Some of those suggestions have merits. The Australian Deletion Project sorting is working out quite well because we have editors who make sure that relevant notices are listed when appropriate.
It is often quite useful to list articles at the appropriate discussion point to get the viewpoint of those people who know more about the subject. The other day I listed Britlist, a website with a lot of Google results but with an article written by an employee of the company, on the British Wikipedian noticeboard. I wanted to determine whether it was a notable company or just someone trying to get free advertising. As an Australian, I didn't know this. After contributions from 4 or 5 British Wikipedians, it was determined that it was a non-notable website with just 39 unique Google hits and listed on AfD. This sort of prediscussion amongst interested people can be useful.
As to expertise, the best way is to show that you know what you are talking about is to demonstrate by casting considered votes. It is easy to claim expertise over the web but more difficult to show it.
Regards
Keith Old
On 11/16/05, Brown, Darin Darin.Brown@enmu.edu wrote:
Message: 4 Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:49:12 -0000 From: "charles matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did thishappen (comixpedia??)) To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 005f01c5e9e2$fc09d270$7cac0656@NorthParade Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original
Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so that admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are
not
speedied but have no support either way.
Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility. Make sorted noms a crisper process.
Categorise: why this nomination?
All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.
All this is without Sangerising and having people arguing that other people don't know what they're talking about.
Sangerising is one thing. I'm certainly not in favor of worshipping expertise, credentials, degrees, or elitism. But it's one thing to be anti-credentialist and anti-elitist, where you're throwing out the *requirement* that people have credentials to voice an opinion. It's quite another to *boast* about how ignorant you are on a subject, and still make decisions based on the ignorance you just declared. I don't consider being against *that* behaviour to be Sangerising.
Put it this way: I guess I'm "elitist" in the sense that I'm willing (I hope) to listen to and possibly defer to people on subjects, when they know more about them or are better informed about them. Where I'd like to think I'm "anti-elitist" is that I don't hold formal credentials as the only way to establish expertise. There are many roads to Rome. If someone demonstrates, by repeated contributions, discussions, and comments, that they're knowledgeable and informed, then I will listen and tend to defer to them on that subject. I know I'm not perfect and I don't always hold to this in practice, but it's what I aim for.
When someone openly boasts their ignorance on a particular subject, but still insists their voice should carry equal weight on that subject, it seems to me their not just being anti-credentialist, they're eschewing any kind of expertise at all, whether it's based on credentials or community reputation or individual worthiness. So, I don't see being *against* that kind of behaviour as being pro-credentialist or elitist.
darin _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l