User:Brendan Moody
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I am comparatively inactive at present, mostly fixing articles I discover are flawed when I use them as informal references. I have a particular interest in bringing the established encyclopedic standards to topics that tend to attract contributions not fully in the spirit of Wikipedia.
[edit] Musings
I'm a member of a message board that until recently had an article on Wikipedia. The article was AFD'd with a result of no consensus; a resulting DRV resulted in an overturn and delete. (Personal disclosure: I voted delete in the AFD and did not participate in the DRV.) The Wikipedia side of this was fairly standard; what interests me is the ongoing discussion at the message board itself of the deletion process. The general tone there was incredulity at how 'mean' Wikipedia was being, with an underlying suggestion that people biased against the message board were driving the discussion and caused the deletion. Attempts (not made by me) to point out the problems with the article were met with slightly off-the-point comments that there's a lot of crap on Wikipedia, so what does one more article matter?
It would be easy to blame all this on the message board members for 'not getting it,' but this judgment seems both one-sided and less than pragmatic. Regardless of whose 'fault' it is, the result is a number of people who trust Wikipedia less than they used to, which isn't good for anyone. Also, I'm a little concerned with the behavior of some Wikipedians toward message board members who participated in the discussion here. Requests for information on how to make the article in question verifiable were met with curt pointers toward an alphabet soup of policies and guidelines that could not be easy for a new member to understand. One participant in the DRV claimed that "the owner of the site and its fanboys want to use wikipedia for free advertising," which was certainly a failure to assume good faith, and confused the board's administrator for its owner. None of this descends to the level of biting the newcomers, but failing to bite is not enough; we must be genuinely open, patient, and accepting. I don't think this would have led to the article being verified- that probably wasn't possible- but it might have produced better feelings on all sides, which is equally important to Wikipedia's mission.
I understand that many Wikipedians, particularly those who are regulars at AFD and DRV, look on website members with a jaundiced eye. Given some of the behavior I've seen from members of other websites up for deletion, this is understandable, but we shouldn't carry it too far. Making our behaviors comprehensible and admirable to outsiders is a vital part of expanding the project and building its credibility as an encyclopedia.
[edit] Wikipedian mindset and credibility
On a related note, I recently noticed a fellow Wikipedian in an off-Wiki online venue. He said the following: "The reason I react a bit strongly to people dismissing Wikipedia is this is 2007 and people need to abandon the notion that only printed works written by people with Ph.Ds are to be trusted. That notion ended some time ago."
I'm not entirely certain what this means; it seems to be more a cri de coeur than an argument. Whatever is meant by "that notion ended," it's important to realize that simply declaring such a thing gets you nowhere. For certain devoted Wikipedians, the statement may be true. But outside that mindset, the notion of expertise is alive and well, which is why, despite being widely used, Wikipedia still has an enormous credibility gap to cross. Waving your hands and declaring that because "this is 2007" such things don't matter will do nothing about that gap. Producing substantial content of the same quality as that produced by experts would help, but on that score Wikipedia still has a long way to go.
