Benefits of having "trusted / high quality" user recognition

PS. An alternative - or complimentary - way of addressing this is to recognize non-anonymous experts. See my essay. --Piotrus 21:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Piotrus21:23, 26 November 2009

Non-anonymous experts are of source (very) desirable. But that doesn't mean they always make desirable editors. There are non-anonymous experts who can't "get" the idea of how we edit, can't collaborate, can't handle NPOV, have their own (non-policy) view on sources, write fine on their pet topics and edit war on others, .....

I wouldn't recognize expertize in this idea. Not because I'm anti-expert (I'm not) but because even in scientific publishing, expertize does not necessarily mean balance, neutrality, non-fringe, appropriate conduct to others they don't agree with, and the like. An expert needs to be able to show these basic editing skills like anyone else, because Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research and so on. This is about recognizing people who know how to edit and are accepted as good at doing so. Nurture those, and the project benefits for all -- including for experts.

I'd tell the expert that (like joining any new project) they need to learn how to edit Wikipedia, which will be different from how they edit their own papers. But they can edit freely, and (since they are bright and used to scientific collaboration) they'll surely be recognized as a trusted content editor for our purposes nice and quickly, if they take a few minutes to understand how we work here. In fact I'd make that part of the "New user wizard" ("Do you have formal credentials in any field you plan to edit?" + guidance).

FT2 (Talk | email)21:40, 26 November 2009

Note: there are also "less formal" credentials that work, i.e. while Master Gardener is a formal credential (that I have), many people don't know or understand the certification. Somewhere can we start culling a list of potential certifications for admins to utilize in screening?

Bhneihouse03:49, 27 November 2009

I could have said that better: informal and lesser known credentials available in a list may help admins.

Bhneihouse03:50, 27 November 2009