My Epiphany

[DexterPointy]

....
Imagine what Wikipedia would look like if articles were written as a collaborative effort by people who actually had a degree in, or within the vicinity of, the topic in question.

Citizendium?

Actually, just a few seconds after I posted that thought of mine, then the exact same question (i.e. "Citizendium?") popped into my head too, but in knowing that Citizendium was born over a decade ago, and never took off, then I didn't go back to muse or research it further.

Well, it turns out that Citizendium isn't dead, but is (as I perceive it, and figuratively speaking without in depth research) sitting there as a patient which nobody has shown the mercy of pulling the plug on.

But! What I did (spending only about 10 minutes at the Citizendium website) find very surprising is that Citizendium seems to have let go of their requirement/convention/rule on competency: Read Note 3, on Citizendium:"CZ:We aren't Wikipedia"

off-topic: Larry Sanger comes across as a bit of a one-trick-pony. I found a short (likely incomplete) rehash of Larry's trajectory post-attempts of Citizendium at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rt0eAPLDkM&t=679s .

[DexterPointy]

Imagine what Wikipedia would look like if articles were written as a collaborative effort by people who actually had a degree in the topic in question.

Wikipedia needs a way for people to register as experts and provide their real credentials.
Wikipedia needs a way for those credentials to be respected

If you're both calling for more influence from published academic, self-identified experts, I don't think that would really improve WIkipedia much, if at all

For this reason:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ ... ed.0020124

Additionally, academic credential supremacy is unfair to critics of bullshit academic schools that have few challenging their nonsense in academia. Bullshit but mainstream and sanctioned 'expert schools' like: psychiatry, Christian bioethics, fat studies, fed funded 'counter-extremism' academia, clinical psychology, gender studies, and economics. Having orthodoxy define heterodox schools would further prevent the influence of the billions of free thinkers outside the tiny cult of academia having any further positive influence on academia.

Journo, "bleding edge" research is no argument for dismissing certified knowledge/competent people. There is much fundamental knowledge which no sane such person would disagree upon (and an encyclopedia is supposed to present a birds eye view on topics). And as for what is "bleding edge", then there's nothing to prevent a "neutral point of view" by presenting multiple incompatible views on exact same reality (well, "there's nothing" apart from humans self centered "need" to be right!).

[journo]

Journo, "bleding edge" research is no argument for dismissing certified knowledge/competent people.

I didn't say that -shrug-

You were asking us to imagine how much better Wikipedia would be if it were only or primarily written by "certified experts". I gave reasons why I thought that was a bad idea, due to the sorry state of academia and the over-institutionalization of thought involved in that proposal.

I also said that I don't think academics, in general, should have more influence in Wikipedia. Not that they shouldn't have influence. They do have a lot of influence in Wikipedia and are sometimes upset they can't have most or all the influence.

Academics already have so much influence at Wikipedia that they are allowed to bypass canvassing rules as long as it generates positive publicity for wikipedia in the name of a college 'edit-o-thon' that promotes whatever the group's opinion is on, in wikipedia's words, "heritage sites, museum collections, women's history, art, feminism, narrowing Wikipedia's gender gap, and social justice issues" among other topics.

WIkipedia also already actively encourages teachers in academic settings to get their students to edit Wikipedia. So far "thousands" of students have become active editors solely through this one program started by Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... gram/About

So give me a break about academics not having enough respect at Wikipedia. I also think it's great that anyone is allowed to revert academics at Wikipedia, just as any academic is allowed to revert any non-academic back.

[ericbarbour]

WIkipedia also already actively encourages teachers in academic settings to get their students to edit Wikipedia. So far "thousands" of students have become active editors solely through this one program started by Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... gram/About

Frankly, I would not accept ANY of the press release claims the Wiki Education Foundation puts out. And don't accept any claims of "thousands of students editing actively" without hard evidence. Students tend to drop off their "program" rather quickly, so the actual CURRENT number is likely to be far less than the numbers they like to claim in their monthly reports. I continue to suspect that Frank Schulenberg is an expert liar and "spin doctor".

The Cult must have fuel and young people are perfect fuel. At least, they WERE in the early days of the WMF. All indications are that the upcoming generation is far less prone to believe the "Wiki Iz Magic" crap without question. Millennials were great suckers for it.

[Bbb23sucks]

My position is somewhere between that of Dexter's and journo's. I would say that Wikipedia does have an over-reliance on some mainstream academic sources and puts too much trust in individual sources and I also concur that Wikipedia should be more accepting of alternative view points, but I believe that Wikipedia does have issues with a lack of editing by academics. Not only does Wikipedia already have too few academics editing, its design and toxic culture actively repels them. By academics, I mean academics as in people and not institutions or sources.