On 11 September 2012 16:23, Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > That comment sounds like it was written by Peter Damian. Not everyone, > even Wikipedians, recognize or keep in mind the fact that there is a > subversive principle (or really, many) underlying the Wikipedia model. > It intentionally does not offer deference to editors with credentials > in the fields they might choose to edit. There are obvious practical > reasons for this, but there's also an element of democratizing > information and the curation of knowledge. > > This strikes many self-defined experts as wrongheaded; they expect to > be treated as authorities, and are often upset when they are not. > While unfortunate, that doesn't turn this feature of Wikipedia into a > bug. If anything it suggests we need to do a better job educating > potential editors and readers about the principles of the > encyclopedia. > > The anti-expert idea is not really related to "democratizing information and the curation of knowledge." Especially as Wikipedia specifically identifies as *not a democracy*!
The point in not deferring to experts is a hack to get around the problem that on the internet you could claim to be just about anyone. Who knows if you truly are an expert in theology (*cough* Essjay *cough*). However; it's a bad hack because in many fields you need to be an expert to be able to properly write about the subject. I have a deep interest in religious history; you couldn't call me an expert, but I have studied the subject to undergraduate level in my spare time. I look at the editors working on religious history topics on Wikipedia and they are, often, incapable of scholarly authorship, or driven by their own viewpoints. This is just one data point. The "all editors created equal" thing is a misnomer; being an admin people *do* defer to me, even though I try to avoid it. I see many admins using their authority. So perhaps it is time to allow experts to be seen as such. Tom _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
