One of the controversies surrounding Wikipedia is that it demands that experts submit to the NPOV policy and to having their work edited by non-experts as well — rather than asking other editors to defer to their expertise. This is in contrast with competing projects Nupedia (now defunct), Citizendium, and Knol, which propose to attract expert editors by giving them a greater voice.
It is worth noting here that Citizendium and Knol both failed as well—Citizendium was overrun by pseudoscientists (who know how to work credentials) and Knol became more or less a crank and spam dump. In the attempt to appeal to writers, they utterly failed to appeal to readers.
It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia has lots of experts editing in their fields anyway. It turns out that if you’re the encyclopedia that everyone actually reads, people will go to some effort to get their field properly documented.
The expert problem is still a problem, of course. Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of experts’ faces, but then Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of anyone’s faces.
It is worth noting here that Citizendium and Knol both failed as well—Citizendium was overrun by pseudoscientists (who know how to work credentials) and Knol became more or less a crank and spam dump. In the attempt to appeal to writers, they utterly failed to appeal to readers.
It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia has lots of experts editing in their fields anyway. It turns out that if you’re the encyclopedia that everyone actually reads, people will go to some effort to get their field properly documented.
The expert problem is still a problem, of course. Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of experts’ faces, but then Wikipedia can’t keep idiots out of anyone’s faces.
The Internet: optimizing idiot delivery to people’s faces since the late 20th century.