Wikipedia:Expert rebellion

This essay is currently inactive or at one time had community consensus, but is no longer relevant. It is retained for historical reference. In particular: This page is several years obsolete; essentially replaced by WP:Expert retention which is itself out-of-date. It was last substantively updated 20 June 2012‎.

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

There are numerous discontented users, and former users, of Wikipedia, who have repeatedly claimed that Wikipedia offers very little incentive for editors who wish to contribute to expert topics. This page contains links to pages of users who are discontented for fundamentally similar reasons, along with discussion of what (if anything) might be done.

Users who have given clear statements of what they are unhappy about

Those who are still active on Wikipedia

Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias
Bmorton3, Dr. Brian Morton, professor of psychology at Indiana State University
user:jkelly, an admin
Timothy J Scriven
Middle 8

Users who are disaffected for different reasons

It was predictable this page would attract editors who have disgruntled for different reasons than the ones I am interested in (namely fed up with edit creep, and fed up with lone cranks or crank subculture vandalism). This list is for user page links where reason for discontent could not be established.

User:Terryeo My reason I'm thinking of leaving is because I'm an expert editor in Scientology, relative to the Scientology-critical editors who control the articles. My gripe is they run their own Scientology-critical websites, publish Scientology-critical essays on them, cite those and cite their own newsgroup postings, etc. etc. etc. So that's my expertise and my reason for not working harder for good Wikipedia articles. A group of Scientology-critical editors consistently inflame discussion and introduce their POV rather than a neutral POV. And the reason I post this extensive reason is because of the misleading statement just below my statement. Terryeo 13:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no evidence I can find that this user has left for the reasons I cite. Details here Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Terryeo/Evidence#Removal_of_references_for_POV_reasons

Jon Awbrey is e-live and living a distributed x-istance at:

Inquiry Project	Inquiry Archive
Textop Home	Textop Talk
Wikinfo Home	Wikinfo Talk
Wikipedia Home	Wikipedia Talk
Elsewhere!	WEEE!
MOPA Round	MOTA City

JA: B there ∨ B² !!! Jon Awbrey 18:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Links documenting "expert frustration"

Some links where contributions from (alleged) subject-matter experts, who consider their contributions to be authoritative, have been reverted or met with resistance by editors who may lack expertise in the subject matter (or in some cases, who may be pushing "crank" theories).

Talk:Consciousness/Archive02#Oh_Lord.... Consciousness is understood as a symbiosis (interaction) of Mind and Information.
Controversy over Cantor. Cantor was wrong.
Talk:Uranium trioxide/Archive 3#Thermodynamics One amateur, in consultation with an outside expert "holds out against a team of PhD's."
Talk:Albert_Einstein#Reverted_without_comment Einstein argued that time is pseudo-directional.
Talk:History_of_the_Internet/Archive_2#Erroneous_edits - An amateur editor inserts his own original research - but knows so little of the subject that he introduces a host of errors.

Links to versions of v bad articles

A diff from the Consciousness article. [1]