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

[Nathan]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 4:33 AM, Peter Damian
<peter.damian at btinternet.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Goodman" <dgoodmanny at gmail.com>
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 12:07 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
>
>
>> 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.
>
> The irony is that this does not happen in Wikipedia in my experience, with
> philosophy.  I know all of the small group and they get on very well and
> support each other.  The problem is the aggressively belligerent non-trained
> editors who drive the specialists away. I think the best way to convince you
> of this is to get testimonials.  There is one here
>

Your own history, Peter, proves that you are incorrect; you are,
yourself, an example of an expert who has been, at times, aggressively
belligerent. I know you don't want to bring up your own history in
this thread,  but it's a simple fact that professional experts are not
always able to edit collaboratively and/or with an acceptably neutral
point of view.

Nathan