[Web4lib] Problems with Wikipedia

[Jimm Wetherbee]

Lars,

But non-experts can identify authorities with biographical citations,
citation indexes and reviews.  That is part of why encyclopedias include
a brief mention of their contributors' credentials.  Note, I am not
saying that the average person would, only that it is a technique
readily available.  Still, the larger point I was trying to make was
that relying on an authority is not necessarily invalid.  The library
staff at Williams was assuming their patrons had the skills to
distinguish between experts and non-experts but that such a skill is
rendered moot if no authority is provided by an article.

--jimm

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Jimm Wetherbee wrote:
>
>   
>> For someone who is not an authority, William's argument is quite 
>> sound.  Note that the library did not say that without a known 
>> authority behind an article its truthfulness cannot be 
>> evaluated, rather that a non-expert in a given field cannot 
>> judge whether a given article is in line with the current state 
>> of knowledge on that topic.
>>     
>
> The non-expert, the average person, doesn't know how to identify 
> an authoritative author either.  They would trust a well-known 
> face from TV, but cannot tell a real professor apart from any 
> photo model in a white coat in a medical advertisement.  The white 
> coat is probably more important than the paper trail.
>
> Hmm... perhaps I should get a photo of myself in a white coat to 
> present myself as an expert on my Wikipedia user's page.  Maybe
> something like this stock photage,
> http://www.medical-scrubs.com/white-lab-coat-3046.htm
> http://www.imagesource.com/search/image.aspx?id=215837
> http://www.comstock.com/web/search/loupe.asp?Image=KS85205.JPG&Type=RF&CatID=&LightboxID=&NoPopUP=T
> http://www.sullivanuniforms.com/uniformstore/prods/4010WH.html
>
>
>