[WikiEN-l] Times article (London)

[Marc Riddell]

>> Well over six months ago I personally persuaded several top-notch writers in
>> their field to contribute to Wikipedia articles. In each and every case they
>> finally gave up in frustration after their work was reverted or challenged
>> on grounds that were pure bullshit.

on 8/18/07 8:09 AM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton at gmail.com wrote:

> 
> Were the grounds really pure bullshit?

In their opinions, and, in some of the cases, mine - yes the grounds were
bullshit. Because, the grounds for disagreement by the disputing editors
were based on popular notions of the subject and self-help nonsense.

In all cases here we are talking about the subjects of human behavior and
other very basic psychosocial concepts. I will not be more specific about
the Articles in question so as not to single-out any specific editor. But,
in each case, the objections they had were based upon "that's not what I
learned" and other pop-psych nonsense. How do you deal with that without
running into the 3RR?

> In my experience, experts
> struggle with NOR and citing sources, since original research is what
> they do for a living. If an expert comes along and changes something
> on a page and just cites their own expertise as the source, then it is
> going to be challenged, and so it should be.

I ask this with my tongue partially planted in my cheek: If a person,
recognized as especially knowledgeable in a field, makes an edit to a
article in that field, then cites their own texts as sources, would this be
acceptable to the Project? Do you see what I¹m getting at? Who would
Einstein have cited?

> Writing encyclopedia
> articles is very different to writing journal articles. Being good at
> one doesn't make you good at the other.

Quite so!
> 
> While encouraging experts to edit Wikipedia is great, they shouldn't
> be doing it as experts, they should just be doing it as people
> interested in the subject, the same as everyone else.

But the reality is, when it comes to certain subjects, they are not like
everyone else. How do you turn expertise on & off?

> What experts
> should do as experts is review articles and put their stamp on them as
> being correct. Such a system would greatly improve Wikipedia's
> reliability and make people trust us far more. Of course, this system
> has been proposed dozens of times, and it's very hard to implement due
> to the difficulty is defining and verifying experts. Perhaps we should
> start on a small scale with just a few fields where it is easier (eg.
> academic fields where we can simply require being a lecturer at a
> reputable university).
> 
I see positives as well as pitfalls with this ­ well worth serious
discussion.

Personal note: After several frustrating attempts at editing articles in my
field, and not having the time nor knowledge of the WP system to argue about
it, I was ready to bow out. Then, a funny thing happened - I discovered the
Project's people. They, and a genuine desire to help them build a healthy
culture, is why I'm still here.

Marc