[Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals with content issues.

Sun Aug 29 16:19:01 UTC 2010

*The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors
that
are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered.
*
I think my problem with suggestions like this is that the assumption at the
heart of all of them--that "experts" with degrees are preferable as
information authorities to nonexperts without--is deeply problematic, and
I'm not convinced it won't create more problems than it solves.  I am not
myself an academic, but I've worked in an academic setting for over a decade
(I'm in college textbooks), and I work closely with college faculty and ...
quite frankly the number of them I would trust to edit an article I wanted
to read is very small.

Academic qualifications generally just mean you stayed in school long enough
to get them, and little else.  I'm not trying to spout anti-intellectual
nonsense, I'm just saying that academia churns out an awful lot of people
with degrees every year, a really astonishing number actually, and an awful
lot of those people are no more deserving of the term "expert" than the guy
driving the 2 train that took me to work this morning, or the girl who
served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.  I'm worried we'd give the imprimatur of
extra scholarly specialness to the edits of a bunch of people who honestly
would not deserve it.

I don't really see this as a problem with Wikipedia anyway.  Wikipedia's
detractors do, but that's generally because they object to the mission in
general, and its democratic nature in particular.  Here we value the quality
of the work, not the letters on a piece of paper obtained in exchange for
$100,000 in tuition.

FMF

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Peter Damian
<peter.damian at btinternet.com>wrote:

> Gerard writes: >>The trouble is that attempts to make something that lures
> experts but
> keeps idiots out of their faces have so far failed and/or attracted no
> attention, even from the experts (Citizendium, Scholarpedia). That is,
> they sound like a good idea; but in practice, Wikipedia has so far
> been the least worst system.
>
> True.  But is there not some way of making Wikipedia just a little more
> attractive
> to people who have studied the subject?  I used to propose things like
> credentials
> based on trust earned on Wikipedia (which would require getting trust from
> other
> trusted editors, much like in financial markets).  These all naturally got
> shot down,
> and silly of me to have tried.  But is there not some way of just making it
> a little
> easier?
>
> The problem is that until someone sits up and notices the serious errors
> that
> are propagated through Wikipedia (and which are now becoming part of the
> folk wisdom of the internet), no one will be bothered. The problem is that
> no one
> *knows* there are problems, and so no one can be bothered. I've started
> documenting
> the problem in a small way, e.g. here
> http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-of-ockham.html
> and here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/avicennian-logic.html , but
> this is only
> in my own area of expertise.
>
> What is the very smallest thing that could be done, I wonder?
>
> Peter
>
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