[WikiEN-l] Re: Expert weight on AfD

Wed Oct 26 14:47:35 UTC 2005

>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>>I don't care about the number of votes. If an expert can assert it
>>meets notability criteria it should be kept. We should try to get such
>>criteria for as many types of articles as possible.

>Tell the people on AFD. (And I dare you to quote actual policy.) They
>seriously argue that a consensus of the admittedly ignorant on a
>subject beats a dissenting actual no-foolin' expert.

Simple self-assertion of expertise carries very little weight in AfD. This is 
true whether arguing for exclusion OR inclusion. 

If, however, one has actual knowledge of a topic it is quite possible to 
influence an AfD _strongly,_ not by asserting knowledgeability but by _using_ 
one's knowledge to locate and cite convincing evidence weighing on the topic.

One of the characteristics of Wikipedia is that the only authority one has is 
one's ability to convince other Wikipedians. This is sometimes a strength and 
sometimes a weakness. 

The problem with saying that "If an expert asserts that an article meets 
notability criteria it should be kept" (or the reverse) is that on Wikipedia, 
there are no accepted credentials for expertise. 

In any situation, Wikipedians credit you with the exact amount of expertise 
you actually demonstrate immediately, on the spot, in their presense.