[WikiEN-l] Citizendium

[David Gerard]

On 18/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> 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.


shhhh! you'll give the game away!


>  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).


There's pathological cases, like the WMC arbitration case, where a
pile of faith-based science advocates tried to get a leading climate
scientist voted off the wiki. Thankfully it didn't alienate WMC
utterly from Wikipedia.


> 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!


*ahem* I hope Citizendium succeeds admirably.


- d.