[WikiEN-l] Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia

Mon Sep 13 20:36:35 UTC 2004

--- Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com> wrote:
> 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.

Each review club should have the ability to say what mix of certified experts
(that is, somebody with a relevant degree or lots of outside experience) vs
self-taught and trusted Wikipedians should review articles under the review
club's jurisdiction. 

Either way, each person (expert or not) reviewing an article can veto the
opinion of the other reviewer about adding the stable tag. That way experts
have no more power than anybody else. 

As already noted, there are strengths and weaknesses with trusting experts or
non-experts alone. So in many cases (esp in the sciences) a mix of the two will
be needed to judge whether or not an article is complete, presents the
consensus view of the relevant field, mentions outside views with the
appropriate detail, is reasonably complete, and does not contain any obvious
errors of fact. 

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail