"The bikeshed problem" as applied to Wikipedia

[Bbb23sucks]

As the classic tale goes, a board meeting starts about the construction of a nuclear power plant. It begins with only five minutes of the deep and intricate engineering of the reactor itself, but end with over an hour of discussion about the trivial issue of constructing a bike outside of the power plant.

This problem represents of a very fundamental problem of any generalized volunteer-run project: Almost anyone can argue about trivial topics (like the construction of a bikeshed), but very people have the knowledge required to properly edit and debate about expert subjects (such as the engineering of the nuclear reactor).

This is very evident on Wikipedia, there are thousands of archives about people fighting over minor formatting spelling changes, administrative actions, and political squabbles, but comparatively few about issues and controversies within expert subjects.

With all of this being pretty evident, you would think that Wikipedia would be doing their very best to get as many experts to edit as possible. But in fact, they are doing the opposite. You can find it almost anywhere on Wikipedia. There will be a factual error - or several - that is corrected by an expert. Only to have that edit later reverted by some clueless admin of patroller or even have the expert blocked. This illustrates the central point of the bikeshed problem: Anyone can argue and debate over something trivial (such as a bikeshed or Wikipedia policies), but very few possess the specific knowledge to properly debate or edit advanced subjects (such as the nuclear reactor or the expert article).

This is made worse by the fact that Wikipedia policies and admins actively discourage experts from editing. Policies such WP:NOR, while good in theory, often result in blocks over very minor "research" on otherwise very valuable users. The Wikipedia doctrine of "anyone can edit" is really "anyone who is an expert in Wikipedia policies can edit". There is lots of original research on Wikipedia, and most of it is not made by experts. This kind of original research is rarely removed by admins. Further more, these experts are often blocked for "edit-warring" when they are simply trying to remove factual errors and don't know the intricacies of Wikipedia policies.

This is so common, you can even find people complaining about it outside of Wikipedia. Here are some examples:
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2022/08/b ... pedia.html