At 12:34 PM 3/23/2007 -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Also, one reason I was advocating a means for verified experts to sign
off
on the accuracy of an article, was to enable people to cite or reference
that article, saying that even if Professor X didn't write it, he
vouches
for its authenticity.
Saying that Professor X vouched for the article only begs the question, "Who the hell is professor X?" For someone who is not familiar with the subject area Professor Y would be just as valuable even if he has an opposing opinion.
Well that's why you could search for articles where not only has the content been signed off on by an expert, but the expert has provided proof of their expertise in a given area -- for example, a school faculty Web page identifies them as a professor in a given area and gives their e-mail address, and the system has sent a confirmation message to that address to ensure that it's really them.
If you go with a sliding scale from 1 to 10 instead of a yes/no option, then there's some ambiguity in whether you can cite an expert as
vouching
for the correctness of the article.
I'm not completely opposed to some professor's anecdotal evidence. TV ads for medical products regularly show some doctor proclaiming the virtues of some product.
Well the article sign-offs would be more trustworthy in that you know the authority was not paid for their endorsement. (And most experts hopefully have limits on what they would sign off on, even if they were paid money.)
How high does their rating have to be before you can put them down as "vouching" for the article? 7? 10? I have no idea.
How about two standard deviations above the statistical mean.
Well you could use any standard you want for deciding for yourself whether an article is credible because Professor X gave it a 7. My issue is that if you wanted to *cite* the article as a source, and list Professor X as someone who vouched for it, you run into issues if *you* thought a "7" meant that Professor X doesn't mind his name being attached to it, but Professor X objects that that's not what his "7" meant at all. A simple yes/no signoff makes it more clear what a "yes" means.
-Bennett
bennett@peacefire.org http://www.peacefire.org (425) 497 9002