[WikiEN-l] AfD suggestions

[Brown, Darin]

> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:49:12 -0000
> From: "charles matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
> 	How did	thishappen (comixpedia??))
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <005f01c5e9e2$fc09d270$7cac0656 at NorthParade>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
> 
> Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so
> that
> admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
> 
> Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are not
> speedied but have no support either way.
> 
> Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility.
> Make
> sorted noms a crisper process.
> 
> Categorise: why this nomination?

All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems
these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.

> All this is without Sangerising and having people arguing that other
> people
> don't know what they're talking about.

Sangerising is one thing. I'm certainly not in favor of worshipping
expertise, credentials, degrees, or elitism. But it's one thing to be
anti-credentialist and anti-elitist, where you're throwing out the
*requirement* that people have credentials to voice an opinion. It's quite
another to *boast* about how ignorant you are on a subject, and still make
decisions based on the ignorance you just declared. I don't consider being
against *that* behaviour to be Sangerising.

Put it this way: I guess I'm "elitist" in the sense that I'm willing (I
hope) to listen to and possibly defer to people on subjects, when they know
more about them or are better informed about them. Where I'd like to think
I'm "anti-elitist" is that I don't hold formal credentials as the only way
to establish expertise. There are many roads to Rome. If someone
demonstrates, by repeated contributions, discussions, and comments, that
they're knowledgeable and informed, then I will listen and tend to defer to
them on that subject. I know I'm not perfect and I don't always hold to this
in practice, but it's what I aim for.

When someone openly boasts their ignorance on a particular subject, but
still insists their voice should carry equal weight on that subject, it
seems to me their not just being anti-credentialist, they're eschewing any
kind of expertise at all, whether it's based on credentials or community
reputation or individual worthiness. So, I don't see being *against* that
kind of behaviour as being pro-credentialist or elitist.

darin