Kevin Kelly responds to Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales wrote:

Wikipedia depends critically on expertise and to fail to understand this is to fail to understand the phenomenon of Wikipedia completely. Wikipedians insist on "reliable sources" not as a magical incantation but because reliable sources matter, really really matter, if we are to be engaged in a project devoted to the passionate pursuit of truth.

I understand how wikipedia must and does cite "experts" --- although I think it would be fair to say that much of what is actually cited (right now) is not written by world class experts but by journalists, who are almost by definition generalists and not experts. The challenge of citing experts is that it often takes an expert to know where to find them, and to evaluate, or even decode their work. I am not even sure that "truthiness" is best served by experts either. On many subjects I think the tendency of wikipedia to cite journalists (some of whom may be world class expert journalists) provides a better more balanced overview of a subject than citing experts would. In very narrow subjects, you would want more narrow expertise. Has any work been published which analyzed the nature of the citations in wikipedia in terms of what percent point to peer reviewed primary sources (a reasonable proxy for expertise)? Jimmy, do you have a intuitive guess at what portion of current citations point to primary experts? (Setting aside the fact that many facts in wikipedia are not currently cited at all -- although that continues to improve.)

The question of whether or not "real world-class experts" will or should participate in Wikipedia is a complete red herring. They are welcome to do so, and in fact, the community - in general - not only tolerates but celebrates the participation of genuine domain experts. (Although, it must be said, that quite properly merely being a genuine domain expert doesn't give one a free pass in Wikipedia - nor should it.)

But citations are only half of wikipedia's value. Contributors and editors select and arrange those citations. My impression was that few of those contributors and editors were world class experts in the subject they worked on. Yes, experts are welcomed, but how many do? My impression is undoubtedly ignorant, so I have to rely on either your impression, which is much more informed than mine, or on serious analysis. Jimmy, what is your guess for either the proportion of wikipedia's contributors/editors who are world class experts, and/or the percentage of all world class experts who contribute or edit wikipedia? I would guess maybe 10% of the contributions/edits in a piece are from the best experts and that maybe 1% of all experts contribute to the wikipedia entry about their subject. But I'm just guessing. Do you have a better sense or better data?
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