[WikiEN-l] Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia

Mon Sep 13 15:46:43 UTC 2004

 --- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote: 
> On 13 Sep 2004, at 15:47, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> > We need a way to select content for the print/stable version and to 
> > make sure that that content is good quality and can be trusted.
> 
> Yes we do.
> But as I've explained here:
> 
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030521.html
> 
> we do ''not'' need to give any preference to "experts" (ie. people who 
> can demonstrate prior achievement) to make that happen.
> We ''can'' build a review club in the best Wikipedia spirit and it will 
> work for the same reasons that Wikipedia works.

You propose:
   "Review club members would need to be very aware of their limits and
   they should clearly say when they don't feel qualified enough to make 
   a judgment on an article. This is where the review club ''could'' also 
   solicit outside opinions, but only if the review club ''agrees'' it 
   lacks the relevant knowledge to do the work alone." 
     -- (the above linked post)

So, if the Review Club has sufficient expertise, it reviews the article itself.
If it feels unqualified, it solicits outside expertise. Forgive me if I've
butchered the intent of your post, but this sounds pretty close to a
requirement for expert knowledge to me. Moreover, a weakness of this system is
that the Review Club could easily make a mistake and not realise when it has
insufficient expertise -- people generally dislike admitting their limitations.
It seems much better to me to have mandatory input from some expert with
evidence of his or her achievement.

-- Matt (User:Matt Crypto)

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