On Jan 1, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/1/09 9:52 AM, Phil Sandifer at
snowspinner(a)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