Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Not "more popular" -- "in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties" -- credibility is an inherent part of this judgment.
But that IS about who is more popular. We don't take each individual scientist, evaluate how good they are, and decide to rank their views according to that. Instead we shotgun it and say nearly everyone believes Albert not Gertie, so we'll declare him the winner.
At a more abstract level, I don't see why you think we can even evaluate credibility. You point out how we can't evaluate theories well because we're notnecessarily qualified to do so, and I agree with that. But if we can't evaluate those theories, how can we evaluate how well the people who do evaluate those theories are doing? That's what makes someone credible: they get things right. But if we can't work out what's right, how can we tell if they're getting it right?
Popularity. It's a popularity contest.
It's also a popularity contest on other levels. A typical edit war starts when person A believes source or view X while person B believes source or view Y. Which source or view is the most "credible"? Well, it's whichever one gets the most people turning up to support it on the talk page! If consensus isn't going to happen, it's always going to end up in a "vote": whether formal or informal.
Jimbo, I think we basically agree, except that you think what's written is the way things really work. I'm all for keeping crackpots off wikipedia, but I don't think the current policy lets us. That they're mostly kept off is despite policy, not because of it. Unfortunately I also think our current means of dealing with it (throw it to a popularity contest) probably keeps off legitimate minority views too.
Shane.