Delirium wrote:
I think this may actually be a strength of Wikipedia---expert idiots, in my experience, are the most likely to be offended that they aren't being given proper deference as experts, and so avoid Wikipedia. (Of course, not all---or even most---experts who avoid Wikipedia are idiots, but the credential-waving type do consistently avoid it.)
I should add that I don't disagree it's a problem that many of the non-idiot sort of experts also avoid Wikipedia. I think the strong and still quite recent shift towards verifiability will go some way towards addressing that problem---experts have an inherent advantage on the new playing field, because they can pull up citations much more easily than an uninformed bullshitter can. It doesn't solve all problems, but it's a step in the right direction.
Judicious organization in Wikiprojects might help also. Many experts are willing to get right down into the dirty work of editing the encyclopedia and interacting on talk pages, but some who don't want to get into that might be willing to offer indirect guidance to participants in various Wikiprojects about what they think should be done, and let others take care of the implementation.
-Mark