Stan said

you've fallen into the "I'm a

professional" trap

**You are right – on the other hand, when I first started working on the ‘pedia (I am testing the waters after a hiatus of about 8 months, but contributed regularly for a long period before that, and also collaborated on many of the initial discussions on standards, etc.), people tended to trust each other’s areas of expertise – whether professional or amateur.  The thing I have found is that people who are interested in good articles can usually tell good work, and a good professional will often bow to a better informed amateur -- or vice versa.  In the case of these particular articles, I really do suggest that you read the discussion that’s been taking place.  You seem to have gathered that I am in a very small minority, but if you read the discussions, you will see that I have qualified my discussion, been very inclusive of other viewpoints, and have provided reasons for my edits. 

Stan said:

But it would take some adroit writing and citing to

produce something that wouldn't be mangled by the semi-educated eager

to promulgate the wrong things they were told by incompetent and

biased CS professors, so I don't tend to work on those articles very

much. It's an unfortunate weakness of Wikipedia, but no amount of

fulminating about it is going to change things; what you and I

experience in our respective fields is a predictable consequence of

the rules under which Wikipedia operates.  It's motivating me to

ponder ideas for new rules that would address your complaints

better, but it's tricky and I don't have any good ideas yet.

**That’s true to some extent, but remember, Wikipedia isn’t paper.  It isn’t the place for original research, but there are tons of examples where we make statements that mention growing trends and new approaches.  And if we know more on a subject, don’t we have some sort of obligation to share that knowledge and make wikipedia better than other online encyclopedias?  After all, even the famous Helga did a great deal of eventual good in that she managed to get articles on issues like the Heimatvertriebene included and to shake several of us into checking facts and neutralizing the Polish-German borders. THOSE articles certainly contain lots of stuff you might not see all in the same place. 

Cheers -- JHK