[Foundation-l] Fwd: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[David Goodman]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 5:26 AM, Peter Damian
<peter.damian at btinternet.com> wrote:
>

>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.

I am not qualified to judge articles on philosophy on my own
understanding of the material. I must ask whether you are so very sure
that academic consensus will endorse your views on the articles
mentioned that you would be able to write a replacement article, and
ask for an RfC on it, and convince outsiders  by reference to multiple
understandable authoritative sources?

I remind you that in the case of climate change, the scientific view
was eventually supported, though it took several rounds at arb com.
In the other direction, disputes between experts was one of the
factors that killed (or almost-killed) Citizendium.



-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG