At the risk of pointing out the obvious...
Expertise in a particular subject area does not make someone an expert on whether a particular topic in that subject area belongs in Wikipedia.
Expertise does not give anyone the right to dictate Wikipedia content.
What it _can_ do is make a person a facile researcher capable of quickly marshalling evidence on whether a topic meets criteria for inclusion-- criteria that have been established by the _non_-expert Wikipedian community.
If someone were to contribute an article on the Roadshow barbershop quartet, http://www.roadshowquartet.com/ , it would properly be deleted as not meeting WP:MUSIC or WP:BIO. The world's greatest expert on barbershop quartets testifying to their notability in the barbershop community would not matter, and ignoring his testimony would not constitute bias against expertise.
On the other hand, if someone contributed a scrappy substub on the Buffalo Bills that failed to mention, say, their Broadway appearance... someone unfamiliar with them might well nominate the article for deletion.
An expert saying "that's ridiculous, they're notable because I'm an expert and I say so and anyone who doesn't agree is an ignoramus" would properly be ignored.
An expert could, however, quickly point out half-a-dozen ways in which they do meet WP:MUSIC and my guess such a presentation would garner quick support the article would be kept--because the expert _used_ his expertise, rather than _asserting_ it.
On Nov 21, 2005, at 8:45 AM, dpbsmith@verizon.net dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
If someone were to contribute an article on the Roadshow barbershop quartet, http://www.roadshowquartet.com/ , it would properly be deleted as not meeting WP:MUSIC or WP:BIO. The world's greatest expert on barbershop quartets testifying to their notability in the barbershop community would not matter, and ignoring his testimony would not constitute bias against expertise.
That's absolutely untrue. If the world's foremost expert on barbershop quartets comes and tells me that the Roadshow quartet is of tremendous importance and significance to the barbershop community, but that the MUSIC and BIO guidelines are not written in such a way that small subcultures of music are marginalized (Which is the case - the MUSIC guidelines are appallingly slanted against world music, for example, and are similarly slanted against anything like Barbershop quartets that is generally performed rather than recorded), I would be strongly inclined to keep, and to feel that the WP:MUSIC guidelines must be flawed if we are deleting things that are of such obvious notability.
-Phil
"Philip Sandifer" wrote
. If the world's foremost expert on barbershop quartets comes and tells me that the Roadshow quartet is of tremendous importance and significance to the barbershop community, but that the MUSIC and BIO guidelines are not written in such a way that small subcultures of music are marginalized (Which is the case - the MUSIC guidelines are appallingly slanted against world music, for example, and are similarly slanted against anything like Barbershop quartets that is generally performed rather than recorded), I would be strongly inclined to keep, and to feel that the WP:MUSIC guidelines must be flawed if we are deleting things that are of such obvious notability.
Good point. Guidelines exist; they can't all be junked. On the other hand they exist in tension. Unfortunately, policy, semi-policy, guideline, whatever, is used in the same fashion as stone clubs in the Neolithic: anything to hand to win an argument. (Yes, yes, uncalled-for slur on Fred Flintstone, I know.)
Charles
On 11/21/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Good point. Guidelines exist; they can't all be junked. On the other hand they exist in tension. Unfortunately, policy, semi-policy, guideline, whatever, is used in the same fashion as stone clubs in the Neolithic: anything to hand to win an argument. (Yes, yes, uncalled-for slur on Fred Flintstone, I know.)
If something really valuable gets deleted, just undelete it. If this happens often enough, deletion policy will be subject to refinement.