Michael Snow wikipedia at earthlink.net : "On the other hand, if 172 wants to deny any significance to the name he has chosen and give us no personal information, then we have no evidence to back up his claims to expertise and might as well disregard them." I agree wholeheartedly. This is case with every other editor who choses to contribute to Wikipedia anonymously. In case it wasn't clear earlier, I'd never asked to be afforded any special status based on my work outside Wikipedia. I made this clear a few months ago. After I'd initiated the Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards page, I used that new forum to propose a system for editorial arbitration. I then declared that as an anonymous editor, I would be unqualified to serve on such a pannel. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Forum_for_Encyclopedic_Standard… Some users, such as Adam Carr, took note of this observation: "I commend [172's] acknowledgement that he, as an anonymous editor, should not be a member of such a group.") I'd like to use the above claification as a chance to illustrate my salient point concerning expertise. My frustration was never that I'd failed to receive sufficient deference from 'non-experts'; the root of the problem was never my treatment. The problem is that there are mechanisms for enforcing some policies but not others. Wikipedia has a court reprimanding users for breaking the 3RR and making personal attacks. But it lacks an authority reprimanding users for chronically undermining Wikipedia's progress with original research, POV nonsense, and ungrammatical prose. My suggestion on Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards was an alternative arbitration committee with public credibility, composed of qualified encyclopedists who have the calhones not to edit anonymously. (Such a review board would "kill two birds with one stone": making Wikipedia more "expert"-friendly and solidifying its public credibility.) However, other people may have better ideas, and my suggestion is certainly not the only one on the table warranting attention. Since the behavior of contributors is influenced by the options afforded to them by Wikipedia's governance-- as behavior is rooted in process and structure in every organizations-- a formal organ on Wikipedia delegating a special role for **non-anonymous** professionals, academics, graduate students, etc. would have a profound, positve effect on the culture of Wikipedia. Right now, far more talk is generated when a serious user commits a faux pax (e.g., violating the 3RR or 'calling a troll a troll') than when a troll spews crap into an article. Here's the reason: Wikipedia has mechanisms enforsing rules of PROCESS (e.g., Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement) but lacks mechanisms enforsing rules of PRODUCT (e.g., Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). As a result, when a policy related to product is broken, the dispute usually stays on talk, handled only by a handful of serious editors actively watching the page; but when a policy related to process is broken, it will attract a huge contingent of users fussing over who reverted whom, how many reverts there were, and what did or did not constitute a revert. The rules are shaping a culture on Wikipedia utterly obsessed with process, but incognizant of product. I'm not arguing that rules of process ought to be discarded. Instead, they ought to be supplemented by rules emphasizing and ENFORCING quality. I say "supplemented" because of the likelihood that far fewer good users would act rashly if already-existing rules mandating encyclopedic standards were enforced. In short, I'm not laying out a detailed case for policy changes here. I'm just pointing to a problem that ought to be addressed. Right now the rules create a culture on Wikipedia resulting in large amounts of attention to some policies but a lack of attention to others. This asymmetry ought to be addressed, before more users committed to undermining NPOV, no original research, and stylistic conventions figure out how to accomplish their ends by exploiting the over-emphasis on other policy guidelines. Others may disagree with solutions that I am proposing. But that doesn't mean that the problem does not exist. If my proposals are wrong, please come up with better ways of handeling the problem. -172 _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/