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.