minor edits, and they shouldn't be credited as co-authors. Others, however, might have added whole sections. In that case, you should try to contact that other person and discuss how to proceed. You might want to act as co-authors on Nupedia; alternatively, you might want to credit the other co-authors, but take responsibility for all the changes required by Nupedia. This is the sort of thing that we can learn to do by doing.
I think that in many cases, and as for me, credit is neither asked for or wanted. When I write on the wikipedia, I do so for my own entertainment and to anonymously contribute to the body of knowledge. Is it possible for articles to appear in Nupedia without any particular attribution, or with attribution to the Wikipedia community-at-large? This seems to better suit our social mores over here. --Jimbo Wales
- Yes, that's quite possible. Simply sign up for the article under your own Nupedia member ID, and just before we give it final acceptance, we'll switch the author field off to some specially-created "Wikipedia-created" ID. --LMS
Pah! We're Wikipedia! We don't need Nupedia!
You've got an excellent point there. Wikipedia is much more successful in terms of sheer numbers. But Nupedia has the great advantage of being very carefully peer-reviewed by experts. Getting an article through Nupedia's editorial process is difficult, and a considerable achievement. A case can be made that Wikipedia and Nupedia need each other; Wikipedia needs the rigor of Nupedia's editorial process, and its expertise, while Nupedia needs Wikipedia's open, vigorous dynamic.
Not sure if this is the place to discuss Copyright issues. I am happy to create and also edit/correct articles within Wikipedia. However, it would also benefit me to have some articles which are clearly my own copyright, even if these are then included in an encyclopaedia. One solution is for me to write, and then to post articles including the copyright notice, though this could lead to text being altered within the article in Wikipedia, which is rather pointless. Another is for me to simply put links (e.g within Wikipedia) to articles from pages on my own web site. Yet another modus operandi might be to generate articles off-line, then post them to Wikipedia, and then retrieve them some time later. Providing the text was still recognisably mine, it would be justified to claim credit, and to acknowledge any corrections made by other Wikipedians. This could be justified by retaining the original off-line text to prove authorship.
As an academic, I have to try to get some credit for some of my work, even if not all of it. There are clearly some very good articles in Wikipedia, though some are still a bit rough.
There could also be problems if writers wished to publish their work commercially, though it's hardly likely that most of us will want to write a whole book's worth of articles within Wikipedia.
Is there somewhere within WP where these things can be/are discussed?
See also adding Nupedia articles to Wikipedia.