On 18/09/06, Delirium delirium@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.