QUOTE(Happy drinker @ Fri 13th November 2009, 11:09am)
So does the theory that only experts should write Wikipedia articles only apply to obscure topics? If so, who decides what is an obscure topic?
No, of course that's not what I meant at all. Perhaps I should be more explicit: It's an
extremely well-covered topic, one which has been directly in front of the general public for many, many years. As a result, the number of people claiming to be "experts" (as well as actually being experts) is likely to number well into the thousands or tens of thousands. A traditional encyclopedia would have a difficult task choosing who, among those experts, fulfills the requirements of being qualified, unbiased, editorially talented, etc. - but they would make that choice, and take responsibility for it. Wikipedia's "choice" is based on who gets there first and who hangs around longest, and nobody takes responsibility for it at all.
On an obscure/less-prominent topic (such as medieval philosophy), that decision would be much easier for the traditional encyclopedia, but Wikipedia's choice is
still often based on who gets there first and who hangs around longest. However, there's at least a small possibility that if someone who's completely unqualified and/or biased attempts to dominate a particular obscure article or topic, they can be voted down by a relatively small group of qualified editors - as long as the unqualified person isn't an administrator or an otherwise favored user.
My point (hopefully) is that with highly visible and controversial topics, such as the effects of smoking, there are enough experts to make the issue of
who should write the Wikipedia article essentially moot. There is simply no way by which Wikipedia, under the current system, can produce unbiased, expert-driven content when the experts are numerous and not in general agreement. (However, the vast majority will at least tell you that smoking is harmful.) What Wikipedia
will produce is a lot of edit-warring, drama, and general hostility, along with an article that's likely to be too long, full of misplaced emphasis, and riddled with lots of irrelevant and extraneous information, even if most of it is reasonably well-sourced.