[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Fastfission]

What is the definition of "expert" we are working with here? Because
there are some forms of expertise which are compatible with our goals
and some which are not. I'm an expert of things which are wrong with
my house and need repairs, but that doesn't mean that this expertise
is worth a damn on here. Expertise in the modern sense usually denotes
some sort of specialized training or hands-on experience -- I'm not
sure that necessarily applies to people who claim expert status by
virtue of their having read a number of webcomics. I think this is at
the heart of the question of why obscure scientific principles don't
get nominated for deletion but obscure webcomics do.

(I'm not at all clued in to the webcomic debates and I don't
participate in AfD very regularly, so I'm not trying to make a
specific point, but just raise a general issue.)

(As an aside, it would be interesting to have a fairly comprehensive
discussion of what academic experts think of Wikipedia, in relation to
teaching as well as just generally. Maybe I could do something of this
nature for Wikimania, some sort of pseudo-sociological study...?
hmm...)

FF

On 11/15/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> kosebamse wrote:
> >Alphax alphasigmax at gmail.com wrote at Tue Nov 15 12:15:00 UTC 2005:
>
> >>What worries me is that with our growing popularity, we're going to have
> >>more experts arriving on our doorstep, trying to write articles on their
> >>specialist areas, and leave in disgust when some 2-bit moron votes "d,
> >>nn. cruft".
>
> >As far as I can say, that has always been a serious problem. It's not a
> >matter of elitism. An expert who is used to discussing his views  with
> >well-informed people on an academic level will not enjoy the experience of
> >having to defend basic and established knowledge of his field against
> >schoolkids whose only expertise is with video games. I am offering no
> >opinion on the desirability of it, but the latter probably form a very
> >sizable fraction of our user base.
>
>
> The problem here is the degree of it. The assumption of bad faith that
> appears to be far too common on AFD has led to an expert being *driven
> off* Wikipedia by people who are not only proudly ignorant, but are
> doing their best to get anti-expert bias made policy and the way
> things work around here.
>
>
> - d.
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