[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[Steve Block]

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


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