On the Nature and Sources of Expertise, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Wiki Systems Options

[Jonny Cache]

On the Nature and Sources of Expertise

Questions about the nature of expertise have been coming up in several of the forums where I spend my time of late, and I've begun to notice curious discrepancies among the things that different people say about it, not to mention the many divergences between those assumptions and the way that I've always thought about expertise, well, at least, for as long as I can remember. So I think I'll break the ice with that.

Just trying to resuscitate this topic that keeps coming up in parallel dialogues on both the old wiki and the new wiki, but that just as quickly keeps falling into some kind of narcoleptic coma. This time I'll try a tactic of selective cross-posting between the two wikiverses of Citizendium and Wikipedia Review.

Nota Bene. This essay is being transposted to the following two wikiverses:

• Citizendium Forums
• Wikipedia Review

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

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[Jonny Cache]

I do not normally think of myself as an expert in anything. I think of myself as a person who does not know anywhere near as much as he wanted to know about all of the things that he wanted to know about. But I do on occasion find myself in discussions with people where I come to realize that I have at least read about many things that they have not, and where I realize that I have had some actual hard-knocks practice in many areas that they have not. And when that happens there's no use being so humble and, er, "non-elitist", as to kid anybody about it -- indeed, it's irresponsible to do so, as it disrespects the lives and the works of those authors and teachers who took the trouble to pass on that knowledge to little ole me.

So if I were free to pick the terms of discussion -- a freedom that I may take back in a moment -- I would almost certainly replace talk of expertise with talk of experience and knowledge, and then I would almost certainly replace talk of knowledge with talk of the process by which we acquire knowledge, to wit, inquiry.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

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[Jonny Cache]

A person with topical experience and knowledge might not be the best person to communicate that experience or knowledge. The editor with less knowledge about a topic might better appreciate the view of readers who also have little knowledge of the topic.

This is of course one of the mantras of the Wikipedian Persuasion. Take a taxi out to Citizendium Terminal and you can hear it being chanted all over again, which is why I drove on by and hopped the first train out of town. Yes, we've all had teachers who could not explain their way out of a paper bag. But this little bit of mythology grossly oversimplifies what is in fact a much more complex problem in communication. I tried to start a more nuanced discussion of the communication process involved in this situation under the heading of Transversality : Communication Across Levels Of Experience, but the Citizendium Forum quickly degenerated into a techie chat room with no real dialogue on core social issues.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

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[Somey]

I tried to start a more nuanced discussion of the communication process involved in this situation under the heading of Transversality : Communication Across Levels Of Experience, but the Citizendium Forum quickly degenerated into a techie chat room with no real dialogue on core social issues.

Well, this is really the crux of the matter, isn't it? These are fundamentally social issues, not technological ones, and technological solutions to social issues can only take you so far. (And in many cases, they can make bad situations worse.)

I keep saying this, but Wikipedia is just too big. Meaningful, working trust relationships simply can't be developed and maintained in a community that large. People like Dave Gerard will say things like, "working with idiots is not optional," and Phil Sandifer will say "in any online community there will be a large percentage who are idiots," and so forth, but the fact is, the clear (if not vast) majority of people are not idiots. They only seem like idiots to the high-level admins, because they're overwhelmed by the enormity of the project, the immense size of the community, and the bewilderingly arcane terminology and mixed-up conceptual framework of the internal culture.

The only way to save the English Wikipedia from itself is to break it up into smaller communities, presumably based on topic areas. They ought to be able to do that without breaking up the actual content - in fact it should be a relatively simple technical detail, an additional layer of abstraction, basically. If they can bring themselves to do that, there's a chance that the people involved can get to know each other, build comfortable subcultures, and work together constructively. Sure, some of the subcultures may fail, but better to have that, even from their perspective, than the self-destructive mess they have now.

[Jonny Cache]

I tried to start a more nuanced discussion of the communication process involved in this situation under the heading of Transversality : Communication Across Levels Of Experience, but the Citizendium Forum quickly degenerated into a techie chat room with no real dialogue on core social issues.

Well, this is really the crux of the matter, isn't it? These are fundamentally social issues, not technological ones, and technological solutions to social issues can only take you so far. (And in many cases, they can make bad situations worse.) ...

Yes, it's social. It may even be biological, to judge from the persistence of it. Observations that I made this summer indicate that the behaviors in question may transcend species:

From:

• Wikipedia Talk:No Binding Decisions, "Hypocrisy & Misrepresentation Breed Cynicism & Mistrust.
• Wikipedia User Talk Page, Prior to Vandal Attacks Notoriously Due Administrative License.
• Larry Sanger's Blog, "Can wikis be used to write textbooks? The Global Text Project Has A Go", Comments.

I think that too many people who talk the wiki talk are fixated on (1st) the content that they wish to create, and (2nd) the technology that they wish to use to create it, when it’s really that (3rd) thing, the group dynamics of the people who aim to use (2) for the making of (1), that always takes the whole biz down the tubes qwikier than 1, 2, 3.

Here's a little allegory that I recently wrote on that very subject:

Humming, All Too Humming

Every Spring we hang a clear red plastic globe — shaped and colored vaguely reminiscent of a large translucent strawberry, with yellow plastic flower-portals on a subtended green plastic calyx — on a cast-iron scrollwork post in our rose garden, and we fill it full of sugar water on a biweekly basis. Now, the instincts of hummingbirds are clearly plastic enough that they go right to it and sup the refined sugar nectar from where it wells up in the faux-flower ports. But the funniest thing, and it cracks us up all Summer long into Fall as we peek through the bay window that peeps out over the roses, is this — there's more sugar water in a single filling of that globe than the whole gang of hummers in the 'hood could possibly consume in a month, and yet their instincts are not so plastic that they'll ever leave off blustering and dogfighting and just plain enjoy the mix. Moral of the Story? Ay, there's the rub.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

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