Steve Bennett wrote:
An excellent argument for why AfD should never be democracy-based (or believed to be that way). In these situations, you almost need someone to step up, say, "Look, I actually know something about entomology. I believe this insect is notable", wipe all the existing votes, and say "now, does anyone actually disagree?" It also seems to me that "ignorance-based debates" are not in themselves harmful, provided that there are mechanisms such that they don't drown out the informed. Everyone's worst nightmare is the 10 pokemon fans drowning out the tenured professor in his own field. But does it actually happen?
It has already happened, on webcomics - a dedicated few editors worked hard to alienate and drive off actual experts (while an actual academic expert who's a Wikipedian tried to stop it happening), and tried to force through that an expert could be outvoted by the proudly ignorant. This led to Comixpedia forking the contributor base. Others have seen this debacle and declared they want to have nothing to do with Wikipedia while it perpetrates this sort of jawdropping idiocy, and I'm having a very hard time convincing them otherwise. They don't even want to use the GFDL because (2) it's complicated and unobvious (1) it's too closely associated with Wikipedia. See past discussion on this very list.
- d.
On 2/27/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It has already happened, on webcomics - a dedicated few editors worked hard to alienate and drive off actual experts (while an actual academic expert who's a Wikipedian tried to stop it happening), and tried to force through that an expert could be outvoted by the proudly ignorant. This led to Comixpedia forking the contributor base. Others
Ah, is *that* what the repeated hushed murmurs about webcomics being evil is all about. Is there any kind of public "We're sorry, it won't happen again"?
have seen this debacle and declared they want to have nothing to do with Wikipedia while it perpetrates this sort of jawdropping idiocy, and I'm having a very hard time convincing them otherwise. They don't
What are the possible solutions? Can we give people cluestars when they have formal expertise on a subject?
(on that note...I'm just thinking if I would deserve any cluestars. I can think of one tiny area of human knowledge on which I'm an expert, but that's it...very humbling)
Steve
David Gerard wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
An excellent argument for why AfD should never be democracy-based (or believed to be that way). In these situations, you almost need someone to step up, say, "Look, I actually know something about entomology. I believe this insect is notable", wipe all the existing votes, and say "now, does anyone actually disagree?" It also seems to me that "ignorance-based debates" are not in themselves harmful, provided that there are mechanisms such that they don't drown out the informed. Everyone's worst nightmare is the 10 pokemon fans drowning out the tenured professor in his own field. But does it actually happen?
It has already happened, on webcomics - a dedicated few editors worked hard to alienate and drive off actual experts (while an actual academic expert who's a Wikipedian tried to stop it happening), and tried to force through that an expert could be outvoted by the proudly ignorant.
I think they were advocates rather than experts, weren't they? Webcomics haven't really been around long enough to have established academic roots. I think I'd bow to Scott McCloud if he deemed something notable, but webcomics is such a new medium that it's impossible to determine scholarly worth: there are few academic papers on the subject. It's a different field to etymology; we're not comparing like for like. Wikipedia isn't the place to be asserting the notability of things, it's where we record the notability granted by other sources. That was an aspect of the forking too. I also think it's rather mean of you to discuss people as ignorant.
Steve block