Please forgive my belated response to the wikipedia editing debate, as I am abroad (lovely Harrogate, UK) and only on once per day (or less). I have been actively involved with Wikipedia for about 6 months, and have found it a good experience. I have been surprised by the accuracy of the articles (in general), the comprehensiveness of the articles (EB would never do one on Bronx gangs of the 1950s-1960s), and the activity of people in monitoring vandalism, sillyness, and fixing bad formats, etc. It's an interesting mixture of hierarchy and anarchy. However, I do agree that editing procedures are cumbersome once you want to put in formatting, references, etc. Moreover, it's hard (for me) to find the guides for what to do, and when I do, the guides (as for Referencing) are not as clearly written as I'd like. We need _Wikipedia for Dummies_! Having said that, the standard Wikipedia response would be something like, "Stop complaining. Fix it yourself." Wish I could, but I have neither the expertise nor the time. This may be Wikiblasphemy, but I wonder if a core paid staff of clear technical writers would be useful for preparing such key help tasks. Best, Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________