Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:22, 14 May 2012

It’s about time we had a serious discussion about having a tiered system of editors where there are hierarchies. While writing my articles, I actually look up the original papers and call the Ph.D.s who wrote them. I had done so extensively for an article on thermodynamics as well as one on a quantum-related subject. In both cases, the Ph.D.s were truly gobsmacked that anyone would bother to toil over article content that some 15-year-old kid could revert.

Invariably, the true experts are amazed that Misplaced Pages works at all because of the ease with which ignorant or stupid people revert studious, factual truth because he or she read that Dick Cheney is a robot, or worse yet, something not quite so asinine so most non-specialist editors can’t tell on first sight that the allegation is B.S.

It will be difficult to come up with a smooth-running process to graduate editors to hierarchies, but the notion that all editors are equally capable and knowledgeable is, of course, fallacious. The idea that “WP:Consensus” can address these differences is (sorta) valid, but it takes an extraordinary amount of time to deal with false allegations. Moreover, merely by being polite with faux wikipleasantries, the most exceedingly tendentious and verbose editors can virtually hijack entire venues of Misplaced Pages and cause hundreds of man-hours of time be devoted by the community to get things done.

The vague notion that “Everyone is granted equal editing privileges because we’re all equal, maaaaaan”, makes for fine music next to your VW bus, but creates an environment that prevents the most knowledgeable contributors from even considering contributing to the project.

It’s clear that a Ph.D. physicist who wrote a landmark paper on string theory knows more about a subject that most generalist editors who A) have high self-esteme, and B) a high-speed Internet connection. It’s equally clear that experts shouldn’t have to devote as much time proving a point of fact as does some 15-year-old kid with gobs of time on his hands. If everyone had equal knowledge (a clearly false assumption), we’d have a lottery system where you could as easily have eight-year-olds teaching classes in high school.

For instance, I know more about PEM fuel cells than probably several hundred million other people. I was the second employee hired (as an R&D scientist) at the only company in the U.S. that today has a truly viable commercial PEM fuel cell in the 5 kW range. Most of my 16 patents pertain to fuel cells. But I have literally not even looked (literally) at our Fuel cell article because it would be so frustrating arguing with kids who get their information out of Popular Mechanics. I’m too busy in real life to be willing to put up with the aggravation.

I think it is about time we abandoned the notion that because it is hard to develop a system for discerning and granting hierarchical editing privileges, we should forever give up on trying to do so. The project has grown far beyond its humble beginnings and it is time to encourage more professional-level contributions.

Lest anyone suspect that I advocate this for my own benefit, I don’t. My motivations for being an editor on Misplaced Pages are different from many others and is certainly different from many experts in their respective fields. I tend to edit on articles that I don’t understand well and would like to learn more about. So I research the living hell out of a given subject matter over a number of months as I expand stubs; at least, that is what I used to do. Greg L (talk) 19:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

You're actually calling the PhD's? Turns out you're more dangerous than I realized. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 20:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)