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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:48 PM 8/13/2009, Carcharoth wrote:
>It's striking a balance between experts who WP:OWN articles and revert
>"ignorant" editors who "don't know what they are talking about", and
>requiring experts to carefully explain everything. Ideally, you would
>tell both lots to edit based on reliable sources, not from their own
>authority.

If you are telling others that you understand the topic better than 
they do, because of your expertise, then, I'm saying, we should 
accept that, taking it in good faith, *and* require you to write 
strictly from sources, though in Talk you may explain more deeply.

Experts can actually be dangerous, even with strict sourcing 
requirements, because, if they are truly experts, they know the 
sources and can cherry-pick more effectively to support their own POV.

The other aspect is that experts often will insist on "perfectly 
accurate" text, and what it takes to do that can make the text so 
cumbersome, with the rare exceptions covered in every statement, with 
technical language preferred, to avoid what they will see as 
ambiguity, that the article becomes unreadable to a non-expert. We 
have some articles like that, they are impenetrable unless you 
already know the subject.

To reach a general audience, an article on a relatively abstruse 
subject must approach the subject carefully, building up 
understanding from what is most simple at the first, into what covers 
the exceptions and the details.

Experts can make sure that true errors don't make it into the text. 
Ordinary editors can make sure that it is understandable, and, when 
there is conflict among experts, resolve the conflicts. Conflict 
among sources is tricky; often, I've seen, when there appears to be 
conflict among the highest quality reliable sources, i.e., 
peer-reviewed secondary sources, the conflict isn't actually in the 
sources, it is in our interpretations of them. At least in the hard sciences.

I really shouldn't be writing here.... but this struck me.