On 23 April 2010 18:54, David Gerard <dgerard(a)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.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk