[WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

Thu Jan 18 20:44:20 UTC 2007

Marc Riddell wrote:

>Ya know what we need in WP, an Article on Expertaphobia: The fear of, and
>seeming intimidation by, people who know stuff about things.
>
That assumes that all experts know what they are talking about.  Some 
do.  Others have merely been credentialized.  We also have Wikipedians 
who are incapable of making that distinction..  I don't even know if a 
fear properly encompases the situation; there is also a clear rejection 
of deference.

>Someone, I don't recall who it was, wrote that they would never work on
>something where experts were involved. Really? Who would you go to if you
>needed heart surgery, or wanted to learn how to play a violin?
>
That's one end of the scale.  I think that most of us are willing to 
find some level of working arrangement with experts.  This necessarily 
involves a rejection of the argument that a difference of opinion is 
decided by the fact that one of the participants is an expert.  We are 
not generally going to practice heart surgery or violin playing, but we 
may enter into discussions about those topics, and we want the experts 
to understand that the opinions of others should not be perfunctorily 
dismissed.

>Don't look now, but you are working with the aid of experts right now! Those
>marvelous persons behind the scenes of this computerized market place who
>make all of this possible. Without them we would be typing into the ether.
>
True enough, but we can still argue with them.  When they propose 
software "improvements" they still need to interact with those of us who 
may feel oppressed by improvements.  There was a virtue to keeping 
Wikisyntax simple as it used to be.

Ec