[WikiEN-l] An expert's perspective - Tim Bray on editing the XML article

[wjhonson at aol.com]

Because you keep assuming that the expert would say "this is so" and if 
anyone asks how, they would say "believe me".  But that is not how we 
should be functioning.

The correct functioning would be that the expert would say "this is so" 
and someone asks how and then the expert provide a source which states 
what they claimed.

An expert editor is not a source, the have to edit using sources, just 
like anyone else does.  Their personal opinions have and should have 
nothing to do with building articles neutrally.  Neutrality is not the 
result of a single editor, it is the emergent condition of the cloud 
editing concept.  The final result of hundreds of edits by a dozen 
editors is neutral.

If an "expert" cannot provide an adequate source for something they are 
claiming, then they are not an expert at all.  Just a pseudo-expert.

Perhaps if you gave a concrete example from a specific article it might 
help to see to what you're referring and how to address the issue.



-----Original Message-----
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>; 
wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thu, Aug 13, 2009 6:35 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] An expert's perspective - Tim Bray on editing 
the XML article










At 08:34 PM 8/13/2009, wjhonson at aol.com wrote:
>"Please don't contentiously edit the article" applies to all editors,
>not just experts.  So I can't see the need for this distinction you
>think should exist. I'm still not seeing what you want here clearly.
>
>I certainly hope you wouldn't be able to get community consensus to
>treat experts as having a WP:COI  If a conflict-of-interest means
>"you're smart we don't want smart people" than we're really sunk.

Absolutely that is not what it means. It means that we want "smart
people" to *advise us,* not control us. By the way, on the subjects I
care about, this would mean absolutely no contentious editing in the
article, but more serious participation in Talk, because I would
claim expertise, enough to take me out of the neutral editor category.

Experts aren't neutral! (not usually, anyway, where there is
significant controversy). However, they know what we need to know in
order to determine neutral text.

How in the world would I gain a community consensus for a stupid idea?

Okay, "applies to all editors." Come on, great theory, absolutely not
common practice where controversy exists! Not contentiously editing
would mean 0RR or 1RR. But there would be rapid mechanisms for a
declared expert to get help.

The point is to both clearly respect, and make that real, and, at the
same time, contain expertise.

What we have now is experts owning articles, sometimes. It can get
very ugly, in both directions, it depends on how popular the expert
is. We block and ban them, or we enable their ownership, both happen.

A judge who happens to be an expert in a controversial field where
there is significant controversy would likely recuse if a case
involving that field arose.... It is, indeed, the opposite of what we
might think at first.


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