On Jan 1, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/1/09 9:52 AM, Phil Sandifer at snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
This really is how bad our policy formation has gotten - there is a sincere belief that specialist knowledge is actually harmful to Wikipedia.
It's the dominant culture, Phil. And, sadly, it is the way the Project has been headed for some time now.
on 1/1/09 1:28 PM, Phil Sandifer at snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. But it is, in practice, not difficult to find the most pernicious pieces of bad policy that allow that move, and to make it so that people who are actually interested in writing a useful resource for our readers can do so.
As it stands, Wikipedia is increasingly at risk of having its quality swept away by the increasingly large community, and the resultant drop in quality of the average community member that entails.
This hard and fast rule against specialist knowledge - and the bizarre belief that the solution is to strengthen it - is a key place where pushing back is beneficial.
Our last two posts must have waved at each other as they went by :-).
Phil, I have been "pushing back" for the three years that I have been here. And it is worse now than when I came. And a great part of the problem is that the "leadership" that does exist here appears to condone the current thinking. I believe it is time for me to help build an alternative.
Marc