Hi Uwe Just made some grammatical adjustments to the article about your father He sounds like a very interesting person as are you It would be great if he would take a serious look at Wikipedia The more professional scientists we get onboard the better As i know that you are trying to get others of your professional standing involved in this project i would like to offer as a member of the public some thoughts for those who are skeptical of such a project All too often the general public is left out of contributing to discussions of scientific importance as we are considered by the scientific community in general to be ignorant and unqualified to engage in any meaningful dialogue about scientific issues of importance If indeed the assumption of ignorance is true then in my opinion it is a fault of the mediums in which scientific knowledge and datum is transmitted i e specialist publications newspapers television and to a lesser extent radio These mediums offer no chance of a dialogue to develop between the general public and the specialist scientist Instead they are in the case of T V newspaper and radio the transmitters of spoon fed facts that we have no control over and renders arbritrary those facts in relation to the world we live in However with a medium such as the internet and a project such as wikipedia their thus arises a new dynamic between the learned and the layman in that a person with no knowledge of a specialist subject can enter into a dialogue with a specialist and comment on what has been written offering advice to elucidate and make clearer the subject for the general reader The empowerment that is garnered from this relationship can not be underestimated as it can have in my opinion many side benefits such as a less alienated relationship to scientific knowledge a greater appreciation of the information being conveyed a willingness to actively learn more about the subject you have been involved with If scientists truely want to engage with the public and have what they say be understood then they must actively get involved in having a dialogue with them Wikipedia in my opinion and experience to date is a great opportunity to do this 1 July 2005 00 34 UTC