I don’t feel his hand should be forced into giving up his identity, but OTOH, when I see him saying that he’s a “world expert” or a absolute authority on a subject as his credentials for why he’s right and you’re wrong about something, it might be nice if he backed it up.
I guess the question (for me) is, how many times can you claim something like that before it’s fair of us to ask for you to verify it or stop saying it. I suppose we have other professionals on the board who’s credentials we’ve never asked for (Doctors, Nurses, Lawyers etc). I’m not sure what the difference is here, the tone maybe.
I suspect because most of the actual experts I’ve seen here are content to let their expertise speak for itself through their posts, rather than simultaneously bragging and being coy about what they know.
[QUOTE=Mister Toad]
The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them knew one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad!
[/QUOTE]
That makes sense. I always find it funny that in online dating sites if in the first line someone mentions that they’re intelligent, when I scroll down to education it’s almost always either “Some High School”, “High School” or “Some College”. I understand that you can be smart without finishing secondary school, but when I see that, listed right at the top, my first thought is ‘who are you trying to convince?’. If you’re smart, it’ll speak for itself, if you have to tell me you’re smart, well, are you?
Well, there are plenty of people here who are expert in some pretty arcane areas - there’s one bloke who makes his own bows and arrows, and is apparently a published authority on it - and they manage not to turn talking about it into some sort of fan dance. It’s not as if you’re going to be sniffed at here for being a flint knapper or a particle physicist, or even the guy who knows everything about Ace the Bat-Hound: it’s when you loftily declare your own expertise but refuse to say what it’s even in that your assertions start to smell a bit off.
I’m more than happy to give Amateur Barbarian the benefit of the doubt: he wants to retain his anonymity. His posts, unlike [checks forum] yours, are stongly tinged with intelligence and sobriety.
Heck, even I am an acknowledged authority in some niches (and have even had my works cited at SDMB!), but the niches are so narrow that to reveal them would quickly lead via Googling to my true name.
The point was to cite those publications when editing Wiki rather than simply claiming expertise. I’m not asking him - or you, for that matter - to prove it here.
Amateur Barbarian suggested that experts should have special status when it comes to editing Wikipedia pages, so if such a system was implemented (and it’s not going to happen), yes, he would have to prove his expertise somehow.
Yes, Effie. Despite your continuous melodramatic lament, people on this board remain unconvinced by your global warming JAQing because your “arguments” suck, not because people in are inherently unable to process facts or reconsider their opinions in light of contrary evidence.
Unless you are the only acknowledged authority then no one can truly know if you are John Buttsniffer Smith or Jacob Buttlicker Jones.
Other so called authorities, such as Qadgop, on this board get a pass because you can take what they post and look it up to verify it yourself elsewhere on the intartubes. Just saying, “I am the expert because I say so.” cannot be second-handed verified.
Also I am the acknowledged authority on knowing that FXMastermind is the acknowledged authority on Global Warming.
You might be, but the internet sort of doesn’t give a crap. Even when the internet knows somebody is actually an expert, or famous, or whatever, they still get treated the same as everybody else. In fact, if a Wikipedian knew you actually were an expert in a field, and you showed them how wrong they were, it wouldn’t matter. Truth is what the consensus says it is, not what some really smart person says.
Why can’t it be both? As long as they have the server space why can’t it talk about both The Brady Bunch AND how snake venom works (or whatever would make you feel better)?
It sounds to me like you just have a bug up your ass because your stuff keeps getting edited out.
If it were a print book, they might still object. The real problem is it seems like somebody knows more than an editor on Wikipedia does. And they hate that shit with a passion.
Nobody should be better than Wikipedia. I know that is true, because I read it on Wikipedia.
The people who actually run the site might actually believe their own bullshit, but it’s still hilarious. “Peer review” is redefined, as are all things on Wikipedia, and they have no problem telling you this.
It doesn’t matter if you are Freeman Dyson, your peers on Wikipedia can be teenagers living in a basement, smoking crack or pot, laughing about how stupid Dyson must be. Or a disgruntled idiot on the internet with a bug up his ass.