[WikiEN-l] Citizendium

[Delirium]

David Gerard wrote:
> Yeah. On Wikipedia, dealing with people you consider to be noisy
> useless idiots is not optional. You can't refuse to suffer fools. If
> Larry can get a live project going that doesn't do that, I think it'll
> lure a lot of contributors - some from Wikipedia, but also many who
> won't go near Wikipedia because there's no cure for stupid. At least
> with "expert" qualifications the idiots will be expert idiots, and any
> good academic has way too much experience dealing with those.
>   

I think this may actually be a strength of Wikipedia---expert idiots, in 
my experience, are the most likely to be offended that they aren't being 
given proper deference as experts, and so avoid Wikipedia.  (Of course, 
not all---or even most---experts who avoid Wikipedia are idiots, but the 
credential-waving type do consistently avoid it.)

What's more, expert idiots are the hardest to deal with.  Non-expert 
idiots usually know they're outmatched when someone who is familiar with 
the relevant literature shows up with citations, so can usually be 
chased off, or forcibly chased off if necessary.  Pretty much the only 
place this doesn't happen is in areas where multiple fields are laying 
claim, in which case it's disagreement over the definition of "expert" 
that's the problem in the first place (and Citizendium has no magic 
solution to resolving that one).

If Citizendium on the other hand encourages the credentialist idiots to 
show up, then that's a whole new level of problems.  As you point out, 
anyone in academia has to deal with those sort on a regular basis, but 
that's unfortunate, unavoidable, and my job---I'm not going to put up 
with that crap in a volunteer job if I have an alternate way of 
accomplishing my volunteer goals!

-Mark