Wikipedia:Expert rebellion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page is in the process of being merged with Wikipedia:Expert Retention. Please make changes over there and not here; this page will likely become a redirect (or deleted) soon.

There are numerous discontented users, and former users, of Wikipedia, who have repeatedly claimed that Wikipedia offers very little incentive for editors who wish to contribute to expert topics. This page contains links to pages of users who are discontented for fundamentally similar reasons, along with discussion of what (if anything) might be done.

Contents 1 Users who have given clear statements of what they are unhappy about 1.1 Those who have departed Wikipedia or are on long-term hiatus 1.2 Those who are still active on Wikipedia 1.3 Users who are disaffected for different reasons 2 Links documenting "expert frustration" 2.1 Links to versions of v bad articles

[edit] Users who have given clear statements of what they are unhappy about

[edit] Those who have departed Wikipedia or are on long-term hiatus

Some of these users may still participate in meta topics on Wikipedia (such as this discussion), but are not actively contributing to articles.

1. Chris Hillman
2. DV8 2XL
3. Windy City Mike. Mike has left, but has a great piece here.
4. Bertrand Meyer, noted computer scientist and inventor of the Eiffel programming language, biographical article at Bertrand Meyer (see here). "Please do not believe anything you see on Wikipedia articles. If you are tempted to, please try the following experiment for a few weeks: write on an important subject that you know and care about; write your best, making sure to apply the strictest standards of scholarship and objectivity. Don't spend too much time on it, but just do it right. Then wait a little. You'll understand".
5. User:KimvdLinde, an admin and expert in evolutionary biology. "My prediction for Wikipedia is that it becomes more and more a vehicle for POV-pushers, while the good editors and experts will leave Wikipedia disgruntled. The high degree of historical revisionism, fringe science, extreme minority viewpoints etc. makes Wikipedia already highly unreliable as an encyclopaedia. Now that the main articles have been written, Wikipedia becomes increasingly vulnerable for this."
6. St. Anne gone after a few short weeks. "This is not (and likely never will be) an encyclopedia. It is more like the large filing cabinet stuffed with clippings, half finished projects, notes, the travel pamphlet collection, manuals for obsolete software and long discarded small appliances, and odd photos etc. that sits in my den and that I will sort through someday".
7. Dr. Edward Buckner. Now left. His special moment was an amateur philosopher who insisted that the article on Astral planes belonged in the philosophy department.
8. Frescard
9. Philosophus
10. User:Rcpaterson per this.
11. User:Ikkyu2 per What's_wrong_with_Wikipedia, by User:Ikkyu2. A professional neurologist who warns his patients not to read Wikipedia. His final moment came when one of his articles was "improved" by an editor who had the idea that "all religious experience is a product of complex partial [epilectic] seizures (the idea came to him while watching Joan of Arcadia)".

[edit] Those who are still active on Wikipedia

1. Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias
2. Bmorton3, Dr. Brian Morton, professor of psychology at Indiana State University
3. user:jkelly, an admin
4. Timothy J Scriven
5. User: Olin

[edit] Users who are disaffected for different reasons

It was predictable this page would attract editors who have disgruntled for different reasons than the ones I am interested in (namely fed up with edit creep, and fed up with lone cranks or crank subculture vandalism). This list is for user page links where reason for discontent could not be established.

• User:Terryeo My reason I'm thinking of leaving is because I'm an expert editor in Scientology, relative to the Scientology-critical editors who control the articles. My gripe is they run their own Scientology-critical websites, publish Scientology-critical essays on them, cite those and cite their own newsgroup postings, etc. etc. etc. So that's my expertise and my reason for not working harder for good wikipedia articles. A group of Scientology-critical editors consistantly inflame discussion and introduce their POV rather than a neutral POV. And the reason I post this extensive reason is because of the misleading statement just below my statement. Terryeo 13:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence I can find that this user has left for the reasons I cite. Details here Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Terryeo/Evidence#Removal_of_references_for_POV_reasons

• Jon Awbrey is e-live and living a distributed x-istance at:

Inquiry Project	Inquiry Archive
Textop Home	Textop Talk
Wikinfo Home	Wikinfo Talk
Wikipedia Home	Wikipedia Talk
Elsewhere!	WEEE!
MOPA Round	MOTA City

JA: B there ∨ B² !!! Jon Awbrey 18:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links documenting "expert frustration"

Some links where contributions from (alleged) subject-matter experts, who consider their contributions to be authoritative, have been reverted or met with resistance by editors who may lack expertese in the subject matter (or in some cases, who may be pushing "crank" theories).

• Talk:Consciousness#Oh_Lord.... Consciousness is understood as a symbiosis (interaction) of Mind and Information.
• Controversy over Cantor. Cantor was wrong.
• Talk:Uranium trioxide One amateur, in consultation with an outside expert "holds out against a team of PhD's."
• Talk:Albert_Einstein#Reverted_without_comment Einstein argued that time is pseudo-directional.

[edit] Links to versions of v bad articles

• A diff from the Consciousness article. [1]