government sponsor

The German government is paying experts to expand German Wikipedia entries on renewable resources and nutrition, agriculture and consumer protection. They're looking to hire existing Wikipedians who are familiar with Wikipedia culture:

"A number of key words already have excellent entries in the German Wikipedia" within the field of renewable resources, explains Andreas Schütte. Schütte is the executive director of the Renewable Resources Agency (FNR), which receives funding from the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection to conduct research on renewable resources with an eye to launching products on the market. At the same time, Schütte says that a number of key words in the German Wikipedia have very short descriptions, are not up to date, or are missing entirely.

Entries on this topic are to be improved under the direction of the private-sector Nova Institute. The Institute plans to get external experts to write entries on renewable resources for Wikipedia. These experts will first receive training for Wikipedia because collaboration in the community project has its pitfalls. The Institute is therefore looking for someone well versed in Wikipedia to handle project coordination. The project partners have issued a call for tenders for that position. Wikipedia experts can send in their applications immediately.

I thought it's pretty cool that the government is pushing this type of knowledge distribution. Even though it'll be in German, it's a start ...
Thanks to BoingBoing for covering this! (tk)