[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[David Russell]

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Delirium wrote:
> 
> They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the 
> article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which 
> case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very 
> basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears 
> in numerous textbooks in their field.
> 
> I don't agree with the expert-centric approach Larry Sangers advocates, 
> but we don't have to have only people who have *no* idea what they're 
> doing editing our articles either.
> 
> -Mark

We are talking about /readers/ here, not Wikipedia editors. If a
/reader/ sees a particular unreferenced statement on Wikipedia, they do
not know whether the statement is unreferenced because:
a) Some idiot has made it up without any factual basis
b) It is 'widely accepted as a fact'

Your 'people familiar with the field will recognise it as a well-known
fact' argument doesn't really wash in this situation. The reason a
person would be reading a Wikipedia article on a subject is because they
_don't_ know enough about the subject. What may appear as a 'widely
accepted fact' to someone writing a Wikipedia article on a subject may
be nothing of the sort to an uninformed person seeking to use Wikipedia
to expand his/her knowledge (which is, after all, what we're for).

Cynical
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