Proposal:Expert review

Info

A lightweight version of this proposal is being operationalized at Expert review on Meta. Please join the discussion there if you are interested.

Status (see valid statuses)

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The status of this proposal is:

This is a draft document. Please feel free to make edits, and understand that content may substantively change. If appropriate, discuss at Proposal talk:Expert review.

Strategic Priorities

This proposal is associated with the bolded strategic priorities below.

1. Achieve continued growth in readership
2. Focus on quality content.
3. Increase Participation.
4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
5. Encourage Innovation

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Summary

Wikimedia should identify, value and use experts.

Step one: expert reviewer

Experts and "expert institutes" are asked to review contents in their profession fields. whether a single review, or continuous watch 2 times a year. Wikimedians then work to improve the quality of the content based on these reviews. They can refer to expert's opinion in disputes.

Absorbing them:

• Starting from famous and mature projects that need quality, not quantity (like en.wikipedia, de.wiktionary, ...), allows absorbing experts. and extending them to languages/media of their choice.
• Starting from verifying high quality institutions like museums and universities, allows us to ask them to introduce their volunteers.
• Starting from biographies and politically controversial topics, which are the target of editing wars seriously increases quality.
• If funds permit, advertising, free culture workshops and symposiums can absorb volunteers.
• Tracking(how?) experts on our own, allows us to invite them directly.

Valuing them:

1. Many areas have become hard to improve.
2. Many articles are informative. but many have remained misleading by omitting expert sensitive crucial facts. simply because no one has yet added that facts

"request for review" and feedback would be of invaluable use in improving these.

Phase II design for the reader feedback tool (does not support expert reviews yet)

Expert review can have many forms:

• Saving review in a separate subpage.
• Review by highlighting and commenting on the article itself (not visible, unless requested).
• Give sticky opinion in the talk page
• Feedback at the bottom of the article (separate from user feedback)
  • Say "Yes" or "No" for existence of a stub article

Step two: Using experts further

• We lack images. A teacher (expert) can ask his students to provide informative Images, sounds and video to articles. that will allow users to summarize the article.
• If a teacher(expert) adopts a wikiproject like physics, he can assign student groups in his class to do the task list he writes. so much learning.

Should the adopted pages be tagged for that period?

• buying articles and researches from experts.

motivation: starting a whole new article is hard for newbies. because there needs to be enough content.

Step three: expert users

Proposal: Making experts able to talk louder than users in their field of profession; by promotimg them to "moderator expert" which are "less than Admin", but "more than users"

verifying moderator experts: Verifying a claim by an expert recognition committee is a usual way in all companies, foundation, and even community. they can then decide for granting the rights.

• Institutions already have global quality measures.
• We can even trust all institutions as experts for the beginning, as we assumed good faith in all users 8 years ago.
• If an expert reveals his real identity and picture o the assessment committee, (like on Knol.com) and verifies that he is a teacher, professor, doctor, R&D engineer, Top student, or worker there.
• People who show us their good works, like elsevier and scincedirect.com contributors, Knol contributors, educated laymen who did years of self-study should be assessed.

moderator experts' rights: Every user can only be expert in his Knowledge or technology "branch". i.e. Rights are limited to articles under certain wikiprojects like physics, history, ... or certain categories. like history, medical science, geology, astronomy.

In that area:

• Experts must be Immune from being blocked by moderatios
  • Pro: The POV pushers change expert written articles. quarrel arises between the "expert" and the "ignorant". then the ignorant wil start trolling and the expert starts scolding. the moderator will usually block the expert and he might be depressed and leave.
  • Con: If a POV pusher grants expert rights he can do 10 times more damage.
• Experts can be given minor moderator rights
• They should should be asked for expert opinions in disputes, after reading a report on edits, not editor discussions.
• Experts and their work should be given some sort of formal recognition.
  • Flagged reviews by experts
  • marking a section as accepted
  • technical protection of selected content
  • special attention from moderators
  • keeping a separate WIP/suggestions version (of a section)
  • protecting the professional one, etc.

Key benefits and challenges

• Currently, an easy to find article is being created for every new product, specially movies, ... which appear on Google's first page 4 hours after creation. this will make it easy for the producers to improve the article towards their own benefit. making Wikipedia a product promoter place.
• This is assuming more good faith in experts than in usual wikipedians.
• This will encourage any adult user to become an expert, while discourage Students.
• This will put organizations and POV pushers higher than wikipedians, and make it easier to perform bias, insead of avoiding it.
• This may increase wikimedians' effort to become an admin (better than expert), but avoids newbies to participate.

Flexibility and low barrier-to-contribution given by an easy-to-use and open editing functionality. so this should be postponed.

Motivation

• This will broaden wikipedia's editor demography
• Many experts are hoping to share their expertise with the world
• It brings credit for expert.
• We were "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit". the edit does not need to be qualified. that's why we succeeded. but that also brings distrusts and disputes. instead, we are visible enough now to convince the experts in the field to donate their time.
• They have no time or editing skill to write content and collaborate directly. but they can brovide expert reviews However, providing a few lines of expert reviews needs none of them.
• Experts love encyclopediatic and theoretical content. while visitors and users like pop culture and ... this will improve scientific articles.
• This is not good for a "wiki". but edit wars are worse
• To be mentioned as a worldwide expert (or at least for a certain language) is very attractive for individual scholars as well as institutions. Perhaps even a list could be made mentioning the number of pages adopted per person/institute.

Costs

(hidden. summarize please)

Step four

Wikipedia needs impartial, expert gatekeepers, like Mediawiki, Linux, Mozilla, Apache, and other large free-software projects. Red Cross, Greenpeace, Google Knol, Citizendium and Wikia are other cases.

This is a long term project. Study: there is an Interview completely about this

Key Questions

• what content would be a priority for experts to review?
  • The content in their profession
  • Pages that need frequent alteration are less suitable
• How many experts and institutions will apply?
  • What motivates a professional teacher or writer to contribute to Wikipedia?
• What mechanism should be developed for "challenging" the so-called expertise of the those whom (as it turned out) Wikipedia has mistakenly designated as experts?

How To

• Verify experts' identities and statuses?
  • verifying an institute is much easier. they can introduce their volunteer expert
• get the top experts?
• Create a simple review process?
• give credit for good contributions?
• prioritize professional views and contributions without too much limiting openness?

Potential Costs

Likely very low. It requires more organization and commitment from volunteers.

Note: This can only work on a free basis.

References

• Proposal:Legitimizing a Scholarly Collaborative

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal Talk:Expert review.

Want to work on this proposal?

1. Rsoracco(greenhorn) 01:58, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
2. Fences and windows 01:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
3. VisionHolder « talk » 02:02, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
4. 68.199.243.16 23:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
5. XKV8R 01:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
6. Faendalimas 06:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
7. Gaeser 07:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
8. Debangshu Mukherjee 09:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
9. Wjhonson 18:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
10. RonRodex 02:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
11. Ian Pitchford 07:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
12. Andrevan 19:40, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
13. Faust 11:57, 6 july 2010 (UTC)
14. Sandeepsp4u 04:38, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
15. Sp33dyphil 07:16, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
16. SimonATL 07:30, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
17. Buckshot06 @ En:wikipedia. 203.97.106.191 05:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
18. GeometryGirl 09:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
19. A. B. ^(talk) 02:07, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
20. MC10 21:07, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
21. Clavier 12:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
22. Not necessarily to be one of said experts. But to make sure the system works, and keeps Wikipedia collaborative and open. Randomran 14:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

also, Sandeepsp4u have suggested valuing the experts by giving them "rights", like "moderators".

References