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.
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.
-Phil