On 1/19/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The problem with expertise on Wikipedia is how to judge whether or not someone is an expert.
Exactly. And short of the foundation phoning people's universities and confirming degrees, it always will be. (And that only works for subjects where it's possible to get a degree... I don't think there is any easy way to confirm other kinds of qualifications (experience, for example).)
Really, it comes down to the edits and verifiability. If a person is adding content that's appropriately referenced, all it takes is checking a book out of the library to see whether that person's full of shit or not. The cheesesteak reference is a good one. The answer to that is (drumroll please), were either one of the statements sourced well?
If one can't find a source for their controversial statement, then it doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article in the first place. That's the problem right now - Wikipedia has this "write then cite" thing going on it's tutorials, but it really should be the other way around. It would quell a lot of the rampant deletionism going on right now if that were done.
Nina
If you can't find a source, then you're statement doesn't belong on
Wikipedia anyway. I'm always encouraging people to source first (which runs a bit counter to current Wikipedia instructions, but could do away with a lot of the rampant deletionism).