[Wikipedia-l] The "Casio Effect"

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> I am wary of this approach.  It holds the "experts" up
> on a pedastal.   Their material or comments are untouchable
> and essentially unrebuttable.

Of course!  Their material SHOULD be uneditable and unrebuttable,
just like mine, and yours, and every other CREDITED article on
the net and every other publication.  That's the whole point of
an author credit--to attach responsibility.  What's editable is
the Wikipedia text that they're reviewing.  I'm talking about
letting Roger Ebert write a movie review--you're certainly able
to disagree, but you can't change what /he/ said, because it's
supposed to be his ideas, his views, his opinions.

> We could easily double or triple our growth in experts reviewing 
> with no further participation while decimating or worse our
> active community participation or stunting our participation
> growth of less credentialed participation.

How is adding reviews any less "participation" than writing
articles?  Is not evaluation of ideas valuable information?

>If this approach is chosen to experiment with, I would propose
>that we add the review pages or a page of links to reviews and
>allow any account holder to publish the critiques.  The critiquer
>can place what ever background information or credentials they
>feel appropriate on their personal page.  The personal pages
>could be protected and administratively overridden if fraud is
>alleged and substantiated.

I'd be willing to relax the criteria for reviewers, but not
eliminate them entirely.  The whole point of having reviewers
is to show expert opinion.  I have as much disdain for formal
credentials as anyone--I write a lot of good articles here, and
a lot of good software, and I'm a college dropout.  So I hope
the review board is set up to recognize real accomplishments as
well as formal training.  As a non-reviewing writer, I think I'm 
more than qualified to read an expert's review, and edit the
article based on it--and even to disagree with the expert if I
think his arguments are weak.  But I wouldn't for a moment think
one should consider me a recognized expert on anything but my
one or two narrow fields of expertise that I've been studying
for over 20 years--microcomputer software and poker.  And if I
can't convince an editorial board that I'm qualified to post
reviews on those two subjects, then I shouldn't be writing
reviews (of course in that case I'd think the review board has
problems, but I'm certainly free to express that opinion too).