Proposal talk:Hire experts and don't allow changes from original

This proposal simply looks like Citizendium (Wikipedia is not Citizendium). Nemo 07:47, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually this proposal is nothing like Citizendium. Expertise is not part of Citizendium. The proposals that try to change Wikipedia into Citizendium are 1) Less_anonymity, 2) Get rid of the global anonymity and the like. This proposal suggest trying something different. This might work, in theory at least. However, in practice ... - Brya 05:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

This

Proposal seems to violate the very spirit of what makes a wiki, a wiki. If people don't want others to change their content, they should just set it up on a traditional website, which is uneditable by anyone except themselves. Also, how do we prove that someone actually an expert, so as to avoid another "Essjay"? 98.227.232.84 07:00, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

This does not necessarily violate "the very spirit of what makes a wiki", as long as these new articles remain a minority. They might be likened to invited review articles and could serve as the nucleus of new activity (which would be wiki). The second objection is much more serious, how do we establish somebody is an expert, and also able to write a neutral, unbiased article? - Brya 12:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Locked content versus experimental democratic boobism

After years of writing for WP (which WP denigratingly calls "editing"), i started my own wiki on a topic-cluster that was having content retention problems at WP, using mediawiki software and limiting my staff to three writers. We are doing great. We enjoy the work, we are open to adding new, qualified writers (and, yes, we credit these contributors as WRITERS, not mere "editors"), and the site is thriving in its own way.

The topic-cluster i selected for my wiki experiment was Folk Magic, including Southern Black folkways; world-wide religious belief in clerical divination, including 19th and 20th century religions such as Spiritism, Spiritualism, and New Thought, and the attendant biographies of personages associated with the development of these religions; and a survey of the divination practices developed by various ethnographic groups, e.g. Scottish and Irish tea leaf reading, Scandinavian egg-divination, African American dream divination, Anglo-American rural dowsing and doodle-bugging, Chinese I Ching fortune telling, etc. In the interest of full disclosure, i will note that i am a published author on these subjects, and also a "notable wikipedian."

These topics were virtually taboo at WP, due to "ownership" by atheistic and skeptico-scientistic materialists who would not permit even mere descriptions of these subjects to stand in the encyclopedia without injecting their negative commentaries, which often took up 50% or more of a given article after they revised it. They often sub-headed their attacks on the material "Criticism," and, yes, they included "Criticism" of everything from the lives of 19th century New Thought authors to the fact that Cantonese-Americans born in the USA often use a system of divination employing 78 strips of bamboo dedicated to the Buddhist goddess Kwan Yin (Guanyin). After 3 1/2 years of attempted contributions to WP on these topics, during which i watched my texts repeatedly defaced by POV-pushing and admin-supported "skeptics" and drive-by racists (you haven't lived until you've found an article you spent 12 hours composing littered by the words "Niggers and porch-monkeys"), i simply collected my texts and took them elsewhere, to a cooperatively-owned non-profit wiki in which contributors manage their own content.

Can WP do what we did? I doubt it, frankly. The "democratic experiment" inherent in WP is going to contiue to run its full and entropic course. Like Usenet, and like the ODP/DMOZ, Wikipedia has peaked as a social network for intellectuals and is on the downward slide. Bandwidth is now so cheap that any author worth his or her salt can create a relevant domain name and host essays and topical articles that will easily be found by google's search engine. Why would any writer donate writing to WP, where writing is called 'editing" and bozos can abort an entire page and admins can "own" a topic and destroy content at whim?

My most popular site -- on the obscure topic of folk magic, and all written by me in html -- now has a rank of 71,000 at Alexa. Our collective new mediawiki site -- on the aforementioned obscure topic-cluster -- only went online on June 6, 2009 and already ranks in the 1,000,000 range at Alexa. We expect it to rank under 100,000 within three years.

Yes, i still write for WP, mostly bcause i am a polymath and when a passing news story outside of my chosen field catches my eye, i like to contribute, but i do so as an IP, and as a result i exprience considerable arrogance and abuse from admins.

So good luck, WP -- but you've already lost a lot of "experts" and professional writers. Bandwidth and hosting are chickenfeed-cheap; we have Yahoo Groups, MySpce, and Facebook for our social friendship needs; and we take enough pride in our work that we like to call it "writing" not "editing" and we like to see it stand out, undefaced, whole, inact against the ravages of a mindless boobocracy and WP's croneyistic cabal of "owning" admins and "editors."

Cordially, catherine yronwode, the IP known as "Ol' 64" -- 64.142.90.33 03:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I am afraid this is very recognizable. By the nature of things there are severe limits to what content can be included in Wikipedia. And indeed, very often a select 'community' (e.g. in the form of a WikiProject) is engaged in pushing its own agenda, the official central policies of Wikiepdia be damned. - Brya 07:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean when you say, "By the nature of things there are severe limits to what content can be included in Wikipedia." Do you mean that bios of military leaders can be included in WP but bios of religious figures should be limited somehow? Have i misunderstood you? 64.142.90.33 03:34, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

No, it is a general remark. The way Wikipedia is set up means it is essentially self-limiting. The contents of Wikipedia are a function of the users (reflects the knowledge of the users). The knowledge of the users is a subset of all knowledge (5%, 10%, ?). Also, there are areas where prejudices and particular interests are so strong that actual knowledge does not stand a chance. - Brya 08:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

disagree

The implications of this are either firstly that in order to pay for this we would have to take advertising or sell printed encyclopaedias, the first of those would drive many of our editors away and the latter is a decreasingly viable option. Secondly topics would date, and in the unlikely event that initial quality was above Wiipedia levels it would not remain so without maintenance. Thirdly we would risk POV forks as our editors created or recreated their articles in rivalry to the "expert" one. In other words why copy the Britannica when we have a much better way of doing things? 201.254.121.96 02:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC) (this was me) WereSpielChequers 00:09, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Already Exists

This proposed system already exists. An expert can already post his or her articles on his or her own web site or blog, and no one else can edit them. Ad-supported free web hosting services have existed since before Wikipedia. If discouraging active community involvement is a better way to create reliable content, then surely Wikipedia will fail and all the personal web pages will turn into credible sources for establishing truth. As that has not yet happened, I propose that Wikipedia should not fight to silence the volunteers that have made it successful and great.

There is also en:Google Knol which works that way. Matthias M. 11:10, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Bad Idea!

1. They already tried making a free encyclopedia with a small group of editors. It was called Nupedia. It didn't work.

2. We'd have a terrible time trying to figure out who deserves to be an expert editor.

3. No small group of editors could hope to create and update so many articles at current speeds; this proposal would surely see a sharp decline in both the growth of Wikipedia and the timeliness of its articles.

4. Exclusive edit rights is far too much power to trust with such a small group. As they say, power corrupts.

5. Yes, I acknowledge that there are opinions sometimes instead of facts. But then other editors come along, and they remove the opinions and record the facts. Yes, sometimes we have edit wars and vandalism, but in the end it all works out. Look how far we've come!

"what a rubbish website you are for letting people do this." Wikipedia is not rubbish. It's the world's largest encyclopedia, with an accuracy level comparable to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"This is really what someone changed a perfectly correct article on the Holy Grail into. You see what I'm saying? An expert wrote the origial version and his/her work has been defaced." What on earth makes you believe that the original version of an article is automatically the correct one? Supposing a spammer or and idiot creates an article, and then later a better editor comes along to fix it? Under your proposal, no one would be able to fix the article.

This proposal would destroy the crowdsourcing nature of Wikipedia, and greatly harm its operations.Sonicsuns 03:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)