Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
The community does not come before our task, the community is organized *around* our task. The difference is simply that decisions ought to always be made not on the grounds of social expediency or popular majority, but in light of the requirements of the job we have set for ourselves.
Similarly, the sister projects too are organized around their own tasks, though even there they maintain a more distant relationship to the idea of an encyclopedia.
I do not endorse the view, a view held as far as I know only by a very tiny minority, that Wikipedia is anti-elitist or anti-expert in any way. If anything, we are *extremely* elitist but anti-credentialist. That is, we seek thoughtful intelligent people willing to do the very hard work of getting it right, and we don't accept anything less than that. PhDs are valuable evidence of that, and attracting and retraining academic specialists is a valid goal.
I think that where Larry Sanger missed the point is in confounding the experts with their expertise. Many of the more stable editors among us deeply appreciate expertise, while being highly intolerant of experts who expect their status to give them a free ride. The editors from academia who lasted understand that, and have learned to live with it. They understand that the dues that they paid elsewhere are not recognized as dues here.
I'm 100% committed to a goal of "Britannica or better" quality for Wikipedia, and all of our social rules should revolve around that. Openness is indispensible for us, but it is our *radical* means to our radical *ends*.
You're too modest. Why not simply say, "Better than Britannica"?
Ec