Wikipedia talk:Expert retention

message: 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)
replies: text: You are comparing a list of 19 items to a list of 9 items; not especially good statistics in any case. Neither list is very current; the "departed" list contains several contributors who have returned, or who are only semi-active, and the "still active" list contains several who have not made contributions recently. And of course, neither is comprehensive in the least. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from a simple comparison of the two. Opabinia regalis 23:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "still active" group 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Featured article "solution". 

message: 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)
replies: text: Good addition; I've added him.  +sj + 01:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Add to list

message: I deleted the paragraph suggesting there aren't any gaseous ceramics.
* http://www.google.com/search?q=gaseous.metal.oxide 388 ghits
* http://www.google.com/search?q=gaseous.aluminum.oxide 240 ghits
Lobbyshook 21:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which is just the point: you are pretty obviously not an expert, so a Google search by you isn't good enough to contradict them. Mangoe 23:11, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So when you read those hundreds of articles talking about ceramic gases, you decide that they aren't true and the people on wikipedia who claim to be experts are more authoritative? How exactly are you qualified to make that determination? Lobbyshook 23:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ceramic gases 

message: :Link to the list of names deleted, for historical purposes: Those who have departed Wikipedia or are on long-term hiatus
:For a more current list see Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians
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)
replies: text: I disagree. The list is in many respects part of the point of the original series of pages which spawned this - it draws to attention that wikipedia is leaking experts and that this is a serious issue. Your tone in saying "it is a little sorry" and "they left - lets move on" implies very much part of the problem itself - that there is a distain towards those with expert knowledge and their leaving is their own fault, that "we don't need them", not an inherent flaw in wikipedia (which a key purpose behind this series of articles has been to highlight). However, the list will always be incomplete, and the inability to verify experthood makes the list less useful, so I shall leave it to another party to re-read if they so wish. LinaMishima (talk) 00:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW I support the removal. I didn't read any disdain in Slrubenstein's words, or any implication that it's their fault and we don't need them. But I looked at a few of the usernames, and thought, who says they're all experts, do they claim expertise themselves, how do or would they feel about being listed here, what does it add to the encyclopaedia. It's impossible to verify: there may be many anonymous experts who come and go, unknown. Stratford490 (talk) 00:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

text: This article hasn't had major edits for a long time. Why such a big change in it now? For historical reasons, it would be better to keep it the way it is. Especially names of those who left are interesting. People can see in the user contributions what the last actions were of those who left and they can read the user pages.Daanschr (talk) 07:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Something being in a page for a long time is not a reason not to remove it. It's a reason not to remove it without posting on the talk page. This is a wiki, after all. I see from the page history that there wasn't a great deal of activity, so perhaps people just missed that section, and now it has been noticed. Just my 2c. Stratford490 (talk) 09:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

text: I agree with Slrubenstein and Stratford. The page is fine but such an incomplete and subjective list of names serves no valid purpose. Furthermore, isn't there a right to vanish from WP. I understand that these did not actually terminate their accounts, talk pages etc. but still we shouldn't be using them for a list without their permission. Str1977 (talk) 22:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia will be a major turning point in history, when people look back 50 years from now. This article is significant enough to serve as an important document to keep for historical reasons.Daanschr (talk) 07:38, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

text: It doesn't matter much. A good researcher would read the talk page and the archives of the talk page, and than go back in the history of this article to retrace former versions of the article.Daanschr (talk) 20:12, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What kind of argument is that? Talk pages are for the editor, not for the reader. Your "going back into the history" would be an argument for stronger measures than merely remove the list from the article. And do you really think anyone will care for this article in 50 years? Str1977 (talk) 20:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  names 

message: 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. -moritheilTalk 07:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: One who left is Ralf Vandeberg astrophotographer, one who stayed is author LeeBrandoncremer both from the ISS article. Penyulap talk 16:11, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isn't this backwards? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Cancer experts 

message: Is this just a great whinge or is it leading to some sort of solution? -- Evertype·✆ 13:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Just look at the dates. We are archeologists here.Daanschr (talk) 15:24, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a point to this? 

message: :Wiki software, reputation system . not usefulness of information, but instead signal-to-noise ratio in making edits. can flag an edit as trolling when reverting, with the lack of good intention. can flag an undo/revert as poor judgement on good intentions of the edit, with no explanation or reasonable attempt to incorporate a useful perspective. this feedback is available for review by a selection of other parties, on the intentions as opposed to specialist knowledge of the information content. presentation of the general trends for an article, as well as users in the edit history. If a reversion is made by someone with a good reputation, it is less likely to be contested or reported. if a bad reputation, more confidence for sympathy in review of a bad faith judgement.
:must leverage value of time differential between editors in a wiki
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)
thread_title:  The final solution 

message: 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)
thread_title:  An 'Experts' Article on Wikipedia Frustration 

message: "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)
thread_title: OWNership, WP:SPECIAL and WP:CONLEVEL

message: 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)
thread_title:  The opposite experience 

message: 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)
replies: text: I have an advanced degree, but much of what I know is self-taught, and at 65 I am still learning. I can sympathize with the frustration of seeing WP content that does not reflect your greater, first-hand knowledge, something I share on many topics.  However there is little that can be done given the necessity of maintaining the guidelines regarding Wikipedia:Verifiability. Adding content that has never been published, or contradicts published material without a citation, is the definition of OR. Allowing this would open the floodgates for WP to become a repository for personal opinions with no way to resolve the edit wars that would crop up. FriendlyFred (talk) 14:17, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not quite what I went.  The problem with RS is that they're often wrong and/or contain gaffes of various kinds when not coming from the area the subject is about; this is very true in my context, which is BC, re statements in Central Canadian media such as "Prince George is a city in the Fraser Valley" for example (there's about 400 miles between PG and what is called the Fraser Valley, which is from Hope downstream to Vancouver), and local knowledge should be respected to correct that, rather than be dragged through the wringer by some younger person not from the area who's never been there and calls it, and your experience/familiarity, "original research".  That's just one example but there's lots.  Many smalltown and regional histories could be enriched by a more welcoming approach to local contributors, especially older ones; and WP:V like other guidelines is subject to instruction creep, with conflations of what it says into hard-and-fast mandatory "rules"; whatever happened to "there are no rules" and Wikipedia's erstwhile opennness and inclusiveness?  Never mind, just a rhetorical question, I already know what happened; too many people obsessed with buildind and ab/using guidelines who don't know or care about the content their decisions/interference cause.Skookum1 (talk) 13:14, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  proposed addition to "What is an expert editor?" section