Fred Bauder (fredbaud@ctelco.net) [050104 23:32]:
No way, an anonymous editor can cite references as well as anyone else and it is not his bona fides that makes the reference good but the reputation and authoritativeness of the reference. Anyone who has attended institutions of higher learning is fully aware that formal qualifications mean next to nothing and has probably learned that those who cite their degrees and position as authority in the course of an argument rather than focusing on evidence which might support their position do so because they are unable to prevail using the evidence available to them.
I would agree on the point that references are the thing. The Internet is a land of unreliable crap probably good to the pub-quiz level of reliability. Wikipedia makes it that far on average. But supply good references, and suddenly an article's standing is a lot higher at a glance. Because references are checkable.
(The next problem becomes garbage references - like all the "Israeli News Network" items on [[Current events]] - and reference wars. But I think it'd be less worse having editors vociferously disparaging each other's references than each other's selves or ancestry. Perhaps I'm just overly hopeful there.)
- d.