I wrote:
Until the 19th century, the scientific system was truly open to anyone, and credentials didn't matter much.
And Ray Saintonge responded:
Was it really open to anyone? The credentials were different but they still mattered. As long as the means for the mass communication of scientific information were not there, the credentials of the pulpit were the ones that mattered. The heresies of a Galileo were not within the grasp of the common man; there was no gavel to gavel newspaper coverage of his trial
I think Ray has confused "science" with "religion." The "heresy of Galileo" was not a clash between opposing scientists. It was a clash between science and religious dogma, in which religious dogma won by virtue of its ability to imprison, torture and kill dissenters. Galileo capitulated to the Catholic Church rather than suffer these violent consequences. The "scientific system" to which I am referring only emerged as religious authorities lost their power to engage in this kind of repression, and it did indeed emerge much like the Wikipedia did, as a system for the accumulation of knowledge in which credentials had little significance. The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 as England's official scientific society, drew much of its inspiration from Sir Francis Bacon's belief that scientific knowledge should come from all quarters and walks of life. At the time of the society's charter, two thirds of its members were interested amateurs rather than full-time scientists. Rather than narrow specialists, scientists of the period were wide-ranging intellectuals interested in all of the ideas of the day, from physics to theology. They combined passion for knowledge with practical interests in commerce, agriculture, and industry. "We find noble rarities to be every day given in," wrote Bishop Sprat, the first historian of the Society, "not only by the hands of the learned, but from the shops of mechanics, voyages of merchants, ploughs of husbandmen, gardens of gentlemen." That description sounds uncommonly similar to the description that someone could write of the Wikipedia today.
Of course, there were limitations to the idea of science being open to anyone. In the 1700s, literacy was rare and most people were too preoccupied with daily survival to engage in scientific dabbling or publishing. Here too, though, there is a parallel to the Wikipedia. There are no _formal_ barriers to participation in the Wikipedia, but in practice only people with sufficient time and access to the Internet are able to contribute, which currently excludes most of the world's population. (Of course, that's not the fault of the Wikipedia.)
Ray also wrote:
There's a problem when a source of information becomes too reliable. People become lazy; they stop looking critically at the text in front of them; they begin to feel that they don't need to double-check.
I don't think there is any evidence showing that reliable access to accurate information dulls anyone's critical thinking faculties. In any case, this problem is merely theoretical for the time being, since the Wikipedia hasn't reached that level yet.
Where are these "accredited experts" going to come from. The paradox is that the peers who do the peer review for the members of the undifferentiated masses cannot come from what are now the acknowledged experts. The peer review must come from other members of the undifferentiated masses.
I don't understand your reasoning here. Why can't the "undifferentiated masses" on Wikipedia intentionally recruit the advice of people who are currently "the acknowledged experts"? In the rest of the real world, people do this all the time. When we hire a physician or an attorney or an architect, most of us go to people who have training, certification and specialized knowledge in those fields. Just as I don't need to be a surgeon myself in order to find a good one to take out my appendix, the "undifferentiated masses" on Wikipedia don't need expertise in everything in order to identify and recruit individuals who _do_ have that expertise. Of course, this system won't be error-proof. (Nothing in this world ever is.) However, it might help improve the quality and reliability of information presented here.
I wrote:
In the future, we may want to have some volunteer committees:
[SNIP]
If a dispute arose over a particular article, the committee would be invited to mediate and render an opinion, and if mediation alone was insufficient to resolve the dispute, the committee could even be given authority to impose a binding decision.
Ray responded:
Perish the thought! Pontifical truth committees! When they mediate and render an opinion it is still just an opinion, and it may therby have greater weight, but please, no binding decisions. Promoting an atmosphere of critical thinking would be a much greater accomplishment.
I realize that the idea of giving "binding" authority to such a committee is bound to raise concerns, and perhaps I'm thinking too far into the future. The question of whether and when to delegate such authority can only be answered after committees of this type already exist and have been functioning for awhile in a purely advisory role. I think that any such binding authority should be given only after careful deliberation, and those in whom it is entrusted should use it with caution and restraint. However, I think it is a mistake to imagine that no one here ever has binding authority over anyone else. We already have a system in place of sysops who exert such authority, acting under the all-seeing gaze of Jimbo, our Philosopher King. Just as sysops can step in now to curb edit wars and vandalism, I think there could be a place in the future for specialized expert committees to perform similar functions.