User talk:Misza13/Nobody cares about your credentials

Excellent
This is the essay I wanted to write but did not have the time to do so. It expresses my sentiments exactly. Hopefully everyone will come to their senses soon enough, realize that this incident doesn't necessitate a whole new policy/way of doing things, and go back to writing an encyclopedia. --JaimeLesMaths (talk!edits) 01:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with this essay as well, this whole incident has sparked too many crazy proposals when all we need is for people to be a little more skeptical about others' credentials and realise stuff needs sources like it always has. --WikiSlasher 07:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge to WP:CAU
You wouldn't mind if I merge this into the project space essay which I made up called Credentials are useless? -- w L &lt;speak&middot;check&gt; 07:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Nah, thanks - the essay reflects my opinion and don't feel like merging it anywhere. Anyone is welcome to borrow ideas from it, however. Миша 13 18:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

An attempt guage community support on this and related proposals is going on at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Credential Verification. Please participate. Thank you. WAS 4.250 11:35, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Polling is evil - just start following it, that is stop caring about editors' credentials in content disputes and stick to good quality sources. Миша 13 18:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Nice
I like it. Reminds me, I should write another essay myself soon. (Read WP:MNF if you haven't already) :) – Qxz 03:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Theory vs. practice
In theory, every fact in Wikipedia must be referenced to a reliable external source, or be removed. That's a good goal.

In practice, there are many facts in Wikipedia which remain unreferenced, which may or may not be disputed. Due to the social nature of the project, people who assert relevant academic credentials are treated differently when advocating for or against the inclusion of unreferenced facts. Personally, as in real life, I give them more deference, and I would expect most people to do that; others may have the opposite reaction. Despite policy, some facts which need to be included cannot be verified externally, such as the details of photo captions. (Details only the photographer would know.) Reputation and respectability do matter to the credibility of such information. Credentials also make a difference socially, in that people who declare they have advanced degress are less likely to be talked down to, or accused of ignorance, etc., than others. Maybe these differences shouldn't exist, but they do; maybe a better title would be "Nobody should care about your credentials".

Unfortunately, even when it comes to referenced material, having an expert evaluation is often important. The question of what sources are reliable on a given topic may be answered quite differently by quacks, the average person, and academics. It also sometimes takes an expert to interpret conflicting sources properly, especially in areas like science, law, medicine, etc. There is certainly nothing preventing people without formal credentials from making correct evaluations and interpretations, and those should be respected. Certainly part of academic rigor is requiring supporting information regardless of source, and in that sense people with credentials shouldn't get a free pass to have what they say accepted without citing sources and without question. And certainly there are some people with credentials who have incorrect or disputed ideas in their field of study, especially with regard to unsettled matters. But some consideration needs to be given when groups of credentialed individuals agree - indeed, that is one of the bases of identifying reliable sources. If five randomly selected PhDs in a field interpret a source one way, and and five random editors on the street interpret it another way, then credentials will indeed matter. On the other hand, I have also seen academics asserting "this is the way this word is used in my field of expertise, therefore this is the only way it may be correctly used", which is overzealous and incompatible with NPOV.

-- Beland 19:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)