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

[charles matthews]

"Fastfission" wrote

>>On 11/20/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
>> Actually, Charles is one of the few people at wikipedia with significant
>> life experience both in and out of academia, so he probably is in a good
>> position to judge how accurate those "ivory tower" stereotypes really 
>> are.

>Maybe you missed my meaning, but anecdotal accounts about academia,
especially those which are from people who have spend significant time
"in and out of academia" are not really very useful data, in my view.

>And my point still stands that we are apparently receiving significant
support from those same apparent ivory tower intellectuals.


Yes to the second point (the first is all wrong, obviously; actual lived 
experience plus some perspective is not 'anecdotal').  But, as you failed to 
show you actually comprehend by answering before as you did (which wasn't 
going to get an answer from me - my thanks to Darin Brown for answering for 
me):

JUST BECAUSE ACADEMICS MAY APPROVE OF SOME ASPECTS OF WP AND EVEN HELP DOES 
NOT MEAN THEY UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS.

And that's because WP operates at the level of the social facts, which are 
rooted in community action and are QUITE DIFFERENT from academia.  The rest 
of your posting seems to assume we take the US model as a given.  That's 
more quantitatively than qualitatively impressive.  However it covers quite 
a number of different traditions, if principally the German model, I'd say. 
Nothing in that prepares for the unfiltered wiki way.  And especially not th 
absence of 'guild standards', the topic of this thread.

Charles