Shaun MacPherson wrote:
--- NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Tuesday 04 January 2005 17:55, Traroth wrote:
Does your proposition mean that only experts will be
authorized to contribute ? That's a major change in
the Wikipedia spirit, and I desagree totally.
Non-experts contribute text, provided they give their full legal name and contact details. Experts contribute text and check the non-experts' contributions.
Sounds like an interesting idea, but why do we need 'experts' for? Anyone can fact and reference check, and after facts have been verified with multiple sources they are then as 'credible' as credible can be in my thinking.
It is time to apply the Wiki philosophy to not just providing the content, but to verifying it with reference checks from multiple sources. It worked for content, I am sure it will work for verification if the community are given the tools (tools such as intelligent foot/end notes, autonumbering of citations, etc.)
Technical issues aside, this has to do with systemic bias, not so much in Wikipedia as in the society in general. It is natural that as society members we would bring our biases with us into Wikipedia. A bias perhaps becomes systemic when no-one recognizes it as a bias; it takes some dumb little kid to yell out that the emperor has no clothes.
Objective truth has nothing to do with who is saying it. Many of us who would write here have been around academic "experts" in the past, and it is inevitable that some would have carried away a little of the idolatry that comes from that association. One of the most frequent idolatrous statements that I see is "IANAL". One should have surmised that something was wrong 400 years ago when Shakespeare commented, "First we'll kill the lawyers." Society abounds with stories of lawyers and politicians (many of whom are lawyers) as thieves and scoundrels, but incredibly we continue to defer to their expertise with that short disclaimer.
Ec