Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
|
|
|
Please excuse my passion for what I deeply care about. My expertise comes from my desire to search for knowledge about what I am interested in. I'm 58 years old. I know a great deal about a few areas. I hold no real degrees in anything other than what life has given me. I don't have time to read on my own the huge amount of WikiRules on my own. If I did, I am sure what I have posted in articles would have not been deleted with such abandon. There would be less interpretation of what can stay in a page instead of just get rid of it. WikiRules would be expressed with greater fairness overall. My feelings would not have been hurt.
I suggest Wiki create a school. WikiSchool for those who wish to post, edit, participate in, ect. Anyone would be able to take the class. This who pass the requirements would gain the privledges to post articles.
Create a learning program that is reasonable and fair. The users still must have a reasonable ability. The trick would be to allow users to succeed at a reasonable level. A middle ground - level of perfection.
I believe Wiki needs a way to educate it's users that is enforceable to some degree. An expert is not always the best person to write an article. I am not perfect and nether is an expert. With this in mind, a required WikiSchool is a viable solution. Articles will have better clarity, organization and many feelings will be saved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cirelages ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Maybe I am being over-critical, but it seems to me that the section labeled "Those who are still active on Wikipedia" are, as a group, less expert than those who have departed (long-term or forever). Maybe there is no way to address this without a lot of finger-pointing and hurt feelings, but that is my overall impression. In particular, it seems that philosophers and computer science credentials have always been in abundant supply within the project. What is needed it true hard-science credentials, ideally at the PhD level. All you have to do is look at the portals listed on the main page to understand how the face we present mismatches the reality of the "expert pool" within the project. -- 70.231.147.149 20:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
This seemed like a very good idea to me, however also at the same time going a little too far? The concept is good, but perhaps semi-protection would be better? Also I'm sure if it was just semi-protection rather than full protection it would be a lot easier to get wide spread community consensus on this (though I'd still have doubts about it being possible). Anyway, I edited it to add that in and I felt that I'd mention it here on the talk page for futher discussion. Mathmo Talk 03:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
You might think about adding PhD Historian to your list or at least looking at his talk page. Awadewit 02:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Two refactors: a new subsection about experts who left but returned; and a new section for the hundreds or thousands of experts who edit every week without hitting dangerous levels of wikistress.
We should solve the problems identified here, especially for highly specialized and focused experts such as PhD Historian -- even if we cannot provide their ideal environment for contribution, we can set expectations so that they never feel their time contributing has been wasted, and so that the chance of their having a senseless argument is minimized. We should however not conflate this problem with the perceived problem that 'experts don't as a rule edit / don't like editing wikipedia' which can be shown to be false by enumeration.
Using a more careful language of expertise as suggested above by QTJ would help reduce this confusion as well! +sj + 01:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
The thing that's missing from this page is that people who see themselves as expert editors aren't necessarily good Wikipedia editors. They suffer from what several editors call "expert syndrome," which is when someone with an advanced degree in a subject, or a particular professional background, feels there's no need for them to cite their sources and edit within the policies, because their original research is expert research, and it therefore ought to be good enough for Wikipedia. As a consequence, the material they produce may be wrong, careless, and POV. It may also be badly written.
We should also bear in mind that just because someone has an advanced degree in a subject doesn't actually mean they're an expert in it. The degree might be from some time ago. They may just have scraped through. It's likely to be in a very particular area, and not applicable to much outside that area, even within their own field. They may not be particularly respected by their peers. They may not work within their field, and so on.
The other problem with expert syndrome is that expert editors feel that, because identified as experts in one area, they should be regarded as experts everywhere else in the encyclopedia. Then when they're not accorded sufficient respect (not allowed to add their personal opinions to articles), they complain about disrespect for experts and leave (and then get added to this list).
I'm not arguing that we don't need experts, because we do, but what we really need are good editors, whether experts or not. I'd much rather work with a good editor who knows little about a subject than with a bad one who has a PhD in it. By putting people with expertise on a pedestal, we exacerbate "expert syndrome." It might be a good idea to add something like this to the page, but I'm not quite sure how to phrase it. SlimVirgin (talk) 11:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I think we should remove the names from this page, and try to write something that's focused on the issue. It's not clear how we're defining "expert" for a start; the list seems to include users it would be hard to regard as experts, and there's also the issue of credential verification, another can of worms. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
How do we define an expert? Well, in the case of Kim van der Linde, there seems to be every reason for people who aren't biologists to consider her to be an expert-- that is to say, their superior in the field. She has a PhD and she is published; what more is needed? Mangoe 17:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Just for the record, this user came back and quit unhappily several more times (in 2011, and twice in 2012, that I know of). As of 7 March 2013, her account has been "burned" through the WP:Right to vanish process, and remains that way a year+ later. I don't know if KvdL really is an expert, but she is not an expert who left Wikipedia because of WP's flaws with regard to relating to experts, but rather because of participation in conflicts in highly charged topic areas, and in Wikipedia self-governance, e.g. the WP:Manual of Style. She's not a useful addition to this list, if it still serves any purpose at all. Also, I have to observe (in general, not about KvdL in particular) that "has a degree and got published" != expert. For an academic, that's just "competent". "Expertise" requires more than that. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:59, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
I think we need to get rid of the list. I'm seeing people on the list who left because they were in trouble of some kind; people who have no degrees in the area they edited in (no degrees at all, in fact); and some of the quotes contain spelling mistakes, which is odd if we're saying these are the people we must keep. Retaining such a list makes the page look odd, and it's a can of worms. If there are no objections, I'll remove it. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
This article has been taken in a direction which is essentially at odds with Wikipedia:Expert rebellion, from which it was derived. The thesis of the new editors seems to be that there really isn't a need to do anything, because all the people who left or who otherwise expressed discontent did so for reasons other than that having to do with expertise in the field. I don't believe this, and I see no reason to believe this in the absence of concrete and specific evidence. The strategy of erasing all the specific statements which one graced the article has left us with nothing but unsustainable allegations, one way or the other. It's particularly obvious that at least one of the erasures has to do with a contratemps between one of the erasing admins and one of the people whose complaint (which had nothing to do with that incident) has thus been erased.
I have no truck with the false choice between cooperative, "good editing" amateurs and uncooperative, "bad editing" experts. Incidents involving bullheaded amateurs abound, whether or not their opponents are experts or even passing novices. Policy attempts and essays such as Wikipedia:Ignore all credentials and Wikipedia:Credentials are irrelevant testify to the hostility experts are met with. The former proposal, in fact, failed only because it failed to reach consensus, not because there was a consensus to reject it. The current seizure of this article by the opposition is simply another act enabling this kind of abuse.
This article should be restored its former state. If SlimVirgin and Jayjg want to oppose it, then they should write their own essay and leave this page alone. Mangoe 02:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
As one of the originators of this page, but someone who has been extremely busy off-Wiki for the past six months or so :(... I'm a bit bemused by some of the comments above.
This page certainly wasn't written just so self-appointed experts can gripe. I don't claim substantial expertese in anything (and the one topic I probably can claim expertese in, computer science, I don't write much on), but I do consider having subject-matter experts present to be beneficial to the project. Likewise with good copyeditors, skilled writers, and dedicated admins. During much of last year, especially after the Siegenthaler controversy, several promiment experts were relating bad experiences with the project, some in promiment forums outside Wikipedia; and the project was getting some of a black eye.
This page, and others like it, did lead to numerous reforms here on Wikipedia (at least I consider them to be reforms). WP:DE is a direct outgrowth of this page, as are much of the current content of WP:FRINGE and WP:SCI (though the latter is still marked "proposed"; the whole notability issue is still under debate). Several contributors here also participated in WP:ATT. While not a "reform", this page also led to the excellent light one candle essay--the best rebuttal I've seen to many of the "Wikipedia doesn't value expertese and is therefore unreliable" arguments.
Just as significant is what didn't happen. No policy changes have been made which canonicize experts--even given the shock-to-Wikipedia that was the Essjay affair, this project is still the same democratic (as in "of the people", not referring to voting) place it has been. There haven't been significant changes to the Wikipedia power structure; nor has the German "stable versions" experiment been adopted on the English Wikipedia.
In short--some of the proposals discussed were adopted by the community; some were advanced but rejected, and some didn't make it off this page.
Now--how relevant is the "list of complaining experts"? It contains some datapoints; OTOH it is rather out of date. Some of the people on the list certainly had issues beyond debates with cranks or well-meaning but clueless folks who think the science section of their local newspaper is a more reliable source than Science. That said, given that this is an essay rather than an article or a policy document, removing the list strikes me as a move of questionable value. The correct way to deal with dirty laundry is to wash it, not hide it in the closet. (And given the well-documented mutual dislike between Slim and Kim, over matters irrelevant here, I think it would be better if someone else were to remove material concerning User:KimvdLinde).
My thoughts on expertese after much reflection over this page, other debates I've participated in, and such? That the primary problem Wikipedia has (and continues to have, despite policies like WP:DE designed to deal with such) is an issue with disruptive and counterproductive editors (some of whom are also experts) rather than an "expert" problem per se. (A secondary problem, which flows from the first and troubles many who hail from meritocratic cultures such as academia, is with users who are unable to cope in a free-for-all environemnt). Get rid of the cranks, trolls, and POV-pushers (leaving alone for the moment inherently controversial topics like abortion, creationism, Israel/Palestine, George W. Bush, etc.) and Wikipedia will become a much more welcoming place for productive editors, including those with subject-matter expertese. But that's my opinion; it may not be the opinion of others.
This page has been mostly inactive lately, other than the recent spate of edits. Many have moved on. What happens here now probably doesn't matter much. Anyways, back to work.
-- EngineerScotty 16:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I deleted the paragraph suggesting there aren't any gaseous ceramics.
Lobbyshook 21:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I deleted a list of names for two reasons: no matter how many people edit this (and it will never be a lot) the list will be very subjective and partial. Does it add anything to the essay? i do not think so. We know the issue is an issue, and worth discussing, but naming names does not help
Also, I think it is a little sorry to call attention to people who chose to leave. They left -lets move one Slrubenstein | Talk 00:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Where do I express disdain? i know some real experts who left, and I miss them terribly. But I just see no purpose to this list. Let's instead confront the real reasons people leave, and address them in a strong way. I would conceed this: if someone left, and left an essay or explanation as to why they left and what they think is wrong with Wikipeida, I oculd see a value in collecting these essyas. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which no article has an author. Once someone leaves, we should assume that they acted in good faith and actually wanted to leave the project. Why keep tab on their ide3ntity? The fact is, many of these people came to Wikipedia before cyberstalking and off-line stalking became a real issue, and people started hiding their identities; giving out personal information here, when we have NO idea whether the individuals want this or not and in fact since the left I suggest they woudln't want it, is really unfair to them ... and others, well, may be fake identities. The only way to sort it all out would be to start investigating the real identities of these users which I see as a major violation of their privacy. This is an encyclopedia. Let's write articles, not keep tabs on people who lon longer want to be here. And if we think that people leaving is a problem, lets talk about why good people leave and what we can do about it. We simply do not need this list to accomplish that. I wrote a statement explaining my deletion. It had no tone. No offense, but i suspect editors who fail to assume good faith and read "tone" into reasonable explkanations - even if ones they disagree with - may be one of the many things that starts turning people off to Wikipedia. Please assume good faith on my part and accept that there may be reasons, even ifyou reject them, for why I would delete the list that have nothing to do with my opinion about the people on the list? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
If we wish to study the problem of experts being chased off, shouldn't we have a comprehensive list of editors who left rather than editors who are still on WP? We could then link to the discussions they had and examine what frustrated them. - moritheil Talk 07:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's an interesting article about Cancer Research UK experts hoping to make positive changes on wikipedia. I'm going to extend a welcome to one of them, User:HenryScow. - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 15:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Is this just a great whinge or is it leading to some sort of solution? -- Evertype· ✆ 13:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
too lazy to rewrite that in proper sentences. If you want to retain experts, or are an expert and want to contribute efficiently to the project, this is how to change the situation away from "isolated expert wastes time in edit war against someone who feels insulted by knowledge" and towards a state where biased editing can be detected and contained by the community as it occurs. I don't care who sees this or works toward its implementation. Personally I do not have the time or interest to do so. It might help to analyze the 'quality' of specific sections of an article and even display this graphically, ranging from "primarily contributions from new or uncontroversial editors" to "largely the work of users that have been frequently judged as making biased contributions" to "written by users with excellent conformance to the objective and critical ideals of the project", as an extension of the differential comparison process. 67.170.106.201 ( talk) 03:01, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Some articles are linked from this one discussing "experts' frustrations". Thought I might suggest a couple recently published articles of a frustrated expert/WP-editor discussing his problems with editing WP.
"
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia" by Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 12, 2012
The WP article that spawned this article is
Haymarket affair (
Talk). It looks like the disagreement began in 2009.
Messer-Kruse's article prompted a few articles to be published such as:
"
Does Wikipedia Have an Accuracy Problem?" by Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic, Feb 16, 2012
—
al-Shimoni (
talk) 06:08, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The most alarming part of this is the suggestion in several places to increase the power and autonomy of wikiprojects and imbue them with hierarchical authority based on specialist credentials. It's difficult for me to think of a worse idea for Wikipedia's future than that. The level of WP:OWNership already exerted by some projects, and the zeal with which they pursue the WP:Specialist style fallacy, sometimes in righteous and advertised defiance of WP:CONLEVEL policy, is a menace to the entire encyclopedia. Individually they're all (or at least mostly) fine and upstanding editors, but assembled on one page with some charismatic personalities in the mix, the result is some really ugly magic. I'd like to replace the entire WP:WikiProject system with something verb-based (WikiWorking Baseball, WikiWorking Astronomy, etc., perhaps), or find some other way to de-noun, de-territorialize collaboration here. Experts need a system in which their input is valued and properly evaluated, not a system that turns their already cliqueish, compartmentalizing, seniority-based and authoritarian hierarchy survival skills into a recipe for project-based balkanization, "school of thought" founding, follower-gathering and discipline/faction-aligned splitting into entrenched, uncooperative camps. And I say all that as a founder and co-founder of several wikiprojects and a specialist of several sorts (albeit not a professional academic one). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:04, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Anyway, absolutely nothing prevents wikiprojects from accreting Randy-from-Boise types as editors, and all wikiprojects have them. There is no mechanism to attract only expert editors to wikiprojects. Indeed, the anti-credentialist nature of the system, combined with the increasingly WP:FACTIONal behavior of projects, pretty much guarantees that more and more Randys will join projects because of the power-in-numbers edge and the member-of-the-club feeling they provide, while still driving off experts, who will not want to be associated with groups increasingly composed of ignorant yahoos.
Another issue is that not everyone who disagrees with an alleged expert on something is a Randy. Experts on bird biology or military history are not usually also experts on linguistics and English language writing; they're often quite terrible at those things. The Dunning–Kruger effect is fairly strong and common among specialists, in both the sense of assuming competences they don't have outside their area of expertise, but also assuming that that incredibly geeky stuff they take for granted in their specialty is surely easy for everyone else, too, and thus not objectionable as a bunch of WP:CREEP and WP:JARGON that should not be imposed here. (I deal with people like this off-WP on frequent basis, and I have to, in my day-to-day work, translate my own tech knowledge into something that very technology-unsavvy people can deal with, so I perhaps think about this more often that average, from both directions.
WP:MILHIST is better than most projects. But it has also been the source of some problems, especially MOS-related ones (military history types tend to be over-fond of capitalization, idiosyncratic abbreviations, flag icons, and various other stylistic gimcrackery that other editors and readers find annoying or confusing), due to the very SSF effect you don't seem to think is real. You've "seen none of these problems" because you're too close to them and not looking for them.
The very fact that wikiprojects take this mentoring or grooming role you mention is precisely why they're a hazard more than a boon when they're off-kilter and being helmed by charismatic WP:NOTHERE loudmouths. This has been a notable problem in many cases.
It's not about whether I might quit in a huff if I don't get a rule I want, and bird (or whatever) editors might quit if they don't get the rule their way. Anyone who would quit over the kinds of trivia under discussion in these cases really isn't here to write an encyclopedia at all. It's about what's good for the readers and for the long-term stability of the project. Allowing wikiprojects to run off the rails and make up their own rules that conflict directly with what the rest of the site is doing doesn't serve either of those goals, only the interests of a handful of egos. Wikipedia has about 1,000 rules that are all "one size fits all" and they do tend to fit all just fine. WE even have an escape valve, WP:IAR for the rare cases they don't. I think you're mistaking a preference for a need. No one needs to capitalize bird species common names, or insert flag icons into naval battle infoboxes, or whatever the WP:LAME style dispute of the day is.
To pick the birds example, since it's current: Most of the proponents of the capitalization are hobbyist birdwatchers who got it from field guides. Bbut field guides on everything capitalize like that. WP doesn't. The end. As I've note elsewhere many times and no one has ever refuted, all actual ornithologists are perfectly comfortable not writing in the precious "Golden Eagle" capitalized style a handful of them are pushing here, because non-ornithology-specific journals do not permit it even in ornithology articles, and some ornithology journals don't either. There are literally zero bird experts who cannot switch between the styles at will, or they'd be out of jobs because they'd almost never get published. It's nothing but an ornithology-insider jargon habit used by some journals in that specialty, and by field guides, nothing more. The "give me capitalization or give me death" WP:BATTLEGROUND promotion of this capitalization on Wikipedia is nothing but a childish power game, and plenty of us have really had enough of it. Just one of many examples. Wikiprojects engage in daft and unhelpful us-vs.-them collective behavior patterns all the time. The more wikiprojects engage in insular, sovereign separatist attitude mongering, the more frequently this happens. It's not federalism, it's a walled city-state mentality.
I even bought into it when I first arrived here. It seemed normal to start a project, to make up new, conflicting rules, and to defend them against a sea of editors in other topics who just couldn't understand. Well, it turns out if you take about 1/10 the effort one would spend on fighting everyone off until they give up (or until you get RFARBed and blocked...), and instead expend that on making a good case at WT:MOS (or where ever - I focus on style issues, but maybe it's something more related to WP:RS concerns, etc.), everyone actually can understand just fine. Either your idea will be seen to make sense in the context of a big encyclopedia instead of a billiards magazine or a bird field guide or an archaeology journal or whatever, or there'll be good reasons why it won't. You compromise and move on. There's someone mentioned with a whole section higher up on this page who spent more time engaged in strife than working on article content or other constructive pursuits. We do not need to lament the "retirement" of every "expert" editor. No editor with expertise in anything is of any use to this encyclopedia if what they do here is cause trouble and foment the willfullorganizing and entrenchment of yet more trouble. See WP:5THWHEEL. Oh, never mind; that's an essay too, critical of troublemaking "experts", and some Wikipedian wrote it, so it must be wrong. :-/
Wikiprojects in particular (as we currently know them) are not necessary for expert editor retention, just because they may have played a role in it so far. By way of analogy, if I keep you alive for a while by feeding you lots of rice so you don't starve, that doesn't mean the only thing you could ever eat is rice, nor that you wouldn't die of some deficiency disease anyway, even with a full stomach, due to how poor a diet it is.
PS: I don't know what you'd propose to do about the Randy-in-Boise problem. Even if we totally ban anonymous edits from IPs, finally, we still have the problem that many registered editors are Randys. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm speaking of WP:NCL (see its talk and history) but am not here to talk about that long affair, which had its start with tnis and four or five others to correct a tidal wave of moves that, as I recall, were done on New Years Eve when almost nobody else was around; After 80-120 others, those titles were moved back to where they had been along, after one single-minded move and a guideline enacted in order to apply globally and without discussion. A hyphen->endash move of this and others like without discussion and a misreading/oversimplification of HYPHEN and ENDASH and corresponding CfD also took months of energy and talk-warring to correct; and as in the first case, and in the second, and others since, I was put to what I call WP:SHRUBBERY "Go get me a shrubbery" where somebody sends you on an errand to get data they demand of you - and in a specific format they says is in the rules but isn't; not even close - and lay down rule-demands for what is required that are not actually required.
It never used to be like this, in my opinion; when articles in those topic areas were evolved, along with the system and conventions used in teh titles (within teh Pacific Northwest there are many names that are dual and the evolved convention was to use the preferred native form for their articles/label and the traditional form used in English for cities, towns, places, that have the same spellings as were formerly used for native groups, and still are....in linguistics, and therein lies the long tale alluded to in the paragraph above, and a host of resulting troubles since, but I'm not here to discuss any of that.
After much blood sweat and tears, and a few necktie parties I "won".... in most cases, overwhelmingly (about those I didn't much could be said). And among the counter jabs at me were that being from the area meant that my views, and that of the natives, was "parochial" and that "global" standards must apply re a select field of sources; finally as with the hyphen/endash thing what turned the tide of single-guideline-ness were official sites and not just per number of cites, but what they said. And of course, as some here must know, I was dragged through wringer for being right all along. Why? Because I knew the reality - modern usages, standard orthographic conventions in the area, and so on; even region names that underly the landscape and nomenclature were contested as original research, if not by formal procedure but alluded to in one, were, if not official-cited and precisely defined should be deleted.
RE WP:CHINA, though per Talk:Jenny Kwan it's not just about the over-application of Chinese names on ethnic-Chinese bios and more; there are other issues of concern and many other articles were much more arduous discussions finally wound up making sense, and China's massive resources for intel and online manipulation show up in Talk:Tibet (which I stay away from ;-)) and countless others, but also in incremental changes, and in the Jenny Kwan case, mandarization and sinification of infoboxes (at variance with WPCANADA norms and standards as pointed about, except on other articles like Kwan's where this has been done); it's a case, and there are many others, where guideline-warring and procedural warfare may be more than cultural, but funded and organized. I won't point fingers, but I know parliamentary procedure and issue-evasion and propaganda-putdown when I see it and also a level of cultural difference about mode and rigour of argument and unyielding position and relentless onslaught of demands....it's a torture technique. Psychological warfare, used in interrogations and "re-education" camps.
But the same tactics are not just limited to WP:CHINA not at all; it's just theirs exemplify the One Guideline Is Law principle (WP:OGIL maybe) and when they apply it, it's with calm language but in 'no discussion' terms...because WP:CHINA says so. all the tactics in the previous paragraph, some with professional p.r. polish, are active in the same way. "it's in teh manual" I put it: debating technique and not issues/topic but guidelines.
I've said my piece, I need dinner and hadn't meant to go on but yours was a very provocative discussion to read after all I've been through in Wikipedia this last couple of years.
I'll come back later with links to news articles about information war and China's campaign; and more, e.g. the UK MoD's new "psychological warfare" unit assigned to infiltrate and manipulate social media.....Wikipedia's not mentioned by name but it's a given it's in the battlefield. I've shot my mouth off about it on Jimbotalk and on CANTALK but point related to the discussion above is that all you are talking about is not a culture that has arisen within Wikipedia; well, it has, but it's being planted and watered and fed by all parties interested in information control/POV and all that sort of thing. Intel is here, and I don't mean the company. Thing is that all the tactics throughout your discussion = and tactics are what they are - more and more I am coming to understand, have more behind them than OCD or ego or being " Brats in a bubble"..........not organized by any one group but used by all of them. Information war, with bearers of messages they don't want hear harassed, blocked, banned.
Enough. Time to eat.....and seems like for once, I'm somewhere where someone's not going to BLUDGEON me and howl WOT and refuse to read what I've taken the time and good will to write; freehand and back-and-forth so jumbled; but I write narrative, not formal essay. Stream-of-consciousness perhaps...but holistic, which was a term that got used when evolving those old conventions I mentioned; thing were returned to where they were, by the way, because the original names had already complied with guidelines and policies all intermeshed with informed input - until someone came along with a steamroller riding a guideline he'd built himself. Skookum1 ( talk) 14:22, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
"The level of WP:OWNership already exerted by some projects, and the zeal with which they pursue the WP:Specialist style fallacy, sometimes in righteous and advertised defiance of WP:CONLEVEL policy, is a menace to the entire encyclopedia."
putting this here for comment later; see Talk:Chinese Canadians in British Columbia and here for now, and also here for now, though it's far from the only example; the linguistics escapade above involved the same matters.... hadn't seen SPECIAL or CONLEVEL before, and why is it by the way, that this essay is "dormant" if there's been activity on it in recent years? By some statistical/numerical "rule"? Samuel Butler I'll quote later, I need my dinner. Skookum1 ( talk) 14:27, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
My own musings on the subject of expertise are on my user page. However I have had the opposite experience with my editing: soon after beginning to add material to pages based upon peer-reviewed journal articles and books, other editors that had been using web sources and newspapers disappear, leaving me as the effective author of the page. There is usually only limited discussion on talk pages regarding content and WP guidelines. This is in fact distressing, since I know that writing without some review/editing is not likely to be very good. What is really puzzling is that I have been working on a highly controversial article, Washington Redskins name controversy. FriendlyFred ( talk) 06:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Right now it just says professional or academic credentials define what expertise is...but I submit when someone has strong knowledge in a given subject area, in my case "local" history and geography for the Pacific Northwest, their insight and corrections should be respected; lately I've had the unpleasant experience of someone AGF'ing me, even going to the OR board looking for backup to condemn me for original research, on a subject he doesn't know anything about and yet has tried to behave as editor-in-chief on the project and been very combative and aggressive about resisting and challenging anything I say (and guess who gets blamed for being like that...).
Recognizing "local authorities" is especially necessary when there is no academic or professional-credentialed RS on a subject - or where those RS are wrong about facts they field, or about conclusions/speculations they reach (which are often widely repeated in other academic papers without ever checking original materials and real data; User:Braches is an 84-year-old from a place called Whonnock who has no degree though has published some articles for local newspaper; he and I are currently working jointly to fix up that article and related ones in the area; we both have direct personal experience of the area and its history (I'm from, partly, Ruskin, British Columbia which is immediately to Whonnock's east.
The dismissive "original research" allegation that gets tossed about against local-knowledge testimony comes out in one form or another; a certain editor maintained that native endonyms and local/native uses were "parochial" vs his own preference for linguistics titles as "global" (in the end googlesearches and commentaries on Canadian usages in recent times added to the mass of evidence supporting the proper change rather than one BOLD-imposed by an "amateur professional" in only one field. "Local expertise" and/or "acquired expertise" should have a mandate here; maybe WP:OR needs adjustment, but changing any guideline invariably winds up with circular arguments about other guidelines (often claiming they say things they actually don't) and not about the validity of teh issue at hand.
Some status for local-knowledge editors of long-standing and proven reliability on matters of local content should be come up with, so such disruptive opposition on grounds of so-called "original research" is not made by people with no knowledge of the subject in question. Particularly when, as with User:Braches and myself (I'm 59) we are older and know about where we're from and have little time for younger people who don't know, if you'll forgive me, jack shit about the subject delete something we know is true, or launch campaigns to AGF us, ot complain that our style of writing/discussion isn't in point form or too long and so on; ...so far that hasn't happened with him, but it has happened with other older contributors most of whom have said f**k it and moved on.....( talk) 11:41, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
|
|
|
Please excuse my passion for what I deeply care about. My expertise comes from my desire to search for knowledge about what I am interested in. I'm 58 years old. I know a great deal about a few areas. I hold no real degrees in anything other than what life has given me. I don't have time to read on my own the huge amount of WikiRules on my own. If I did, I am sure what I have posted in articles would have not been deleted with such abandon. There would be less interpretation of what can stay in a page instead of just get rid of it. WikiRules would be expressed with greater fairness overall. My feelings would not have been hurt.
I suggest Wiki create a school. WikiSchool for those who wish to post, edit, participate in, ect. Anyone would be able to take the class. This who pass the requirements would gain the privledges to post articles.
Create a learning program that is reasonable and fair. The users still must have a reasonable ability. The trick would be to allow users to succeed at a reasonable level. A middle ground - level of perfection.
I believe Wiki needs a way to educate it's users that is enforceable to some degree. An expert is not always the best person to write an article. I am not perfect and nether is an expert. With this in mind, a required WikiSchool is a viable solution. Articles will have better clarity, organization and many feelings will be saved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cirelages ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Maybe I am being over-critical, but it seems to me that the section labeled "Those who are still active on Wikipedia" are, as a group, less expert than those who have departed (long-term or forever). Maybe there is no way to address this without a lot of finger-pointing and hurt feelings, but that is my overall impression. In particular, it seems that philosophers and computer science credentials have always been in abundant supply within the project. What is needed it true hard-science credentials, ideally at the PhD level. All you have to do is look at the portals listed on the main page to understand how the face we present mismatches the reality of the "expert pool" within the project. -- 70.231.147.149 20:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
This seemed like a very good idea to me, however also at the same time going a little too far? The concept is good, but perhaps semi-protection would be better? Also I'm sure if it was just semi-protection rather than full protection it would be a lot easier to get wide spread community consensus on this (though I'd still have doubts about it being possible). Anyway, I edited it to add that in and I felt that I'd mention it here on the talk page for futher discussion. Mathmo Talk 03:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
You might think about adding PhD Historian to your list or at least looking at his talk page. Awadewit 02:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Two refactors: a new subsection about experts who left but returned; and a new section for the hundreds or thousands of experts who edit every week without hitting dangerous levels of wikistress.
We should solve the problems identified here, especially for highly specialized and focused experts such as PhD Historian -- even if we cannot provide their ideal environment for contribution, we can set expectations so that they never feel their time contributing has been wasted, and so that the chance of their having a senseless argument is minimized. We should however not conflate this problem with the perceived problem that 'experts don't as a rule edit / don't like editing wikipedia' which can be shown to be false by enumeration.
Using a more careful language of expertise as suggested above by QTJ would help reduce this confusion as well! +sj + 01:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
The thing that's missing from this page is that people who see themselves as expert editors aren't necessarily good Wikipedia editors. They suffer from what several editors call "expert syndrome," which is when someone with an advanced degree in a subject, or a particular professional background, feels there's no need for them to cite their sources and edit within the policies, because their original research is expert research, and it therefore ought to be good enough for Wikipedia. As a consequence, the material they produce may be wrong, careless, and POV. It may also be badly written.
We should also bear in mind that just because someone has an advanced degree in a subject doesn't actually mean they're an expert in it. The degree might be from some time ago. They may just have scraped through. It's likely to be in a very particular area, and not applicable to much outside that area, even within their own field. They may not be particularly respected by their peers. They may not work within their field, and so on.
The other problem with expert syndrome is that expert editors feel that, because identified as experts in one area, they should be regarded as experts everywhere else in the encyclopedia. Then when they're not accorded sufficient respect (not allowed to add their personal opinions to articles), they complain about disrespect for experts and leave (and then get added to this list).
I'm not arguing that we don't need experts, because we do, but what we really need are good editors, whether experts or not. I'd much rather work with a good editor who knows little about a subject than with a bad one who has a PhD in it. By putting people with expertise on a pedestal, we exacerbate "expert syndrome." It might be a good idea to add something like this to the page, but I'm not quite sure how to phrase it. SlimVirgin (talk) 11:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I think we should remove the names from this page, and try to write something that's focused on the issue. It's not clear how we're defining "expert" for a start; the list seems to include users it would be hard to regard as experts, and there's also the issue of credential verification, another can of worms. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
How do we define an expert? Well, in the case of Kim van der Linde, there seems to be every reason for people who aren't biologists to consider her to be an expert-- that is to say, their superior in the field. She has a PhD and she is published; what more is needed? Mangoe 17:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Just for the record, this user came back and quit unhappily several more times (in 2011, and twice in 2012, that I know of). As of 7 March 2013, her account has been "burned" through the WP:Right to vanish process, and remains that way a year+ later. I don't know if KvdL really is an expert, but she is not an expert who left Wikipedia because of WP's flaws with regard to relating to experts, but rather because of participation in conflicts in highly charged topic areas, and in Wikipedia self-governance, e.g. the WP:Manual of Style. She's not a useful addition to this list, if it still serves any purpose at all. Also, I have to observe (in general, not about KvdL in particular) that "has a degree and got published" != expert. For an academic, that's just "competent". "Expertise" requires more than that. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:59, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
I think we need to get rid of the list. I'm seeing people on the list who left because they were in trouble of some kind; people who have no degrees in the area they edited in (no degrees at all, in fact); and some of the quotes contain spelling mistakes, which is odd if we're saying these are the people we must keep. Retaining such a list makes the page look odd, and it's a can of worms. If there are no objections, I'll remove it. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
This article has been taken in a direction which is essentially at odds with Wikipedia:Expert rebellion, from which it was derived. The thesis of the new editors seems to be that there really isn't a need to do anything, because all the people who left or who otherwise expressed discontent did so for reasons other than that having to do with expertise in the field. I don't believe this, and I see no reason to believe this in the absence of concrete and specific evidence. The strategy of erasing all the specific statements which one graced the article has left us with nothing but unsustainable allegations, one way or the other. It's particularly obvious that at least one of the erasures has to do with a contratemps between one of the erasing admins and one of the people whose complaint (which had nothing to do with that incident) has thus been erased.
I have no truck with the false choice between cooperative, "good editing" amateurs and uncooperative, "bad editing" experts. Incidents involving bullheaded amateurs abound, whether or not their opponents are experts or even passing novices. Policy attempts and essays such as Wikipedia:Ignore all credentials and Wikipedia:Credentials are irrelevant testify to the hostility experts are met with. The former proposal, in fact, failed only because it failed to reach consensus, not because there was a consensus to reject it. The current seizure of this article by the opposition is simply another act enabling this kind of abuse.
This article should be restored its former state. If SlimVirgin and Jayjg want to oppose it, then they should write their own essay and leave this page alone. Mangoe 02:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
As one of the originators of this page, but someone who has been extremely busy off-Wiki for the past six months or so :(... I'm a bit bemused by some of the comments above.
This page certainly wasn't written just so self-appointed experts can gripe. I don't claim substantial expertese in anything (and the one topic I probably can claim expertese in, computer science, I don't write much on), but I do consider having subject-matter experts present to be beneficial to the project. Likewise with good copyeditors, skilled writers, and dedicated admins. During much of last year, especially after the Siegenthaler controversy, several promiment experts were relating bad experiences with the project, some in promiment forums outside Wikipedia; and the project was getting some of a black eye.
This page, and others like it, did lead to numerous reforms here on Wikipedia (at least I consider them to be reforms). WP:DE is a direct outgrowth of this page, as are much of the current content of WP:FRINGE and WP:SCI (though the latter is still marked "proposed"; the whole notability issue is still under debate). Several contributors here also participated in WP:ATT. While not a "reform", this page also led to the excellent light one candle essay--the best rebuttal I've seen to many of the "Wikipedia doesn't value expertese and is therefore unreliable" arguments.
Just as significant is what didn't happen. No policy changes have been made which canonicize experts--even given the shock-to-Wikipedia that was the Essjay affair, this project is still the same democratic (as in "of the people", not referring to voting) place it has been. There haven't been significant changes to the Wikipedia power structure; nor has the German "stable versions" experiment been adopted on the English Wikipedia.
In short--some of the proposals discussed were adopted by the community; some were advanced but rejected, and some didn't make it off this page.
Now--how relevant is the "list of complaining experts"? It contains some datapoints; OTOH it is rather out of date. Some of the people on the list certainly had issues beyond debates with cranks or well-meaning but clueless folks who think the science section of their local newspaper is a more reliable source than Science. That said, given that this is an essay rather than an article or a policy document, removing the list strikes me as a move of questionable value. The correct way to deal with dirty laundry is to wash it, not hide it in the closet. (And given the well-documented mutual dislike between Slim and Kim, over matters irrelevant here, I think it would be better if someone else were to remove material concerning User:KimvdLinde).
My thoughts on expertese after much reflection over this page, other debates I've participated in, and such? That the primary problem Wikipedia has (and continues to have, despite policies like WP:DE designed to deal with such) is an issue with disruptive and counterproductive editors (some of whom are also experts) rather than an "expert" problem per se. (A secondary problem, which flows from the first and troubles many who hail from meritocratic cultures such as academia, is with users who are unable to cope in a free-for-all environemnt). Get rid of the cranks, trolls, and POV-pushers (leaving alone for the moment inherently controversial topics like abortion, creationism, Israel/Palestine, George W. Bush, etc.) and Wikipedia will become a much more welcoming place for productive editors, including those with subject-matter expertese. But that's my opinion; it may not be the opinion of others.
This page has been mostly inactive lately, other than the recent spate of edits. Many have moved on. What happens here now probably doesn't matter much. Anyways, back to work.
-- EngineerScotty 16:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I deleted the paragraph suggesting there aren't any gaseous ceramics.
Lobbyshook 21:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I deleted a list of names for two reasons: no matter how many people edit this (and it will never be a lot) the list will be very subjective and partial. Does it add anything to the essay? i do not think so. We know the issue is an issue, and worth discussing, but naming names does not help
Also, I think it is a little sorry to call attention to people who chose to leave. They left -lets move one Slrubenstein | Talk 00:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Where do I express disdain? i know some real experts who left, and I miss them terribly. But I just see no purpose to this list. Let's instead confront the real reasons people leave, and address them in a strong way. I would conceed this: if someone left, and left an essay or explanation as to why they left and what they think is wrong with Wikipeida, I oculd see a value in collecting these essyas. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which no article has an author. Once someone leaves, we should assume that they acted in good faith and actually wanted to leave the project. Why keep tab on their ide3ntity? The fact is, many of these people came to Wikipedia before cyberstalking and off-line stalking became a real issue, and people started hiding their identities; giving out personal information here, when we have NO idea whether the individuals want this or not and in fact since the left I suggest they woudln't want it, is really unfair to them ... and others, well, may be fake identities. The only way to sort it all out would be to start investigating the real identities of these users which I see as a major violation of their privacy. This is an encyclopedia. Let's write articles, not keep tabs on people who lon longer want to be here. And if we think that people leaving is a problem, lets talk about why good people leave and what we can do about it. We simply do not need this list to accomplish that. I wrote a statement explaining my deletion. It had no tone. No offense, but i suspect editors who fail to assume good faith and read "tone" into reasonable explkanations - even if ones they disagree with - may be one of the many things that starts turning people off to Wikipedia. Please assume good faith on my part and accept that there may be reasons, even ifyou reject them, for why I would delete the list that have nothing to do with my opinion about the people on the list? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
If we wish to study the problem of experts being chased off, shouldn't we have a comprehensive list of editors who left rather than editors who are still on WP? We could then link to the discussions they had and examine what frustrated them. - moritheil Talk 07:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's an interesting article about Cancer Research UK experts hoping to make positive changes on wikipedia. I'm going to extend a welcome to one of them, User:HenryScow. - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 15:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Is this just a great whinge or is it leading to some sort of solution? -- Evertype· ✆ 13:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
too lazy to rewrite that in proper sentences. If you want to retain experts, or are an expert and want to contribute efficiently to the project, this is how to change the situation away from "isolated expert wastes time in edit war against someone who feels insulted by knowledge" and towards a state where biased editing can be detected and contained by the community as it occurs. I don't care who sees this or works toward its implementation. Personally I do not have the time or interest to do so. It might help to analyze the 'quality' of specific sections of an article and even display this graphically, ranging from "primarily contributions from new or uncontroversial editors" to "largely the work of users that have been frequently judged as making biased contributions" to "written by users with excellent conformance to the objective and critical ideals of the project", as an extension of the differential comparison process. 67.170.106.201 ( talk) 03:01, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Some articles are linked from this one discussing "experts' frustrations". Thought I might suggest a couple recently published articles of a frustrated expert/WP-editor discussing his problems with editing WP.
"
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia" by Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 12, 2012
The WP article that spawned this article is
Haymarket affair (
Talk). It looks like the disagreement began in 2009.
Messer-Kruse's article prompted a few articles to be published such as:
"
Does Wikipedia Have an Accuracy Problem?" by Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic, Feb 16, 2012
—
al-Shimoni (
talk) 06:08, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The most alarming part of this is the suggestion in several places to increase the power and autonomy of wikiprojects and imbue them with hierarchical authority based on specialist credentials. It's difficult for me to think of a worse idea for Wikipedia's future than that. The level of WP:OWNership already exerted by some projects, and the zeal with which they pursue the WP:Specialist style fallacy, sometimes in righteous and advertised defiance of WP:CONLEVEL policy, is a menace to the entire encyclopedia. Individually they're all (or at least mostly) fine and upstanding editors, but assembled on one page with some charismatic personalities in the mix, the result is some really ugly magic. I'd like to replace the entire WP:WikiProject system with something verb-based (WikiWorking Baseball, WikiWorking Astronomy, etc., perhaps), or find some other way to de-noun, de-territorialize collaboration here. Experts need a system in which their input is valued and properly evaluated, not a system that turns their already cliqueish, compartmentalizing, seniority-based and authoritarian hierarchy survival skills into a recipe for project-based balkanization, "school of thought" founding, follower-gathering and discipline/faction-aligned splitting into entrenched, uncooperative camps. And I say all that as a founder and co-founder of several wikiprojects and a specialist of several sorts (albeit not a professional academic one). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:04, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Anyway, absolutely nothing prevents wikiprojects from accreting Randy-from-Boise types as editors, and all wikiprojects have them. There is no mechanism to attract only expert editors to wikiprojects. Indeed, the anti-credentialist nature of the system, combined with the increasingly WP:FACTIONal behavior of projects, pretty much guarantees that more and more Randys will join projects because of the power-in-numbers edge and the member-of-the-club feeling they provide, while still driving off experts, who will not want to be associated with groups increasingly composed of ignorant yahoos.
Another issue is that not everyone who disagrees with an alleged expert on something is a Randy. Experts on bird biology or military history are not usually also experts on linguistics and English language writing; they're often quite terrible at those things. The Dunning–Kruger effect is fairly strong and common among specialists, in both the sense of assuming competences they don't have outside their area of expertise, but also assuming that that incredibly geeky stuff they take for granted in their specialty is surely easy for everyone else, too, and thus not objectionable as a bunch of WP:CREEP and WP:JARGON that should not be imposed here. (I deal with people like this off-WP on frequent basis, and I have to, in my day-to-day work, translate my own tech knowledge into something that very technology-unsavvy people can deal with, so I perhaps think about this more often that average, from both directions.
WP:MILHIST is better than most projects. But it has also been the source of some problems, especially MOS-related ones (military history types tend to be over-fond of capitalization, idiosyncratic abbreviations, flag icons, and various other stylistic gimcrackery that other editors and readers find annoying or confusing), due to the very SSF effect you don't seem to think is real. You've "seen none of these problems" because you're too close to them and not looking for them.
The very fact that wikiprojects take this mentoring or grooming role you mention is precisely why they're a hazard more than a boon when they're off-kilter and being helmed by charismatic WP:NOTHERE loudmouths. This has been a notable problem in many cases.
It's not about whether I might quit in a huff if I don't get a rule I want, and bird (or whatever) editors might quit if they don't get the rule their way. Anyone who would quit over the kinds of trivia under discussion in these cases really isn't here to write an encyclopedia at all. It's about what's good for the readers and for the long-term stability of the project. Allowing wikiprojects to run off the rails and make up their own rules that conflict directly with what the rest of the site is doing doesn't serve either of those goals, only the interests of a handful of egos. Wikipedia has about 1,000 rules that are all "one size fits all" and they do tend to fit all just fine. WE even have an escape valve, WP:IAR for the rare cases they don't. I think you're mistaking a preference for a need. No one needs to capitalize bird species common names, or insert flag icons into naval battle infoboxes, or whatever the WP:LAME style dispute of the day is.
To pick the birds example, since it's current: Most of the proponents of the capitalization are hobbyist birdwatchers who got it from field guides. Bbut field guides on everything capitalize like that. WP doesn't. The end. As I've note elsewhere many times and no one has ever refuted, all actual ornithologists are perfectly comfortable not writing in the precious "Golden Eagle" capitalized style a handful of them are pushing here, because non-ornithology-specific journals do not permit it even in ornithology articles, and some ornithology journals don't either. There are literally zero bird experts who cannot switch between the styles at will, or they'd be out of jobs because they'd almost never get published. It's nothing but an ornithology-insider jargon habit used by some journals in that specialty, and by field guides, nothing more. The "give me capitalization or give me death" WP:BATTLEGROUND promotion of this capitalization on Wikipedia is nothing but a childish power game, and plenty of us have really had enough of it. Just one of many examples. Wikiprojects engage in daft and unhelpful us-vs.-them collective behavior patterns all the time. The more wikiprojects engage in insular, sovereign separatist attitude mongering, the more frequently this happens. It's not federalism, it's a walled city-state mentality.
I even bought into it when I first arrived here. It seemed normal to start a project, to make up new, conflicting rules, and to defend them against a sea of editors in other topics who just couldn't understand. Well, it turns out if you take about 1/10 the effort one would spend on fighting everyone off until they give up (or until you get RFARBed and blocked...), and instead expend that on making a good case at WT:MOS (or where ever - I focus on style issues, but maybe it's something more related to WP:RS concerns, etc.), everyone actually can understand just fine. Either your idea will be seen to make sense in the context of a big encyclopedia instead of a billiards magazine or a bird field guide or an archaeology journal or whatever, or there'll be good reasons why it won't. You compromise and move on. There's someone mentioned with a whole section higher up on this page who spent more time engaged in strife than working on article content or other constructive pursuits. We do not need to lament the "retirement" of every "expert" editor. No editor with expertise in anything is of any use to this encyclopedia if what they do here is cause trouble and foment the willfullorganizing and entrenchment of yet more trouble. See WP:5THWHEEL. Oh, never mind; that's an essay too, critical of troublemaking "experts", and some Wikipedian wrote it, so it must be wrong. :-/
Wikiprojects in particular (as we currently know them) are not necessary for expert editor retention, just because they may have played a role in it so far. By way of analogy, if I keep you alive for a while by feeding you lots of rice so you don't starve, that doesn't mean the only thing you could ever eat is rice, nor that you wouldn't die of some deficiency disease anyway, even with a full stomach, due to how poor a diet it is.
PS: I don't know what you'd propose to do about the Randy-in-Boise problem. Even if we totally ban anonymous edits from IPs, finally, we still have the problem that many registered editors are Randys. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm speaking of WP:NCL (see its talk and history) but am not here to talk about that long affair, which had its start with tnis and four or five others to correct a tidal wave of moves that, as I recall, were done on New Years Eve when almost nobody else was around; After 80-120 others, those titles were moved back to where they had been along, after one single-minded move and a guideline enacted in order to apply globally and without discussion. A hyphen->endash move of this and others like without discussion and a misreading/oversimplification of HYPHEN and ENDASH and corresponding CfD also took months of energy and talk-warring to correct; and as in the first case, and in the second, and others since, I was put to what I call WP:SHRUBBERY "Go get me a shrubbery" where somebody sends you on an errand to get data they demand of you - and in a specific format they says is in the rules but isn't; not even close - and lay down rule-demands for what is required that are not actually required.
It never used to be like this, in my opinion; when articles in those topic areas were evolved, along with the system and conventions used in teh titles (within teh Pacific Northwest there are many names that are dual and the evolved convention was to use the preferred native form for their articles/label and the traditional form used in English for cities, towns, places, that have the same spellings as were formerly used for native groups, and still are....in linguistics, and therein lies the long tale alluded to in the paragraph above, and a host of resulting troubles since, but I'm not here to discuss any of that.
After much blood sweat and tears, and a few necktie parties I "won".... in most cases, overwhelmingly (about those I didn't much could be said). And among the counter jabs at me were that being from the area meant that my views, and that of the natives, was "parochial" and that "global" standards must apply re a select field of sources; finally as with the hyphen/endash thing what turned the tide of single-guideline-ness were official sites and not just per number of cites, but what they said. And of course, as some here must know, I was dragged through wringer for being right all along. Why? Because I knew the reality - modern usages, standard orthographic conventions in the area, and so on; even region names that underly the landscape and nomenclature were contested as original research, if not by formal procedure but alluded to in one, were, if not official-cited and precisely defined should be deleted.
RE WP:CHINA, though per Talk:Jenny Kwan it's not just about the over-application of Chinese names on ethnic-Chinese bios and more; there are other issues of concern and many other articles were much more arduous discussions finally wound up making sense, and China's massive resources for intel and online manipulation show up in Talk:Tibet (which I stay away from ;-)) and countless others, but also in incremental changes, and in the Jenny Kwan case, mandarization and sinification of infoboxes (at variance with WPCANADA norms and standards as pointed about, except on other articles like Kwan's where this has been done); it's a case, and there are many others, where guideline-warring and procedural warfare may be more than cultural, but funded and organized. I won't point fingers, but I know parliamentary procedure and issue-evasion and propaganda-putdown when I see it and also a level of cultural difference about mode and rigour of argument and unyielding position and relentless onslaught of demands....it's a torture technique. Psychological warfare, used in interrogations and "re-education" camps.
But the same tactics are not just limited to WP:CHINA not at all; it's just theirs exemplify the One Guideline Is Law principle (WP:OGIL maybe) and when they apply it, it's with calm language but in 'no discussion' terms...because WP:CHINA says so. all the tactics in the previous paragraph, some with professional p.r. polish, are active in the same way. "it's in teh manual" I put it: debating technique and not issues/topic but guidelines.
I've said my piece, I need dinner and hadn't meant to go on but yours was a very provocative discussion to read after all I've been through in Wikipedia this last couple of years.
I'll come back later with links to news articles about information war and China's campaign; and more, e.g. the UK MoD's new "psychological warfare" unit assigned to infiltrate and manipulate social media.....Wikipedia's not mentioned by name but it's a given it's in the battlefield. I've shot my mouth off about it on Jimbotalk and on CANTALK but point related to the discussion above is that all you are talking about is not a culture that has arisen within Wikipedia; well, it has, but it's being planted and watered and fed by all parties interested in information control/POV and all that sort of thing. Intel is here, and I don't mean the company. Thing is that all the tactics throughout your discussion = and tactics are what they are - more and more I am coming to understand, have more behind them than OCD or ego or being " Brats in a bubble"..........not organized by any one group but used by all of them. Information war, with bearers of messages they don't want hear harassed, blocked, banned.
Enough. Time to eat.....and seems like for once, I'm somewhere where someone's not going to BLUDGEON me and howl WOT and refuse to read what I've taken the time and good will to write; freehand and back-and-forth so jumbled; but I write narrative, not formal essay. Stream-of-consciousness perhaps...but holistic, which was a term that got used when evolving those old conventions I mentioned; thing were returned to where they were, by the way, because the original names had already complied with guidelines and policies all intermeshed with informed input - until someone came along with a steamroller riding a guideline he'd built himself. Skookum1 ( talk) 14:22, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
"The level of WP:OWNership already exerted by some projects, and the zeal with which they pursue the WP:Specialist style fallacy, sometimes in righteous and advertised defiance of WP:CONLEVEL policy, is a menace to the entire encyclopedia."
putting this here for comment later; see Talk:Chinese Canadians in British Columbia and here for now, and also here for now, though it's far from the only example; the linguistics escapade above involved the same matters.... hadn't seen SPECIAL or CONLEVEL before, and why is it by the way, that this essay is "dormant" if there's been activity on it in recent years? By some statistical/numerical "rule"? Samuel Butler I'll quote later, I need my dinner. Skookum1 ( talk) 14:27, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
My own musings on the subject of expertise are on my user page. However I have had the opposite experience with my editing: soon after beginning to add material to pages based upon peer-reviewed journal articles and books, other editors that had been using web sources and newspapers disappear, leaving me as the effective author of the page. There is usually only limited discussion on talk pages regarding content and WP guidelines. This is in fact distressing, since I know that writing without some review/editing is not likely to be very good. What is really puzzling is that I have been working on a highly controversial article, Washington Redskins name controversy. FriendlyFred ( talk) 06:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Right now it just says professional or academic credentials define what expertise is...but I submit when someone has strong knowledge in a given subject area, in my case "local" history and geography for the Pacific Northwest, their insight and corrections should be respected; lately I've had the unpleasant experience of someone AGF'ing me, even going to the OR board looking for backup to condemn me for original research, on a subject he doesn't know anything about and yet has tried to behave as editor-in-chief on the project and been very combative and aggressive about resisting and challenging anything I say (and guess who gets blamed for being like that...).
Recognizing "local authorities" is especially necessary when there is no academic or professional-credentialed RS on a subject - or where those RS are wrong about facts they field, or about conclusions/speculations they reach (which are often widely repeated in other academic papers without ever checking original materials and real data; User:Braches is an 84-year-old from a place called Whonnock who has no degree though has published some articles for local newspaper; he and I are currently working jointly to fix up that article and related ones in the area; we both have direct personal experience of the area and its history (I'm from, partly, Ruskin, British Columbia which is immediately to Whonnock's east.
The dismissive "original research" allegation that gets tossed about against local-knowledge testimony comes out in one form or another; a certain editor maintained that native endonyms and local/native uses were "parochial" vs his own preference for linguistics titles as "global" (in the end googlesearches and commentaries on Canadian usages in recent times added to the mass of evidence supporting the proper change rather than one BOLD-imposed by an "amateur professional" in only one field. "Local expertise" and/or "acquired expertise" should have a mandate here; maybe WP:OR needs adjustment, but changing any guideline invariably winds up with circular arguments about other guidelines (often claiming they say things they actually don't) and not about the validity of teh issue at hand.
Some status for local-knowledge editors of long-standing and proven reliability on matters of local content should be come up with, so such disruptive opposition on grounds of so-called "original research" is not made by people with no knowledge of the subject in question. Particularly when, as with User:Braches and myself (I'm 59) we are older and know about where we're from and have little time for younger people who don't know, if you'll forgive me, jack shit about the subject delete something we know is true, or launch campaigns to AGF us, ot complain that our style of writing/discussion isn't in point form or too long and so on; ...so far that hasn't happened with him, but it has happened with other older contributors most of whom have said f**k it and moved on.....( talk) 11:41, 3 February 2015 (UTC)