On 18/09/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
I think this may actually be a strength of
Wikipedia---expert idiots, in
my experience, are the most likely to be offended that they aren't being
given proper deference as experts, and so avoid Wikipedia. (Of course,
not all---or even most---experts who avoid Wikipedia are idiots, but the
credential-waving type do consistently avoid it.)
What's more, expert idiots are the hardest to deal with.
shhhh! you'll give the game away!
Non-expert
idiots usually know they're outmatched when someone who is familiar with
the relevant literature shows up with citations, so can usually be
chased off, or forcibly chased off if necessary. Pretty much the only
place this doesn't happen is in areas where multiple fields are laying
claim, in which case it's disagreement over the definition of "expert"
that's the problem in the first place (and Citizendium has no magic
solution to resolving that one).
There's pathological cases, like the WMC arbitration case, where a
pile of faith-based science advocates tried to get a leading climate
scientist voted off the wiki. Thankfully it didn't alienate WMC
utterly from Wikipedia.
If Citizendium on the other hand encourages the
credentialist idiots to
show up, then that's a whole new level of problems. As you point out,
anyone in academia has to deal with those sort on a regular basis, but
that's unfortunate, unavoidable, and my job---I'm not going to put up
with that crap in a volunteer job if I have an alternate way of
accomplishing my volunteer goals!
*ahem* I hope Citizendium succeeds admirably.
- d.