Wikipedia:Anti-elitism
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
Anti-elitism at Wikipedia is at the root of both of its biggest problems, and its greatest strengths.
The negative effects of anti-elitism are obvious:
- lack of public perception of credibility, particularly in areas of detail
- the dominance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers
The positive effects are perhaps less predictable, but are demonstrated in effect by the success of Wikipedia's anti-elitist model, compared to more restrictively "elitist" projects like Nupedia or Citizendium.
- maintaining Wikipedia involves many "menial", repetitive tasks that expert editors would not want to bother with, but which are embraced by anti-elitist editors
- intelligent non-experts can compile perfectly encyclopedic articles by referring to tertiary sources (paraphrasing other encyclopedias and introductory textbooks).
- Flawed articles due to trolling or pushing of fringe scholarship may have the effect of motivating educated editors to invest effort much more than an invitation to expand a short but innocent stub article would.
The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: "Experts are scum." For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War -- and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge -- get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.
