grm_wnr wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The deletionist's anomaly is that he is often nominating articles that are outside of his interests. If a candidate article comes up in his own field of interest he is in a better position to improve it. I don't have a lot of interest in rock bands, so apart from a very few very big names none of them are notable to me. Taking that further, even if I were interested in such music how could I possibly evaluate the local scene in some other large city. Of course, if I participate in the vote I expect my vote to be counted even if I have no idea WTF I'm talking about. If it's a matter of rock bands (and similarly for other subjects), perhaps a vote should have less value if the person has done no editing in that subject area.
This is an idea I've been toying with myself - giving the parts of the community concerned with a topic (WikiProjects, basically) more autonomy in their respective fields. We already do that in some ways - [[WP:MUSIC]], [[WP:SFD]]. Of course, this could lead to a certain "inbreeding" / "groupthink" mentality.
That is a real danger. I've seen it in the sciences where too many are quick to put a pseudoscience label on things that they don't understand. If these topics turn out to be complete nonsense let them do so on their own lack of merits, without applying a prejudgement. Preventing inbreeding requires some system for occasionally bringing in people from outside the field, perhaps in the way that a faculty person from another department might be brought into a thesis committee.
Ec