Jimmy: Thanks for giving me such a nice example to work with. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al. This is perhaps the only scientific study (a meta-analysis of existing studies) that was condemned by the US House of Representatives. It concluded that, contrary to mainstrean opinion, child sexual abuse does not necessarily cause pervasive harm in later life. Many "experts" would characterize Rind et al. as a "crackpot source". Now, there has been, over the last 25 years, a gigantic amount of hysteria about child sexual abuse in the United States. Thousands of innocent individuals have been accused of abuse in a wave of allegations, mostly based on the pseudoscientific theory that memories of abuse are "repressed" and have to be recovered by "trained therapists" in special "repressed memory therapy" which involves suggestive questioning, hypnosis, "scenario exploration", and drugs. Respected anti-pseudoscience organizations such as CSICOP have tried to alert people to this problem. Good starting points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Ritual_Abuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder An excellent book on the topic is "Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria" by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0520… Also highly recommended: "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex" by Judith Levine: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0816… (With a foreword by Jocelyn Elders, the former US Surgeon General who was fired by Bill Clinton because she said about masturbation that "it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.") Suffice it to say that there was and, to some extent, continues to be an entire "therapy industry" that profited massively from creating "child sexual abuse" claims (including the most bizarre allegations of murder and torture you can imagine). Some of these "trained experts" have now moved on to "therapize" victims of abductions by extraterrestrials. What does this have to do with Rind et al.? Many of the same people who work in that industry have massively attacked the Rind study. There were methodological problems with it (particularly from a European point of view, where "child abuse" typically refers to acts with children under 14, while in the US, it often refers to persons under 18), but many of the criticisms were simply very vile personal attacks against the authors of the study. Of course, pedophiles near and far have trumpeted Rind et al. as evidence that child abuse is not harmful. To some extent, they are correct: The ridiculous assumption that a 16-year-old cannot decide to have sex and will be instantly traumatized when they do so deserves to be questioned. The age of consent is something that needs to be carefully examined on the basis of scientific evidence. To exclude individual scientists who challenge the emotional mainstream as "crackpots" is not a good way to do this. I am absolutely confident that if a pedophilia or child abuse related article was brought before the ArbCom, and they consulted with an "expert" on child sexual abuse, the chances are pretty good that said expert falls into the group of questionable psychologists described above, and that they would strongly recommend to entirely ban any mention of Rind et al. from child abuse related articles. A villified user would be positioned against a trusted and respected expert. They wouldn't stand a chance. Such a decision would be highly POV and absolutely incorrect. It is questionable whether a democratic process would lead to a better result, but at least someone quoting Rind et al. would not be treated as a crackpot by some committee which decides the dispute. At least they would have a chance to submit their arguments to the whole community on equal footing with everyone else, and the community would have a chance to read all arguments and *judge for themselves* which ones are plausible. Hence, the child sexual abuse / pedophilia example is an *excellent* reason not to delegate any kind of authority to credentialed experts. Credentialed experts are largely responsible for creating the hysteria around this topic, and many of them made a lot of money by doing so. *Especially* in cases where a topic is highly emotionalized, making decisions based on "expert opinion" is the wrong thing to do, because the expert is very likely to be biased one way or another. And I absolutely challenge the notion that, if a decision were made in a democratic process, nobody would be interested. In fact, I believe that an emotional topic like pedophilia, if properly announced, would attract a very large number of commenters and voters. Yes, there are pedophiles on Wikipedia. That doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong by default, and that we need some expert to tell us so. We can deal with these people on our own. As some have pointed out, this is a choice between credentialism and open community processes. If we choose credentialism, then we implicitly assume that experts can be trusted to do the right thing. But history shows that this is a very, very dangerous assumption to make. Open processes are the only way that we can reliably challenge experts when they happen to be wrong. Erik

On 6/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: A good point to bring up is the sort of participants that each of those methods will bring... Votes are far more likely to bring around the fear and emotion driven, reactionary, and mob mentality crowds than something that actually requires time and thought. But the problem with things requiring time and thought is that often it discourages so many people that the decision is ultimately made by a small group with a special interest.. and many of the more neutral people are too disinterested or two annoyed from dealing with the click that they avoid it. Which is one of the things about a number of our voting processes.. they are not strictly votes but rather the interpretation of a poll by a trusted member of our community who must answer for his or her call if it comes into question. I'd like to see more of that, and less implying that it's actually a vote.