[WikiEN-l] An expert's perspective - Tim Bray on editing the XML article

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:32 PM 8/13/2009, you wrote:
>Just the opposite.
>We want experts to edit the controversial bits.
>Do you really want a swarm of amateurs who have little-to-no basis in
>the field being the sole people editing the most contentious portions?
>That just sounds upside-down to me.

Yes, I understand. But isn't this a rather extreme view? I.e., this 
assumes that no sensible editors are involved, only experts and 
no-nothings. "Swarm of amateurs" is the Wikipedia community. If you 
are a professional, you have a kind of conflict of interest.

Here is the point. If an expert can't explain the subject to other 
editors who are not experts, how in the world are they going to 
explain it in the article?

What we absolutely *need* experts for is to check articles. You 
cannot write good articles just by looking stuff up in sources.

I'm not suggesting that experts not edit articles at all, but that 
when there is conflict, it should be resolved by non-experts, judging 
the evidence as presented by experts (who may have conflicting POVs), 
following the sources provided. It gets dangerous when an expert is 
assumed to know better than others, because, in fact, we don't know 
who the experts really are, and experts can have serious biases. They 
may indeed know better, but may, very often, present the evidence 
that shows what they believe, and not contrary evidence, I've seen it 
too many times. There are some experts who are much more neutral than 
that, but we can't depend on that, it's actually unusual.