On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:15:10AM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote:
I am not sure the point applies as well to NOR, where we do actually run into the problem that we need to have some way of differentiating between an acceptable interpretation of a source and an unacceptable one.
The only method we have is to engage in discussion on the talk page. I often say something like "Anybody can edit Wikipedia, but not everyone can edit every article". In practice, I find that it's not specialized topics that are more difficult, but topics that are associated with actual political or religious debates.
One incident I remember involved an article where an editor wanted to introduce a certain type of proof that the editor found more intuitively clear. In the editor's opinion, the way that the proof is ordinarily presented in the literature is non-ideal because of the way that certain basic parts of the field are organized. Responding to this sort of proposal is extremely difficult without a broad knowledge of how the literature as a whole deals with a particular topic, because there's no single source that can be consulted to settle the debate.
This type of high-level decision about the fundamental organization and due weight of ideas in a certain article will always require a broad knowledge of the field.
- Carl