On 23 April 2010 18:54, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That said, any hypothesis claiming Wikipedia is fundamentally expert-hostile needs to account for the fact of the startling quantities of experts actually here and contributing. You can hardly move on Wikipedia without bumping into someone with a doctorate.
Interesting phenomenon I have noticed here and there: these experts choosing to work on Wikipedia on an entirely different topic altogether. That is to say, someone quite qualified and competent to write articles on Assyrian archaeology in the way we normally mean when we say "expert", but instead writing at some length about eighteenth-century music, on the grounds that Assyrian archaeology is too much like the day job - besides, the articles are a mess, and this other stuff is fun, damnit.
Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I leave as an exercise to the reader.