We were
talking
about very aggressive editors who know absolutely
nothing of the subject,
and drive away specialist editors.
I see an equal proportion of very aggressive editors among
the expert
as well as the non-expert editors. Expertise does not
necessarily
mean a devotion to expressing all significant views and
presenting
them fairly. I have been involved a little with
some articles in
Wikipedia written by fully-credentialed experts --in one
case with an
international reputation and distinguished academic
awards-- devoted
to expressing their own peculiarly one-sided view of the
subject. And
there was a group of articles with several experts of
established high
reputation each taking the position that the other
ones were
hopelessly wrong. And not confined to
Wikipedia, I think we all
know of subjects in all fields where there are or have been
people of
high authority with peculiar views Indeed, this sort
of bias infected
the old Brittanica.
<snip>
I remind you that in the case of climate change, the
scientific view
was eventually supported, though it took several rounds at
arb com.
While this is a whole other topic, it is worth bearing in mind that there is another arb
com round currently ongoing on climate change in en:WP, and that one of the most visible
experts looks likely to end up topic-banned.
It is unfortunately true that experts can also be aggressive, and wedded to strange ideas
about how to edit articles related to their field (in this case, BLPs of their ideological
opponents).
A.