[Wikipedia-l] Expert quality

[tarquin]

an aside on the subject of expert quality:

There are certain topic areas where amateurs *know* they are out of 
their depth,and only the likes of Mr "relativity is wrong" Jones dare to 
tread.

In other areas, *everybody* thinks they know something. Take Music: I 
have found most of the articles on music theory to be of sloppy quality; 
they appeared to be written by people who half-remembered stuff from 
chilhood piano lessons. I and several others (Camembert, JFQuackenbush) 
have lately been rewriting them. Stuff like Note Pitch, the various 
scales, etc -- all much improved, but still, I hope, comprehensible to 
the lay person.
contrast with Nupedia: there's just an article on "atonality", which is 
largely incomprehensible.

The problem with "experts" is that they don't want to write about the 
basics. I doubt I would have wanted to bother with writing about "major 
scale", or "key signature" but finding the page in such a state 
compelled me to do something about it.

Another point on stubs: my 1100 page Oxford Companion to Music has about 
12 lines on the Glockenspiel -- about the same as Wikipedia. Some 
subjects will probably always be stubs.