Who's an expert?

Couple of things in the media recently, along the general lines of who really should get to be heard, in the context of clue sufficiency. First, one of my long-standing betes noires, the wiki idea and Wikipedia in general, is getting some competition from what will amount to a real, as opposed to a fantasy, web encyclopedia, Citizendium.

Interestingly, one of the claims made for Wikipedia is its huge base of "contributors," cited as being 3 million accounts. In fact, though, few of those accounts actually do anything -- a Washington Post article says:

"Wikipedia's own statistics show that in September, the most recent month for such data, 43,000 people were considered "active" _ they each contributed to more than five articles for the English site. The category of "very active Wikipedians" _ those who worked on more than 100 items _ numbered 4,330."

So what Wikipedia actually consists of is a tiny number of people with too much time on their hands, joined by about ten times the number of occasional contributors, and a vast number of lurkers -- gosh, that sounds a lot like ... news groups! Yes, it's just alt.flame writ large and somewhat better looking on screen.

Whether Citizendium will be any more useful remains to be seen.

Elsewhere, Harry Collins writes in New Scientist about technological populism and a "periodic table" of expertise -- his example is the media frenzy that occurred when a small set of highly inexpert parents extrapolated from MMR vaccinations to autism, without any basis. He also cites the South African government's decision to withhold AZT from HIV patients, on the grounds that President Thabo Mbeki believed he'd seen a "controversy" over its effectiveness in scientific literature he wasn't qualified to interpret.

His real point is that only the people practicing a particular area of science know whether a dissenting position represents a valid, "we just don't know yet" situation or whether a small group is being subsidized by, say, the tobacco industry, the energy industry, a religious group, or someone else with an axe to grind. And since the popular media are neither themselves qualified or motivated to distinguish, it's frighteningly easy to create bad policy by whipping up technological populism.

And John Hritz has some points to make, in his blog.

Anyway, good stuff to look at on a Tuesday morning, as the coffee takes hold.

And by the way, I believe it's now possible for you to add comments to this blog, although they are going to be moderated, since as you can probably tell from the above, I believe firmly in the repression of dissent of any kind.

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An undated piece from the old WCA News Service, with an extremely tenuous connection to the foregoing:

THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERN

Ann Arbor: A Livingston County legislator is agitating to suspend some levels of state revenue to Ann Arbor unless the city brings its marijuana penalty into line with the state's. A tiny minority of his colleagues are pointing out that, while they fully agree with and support his courageous zeal in defense of our threatened children, his measure is illegal. But, hey, somebody's got to keep those lazy bums on the Supreme Court busy, huh? Actually, it seems like a good idea to us -- meddling in your neighbor's politics -- and so WCA has funded a massive lobbying effort to shut off all state and federal monies to Livingston County until:

- It brings its traffic enforcement into line with Ann Arbor's; the current disgracefully low level of parking citations written in most Livingston County municipalities sends a disastrous message to their kids -- "Hey, park anywhere man, it's cool."

- It ensures that each city and township has at least one International Center for Tibetan Buddhism, located no more than 30 feet from the Baptist Church and the VFW hall. Religious diversity is horribly threatened by the current, whitebread approach to faith in the County, and it seems only fair that if they're going to get any of our hard-earned tax money, a representative proportion of their population should be forced to convert to Roscicrucianism or the Arian Heresy.

- Stop endangering our children by electing morons to the legislature. Henceforward, an aggregate IQ score for all Livingston County lawmakers will be computed each year, and no revenues will be transferred in any year in which the score continues to be below 38, as it apparently is now.

ANN ARBOR CONDUCTS NUCLEAR TESTS

Ann Arbor: "We have to protect ourselves from Livingston County," said a spokesman. The CIA, which was taken completely by surprise ("Ann Harbour? Huh?" said a CIA spokespook), is reported to be monitoring the situation, having done a quick MapQuest search.

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The WCA News Service is brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern and its credible nuclear tempeh deterrent. "We have to protect ourselves from Andy Gulvezan," said a bartender who could hardly be heard above the Baby Elephant Walk, playing on the bar's sound system.

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