Larry Sanger has the same diagnosis that i do I have more to offer in terms of how to solve the problem But not whilst being blocked by trolls and their pet admins for making the effort Wikipedia has to its credit done something about the most serious trolling and other kinds of abuse there is an Arbitration Committee that provides a process whereby the most disruptive users of Wikipedia can be ejected from the project But there are myriad abuses and problems that never make it to mediation let alone arbitration A few of the project s participants can be not to put a nice word on it pretty nasty And this is tolerated So for any person who can and wants to work politely with well meaning rational reasonably well informed peoplewhich is to say to be sure most people working on Wikipediathe constant fighting can be so off putting as to drive them away from the project This explains why I am gone it also explains why many others including some extremely knowledgeable and helpful people have left the project The root problem anti elitism or lack of respect for expertise There is a deeper problemor I at least regard it as a problemwhich explains both of the above elaborated problems Namely as a community Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise As a community far from being elitist which would in this context mean excluding the unwashed masses it is anti elitist which in this context means that expertise is not accorded any special respect and snubs and disrespect of expertise is tolerated This is one of my failures a policy that I attempted to institute in Wikipedia s first year but for which I did not muster adequate support was the policy of respecting and deferring politely to experts Those who were there will I hope remember that I tried very hard I need not recount the history of how this nascent policy eventually withered and died Ultimately it became very clear that the most active and influential members of the projectbeginning with Jimmy Wales who hired me to start a free encyclopedia project and who now manages Wikipedia and Wikimediawere decidedly anti elitist in the above described sense Consequently nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia because they willat least if they are editing articles on articles that are subject to any sort of controversybe forced to defend their edits on article discussion pages against attacks by nonexperts This is not perhaps so bad in itself But if the expert should have the gall to complain to the community about the problem he or she will be shouted down at worst or politely asked to work with persons who have proven themselves to be unreasonable at best This lack of respect for expertise explains the first problem because if the project participants had greater respect for expertise they would have long since invited a board of academics and researchers to manage a culled version of Wikipedia one that I think would not directly affect the way the main project is run But because project participants have such a horror of the traditional deference to expertise this sort of proposal has never been taken very seriously by most Wikipedians leading the project now And so much the worse for Wikipedia and its reputation This lack of respect for expertise and authority also explains the second problem because again if the project participants had greater respect for expertise there would necessarily be very little patience for those who deliberately disrupt the project This is perhaps not obvious so let me explain To attact and retain the participation of experts there would have to be little patience for those who do not understand or agree with Wikipedia s mission or even for those pretentious mediocrities who are not able to work with others constructively and recognize when there are holes in their knowledge collectively probably the most disruptive group of all A less tolerant attitude toward disruption would make the project more polite welcoming and indeed open to the vast majority of intelligent well meaning people on the Internet As it is there are far fewer genuine experts involved in the project though there are some of course than there could and should be It will probably be objected by some that since I am not 100 committed to the most radical sort of openness I do not understand why the project that I founded works it works I will be told precisely because it is radically openeven anarchical I know of course that Wikipedia works because it is radically open I recognized that as soon as anyone indeed it was part of the original plan But I firmly disagree with the notion that that Wikipedia fert