User:Joanna Bryson

Please note the below was written in 2006, cf. the more recent talk page discussion. This user page explains a fair amount of important stuff, so I will probably revert most edits to it. Please feel free to comment on it or anything else I have done on the discussion page though.

Introduction

This account is my profession presence on Wikipedia. Usually I prefer to edit anonymously. This is partly because I'm both impressed by and interested in the Wikipedia process, the way it works as a distributed process. I suspect that in general an academic reputation can only get in the way of that sort of democracy.

However, I am now involved in Wikipedia in a professional way (see below) so for some edits I am using this account.

Nevertheless, I would prefer if work I edit as this user were treated no differently than something I do anonymously. Be bold!

Motivations

One of the ways science is developed is through government funding. This is better than relying on industrial money because governments can have a longer and broader view of what is valuable research than industry (depending of course on how the government is determined and on how competitive a particular industry is --- some companies are clearly likely to last longer and /or have more capital on hand than some governments.) Philanthropic funding is similar, though it comes from charities and indeed sometimes from industry. Of course, the advantage of industry is that we can tell if it is spending its money wisely by the amount of money it makes. The only way to assess whether a government or philanthropic funding source is doing its job well is through oversight. Part of that oversight is that scientists (like me) have to acknowledge in our work what funding supported what contributions.

I think that we should encourage scientists to populate Wikipedia for several reasons.

• For many of us, expanding "public understanding" is part of our job (again, because we are paid by the government.)
• The process of creating publicly-agreed definitions of the terms and methods of our disciplines is a key part of doing science. Wikipedia, with its well-developed processes for finding consensus seems like an excellent catalyst for this. Although it doesn't provide the kind of paper trail a published debate does, it can at least help with brainstorming.
• Many very smart people devote their spare hours to study even if they are not professional academics. Wikipedia strikes me as a place where professionals and amateurs can intermingle on equal ground. The scientific process is an amazing and powerful thing, but I think the Wikipedia process is powerful as well.

So, I see having a professional page, and listing funding sources, as an experiment both in Wikipedia policy and in scientific method.

Acknowledgements

• The work on thinking about Wikipedia Policy is currently unfunded and just a hobby, but we may actually try to write a grant to study this. Edit my discussion if you want to be a part of this.
• The stubs for action selection and reactive planning were developed by User:Cyril2 and myself together in Bath thanks to a grant from The European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems in May of 2006. A snapshot of the action selection page was turned into a white paper in August 2006, Action Selection for Intelligent Systems.