Talk:Expert review
To the extent that this affects Wikipedia, it goes against the principle that anyone can edit & that all editors are equal. I have some wiki experience with editor review, as one of the first certified expert editors at Citizendium, and based on what I learned there (& in similar processes in the RW), I think we need to keep far away from it. The only part of it that would make sense within our context, is to link on the talk page to signed reviews published elsewhere. (if not signed, they're no more reliable than Wikipedia). Those interested can then do whatever they want in that direction, as always, & if they want to publish personally re-edited Wikipedia articles, that's altogether in the spirit of free culture, however far such OWNership is from the more specific local spirit at Wikipedia. We need to continue the principle that anyone who wants to write based on authority as an expert should go elsewhere. DGG 06:20, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm all for expert involvement, I was one of the Wikipedians who went into the British museum and worked with the curators to get en:Hoxne Hoard to featured article standard. I've also updated articles based on criticism of them elsewhere. But we need to avoid "experts" feeling they can review our articles and automatically have more status than the editors who actually write them. Remember in some cases our existing editors are more qualified than the reviewers will be. WereSpielChequers 15:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
- Do either of you see an issue with the EOL review? All I see WMF doing here is enabling more of these types of partnerships, by a) creating a simple UI, DB and API for submitting reviews and, if there is credentials metadata that signifies expertise, storing it together with the reviews, b) making it possible to query that DB. Where I see potential for conflict or distortion is when such reviews are prominently highlighted or the reviewers given undue influence.--Eloquence 19:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
- As I understand it the EOL is an off-wikipedia approach, the only impact on Wikipedia is if the individual EOL reviewer edits the wikipedia article, and they do that as any other editor would. I don't have a problem with that, the EOL is welcome to reuse our info providing they meet the terms of the licence, and individuals from their are welcome to edit Wikipedia. Where it could become a problem would be if the edit was to impose an EOL house style on Wikipedia, or multiple EOL editors started patrolling Wikipedia articles to enforce compliance with the "approved" EOL version. What concerns me about the foundation setting up similar exercises is that they are in a sense on Wiki and risk encouraging people to critique articles rather than improve them. Also it seems to be inspired by the theory that we can't get experts to edit Wikipedia articles, since the theory is faulty the results of a project based on it are likely to be flawed. It would be much better to celebrate examples where we already have experts editing Wikipedia and thereby attempt to recruit more. WereSpielChequers 10:15, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
- I like DGG's idea of linking to signed reviews elsewhere. 'elsewhere' could be a separate review area where anyone can create and stamp their own review, with no normative statement about one group's views being better than others. Individual wikiprojects, scripters, or reusers could then choose to work with sets of reviewers they like. I agree that starting with areas where we have a lot of experts on WP would be handy. I would personally like to see how this would play out in controversial areas with conflicting sources of credential-authority, such as climate change. –SJ · talk | translate 08:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
- Call me cynical, but who credentials the credentialers? If we link back to reviews, wouldn't we get an awful lot of folks wanting to stamp articles with their seal of approval based on interests unknown or unknowable to the reader? I do not doubt that a database of trackbacks could be analyzed fruitfully, but I think it would mostly confuse readers. It could just invite a lot of linkspam, and I envision people arguing about the links instead of directly arguing about the articles, or even improving them. ~ Ningauble 19:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
- There is both an interface and a social problem here - providing a way to sort reviews or visualize large numbers of them without being distracting, and avoiding linkspam or keeping this from being a totally unmoderated channel for vandals and spammers. I do think that providing a way to gather freely-licensed reviews. and to let people who don't wish to dive into collaborative talk-page interactions share detailed reflections will end up adding lasting depth and color to the knowledge we already gather. It will also offer a much friendlier way for us to engage the input of subject experts, whether or not their writing ends up being directly used in an article, quoted, linked to, or silently left out. –SJ · talk | translate 12:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
- Call me cynical, but who credentials the credentialers? If we link back to reviews, wouldn't we get an awful lot of folks wanting to stamp articles with their seal of approval based on interests unknown or unknowable to the reader? I do not doubt that a database of trackbacks could be analyzed fruitfully, but I think it would mostly confuse readers. It could just invite a lot of linkspam, and I envision people arguing about the links instead of directly arguing about the articles, or even improving them. ~ Ningauble 19:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
- I like DGG's idea of linking to signed reviews elsewhere. 'elsewhere' could be a separate review area where anyone can create and stamp their own review, with no normative statement about one group's views being better than others. Individual wikiprojects, scripters, or reusers could then choose to work with sets of reviewers they like. I agree that starting with areas where we have a lot of experts on WP would be handy. I would personally like to see how this would play out in controversial areas with conflicting sources of credential-authority, such as climate change. –SJ · talk | translate 08:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
- As I understand it the EOL is an off-wikipedia approach, the only impact on Wikipedia is if the individual EOL reviewer edits the wikipedia article, and they do that as any other editor would. I don't have a problem with that, the EOL is welcome to reuse our info providing they meet the terms of the licence, and individuals from their are welcome to edit Wikipedia. Where it could become a problem would be if the edit was to impose an EOL house style on Wikipedia, or multiple EOL editors started patrolling Wikipedia articles to enforce compliance with the "approved" EOL version. What concerns me about the foundation setting up similar exercises is that they are in a sense on Wiki and risk encouraging people to critique articles rather than improve them. Also it seems to be inspired by the theory that we can't get experts to edit Wikipedia articles, since the theory is faulty the results of a project based on it are likely to be flawed. It would be much better to celebrate examples where we already have experts editing Wikipedia and thereby attempt to recruit more. WereSpielChequers 10:15, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
- That's exactly the direction we're thinking in. Having a toolset for mining and managing large amounts of feedback. Capturing credentials and presenting a review interface that subject-matter experts find useful just helps us get more and better data, but that doesn't mean that people who provide credentials should get special visibility.--Eloquence 21:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)