I usually think very highly of Jim's posts but this one on the wiki page was wrong on several key points.  Others seem to be mirroring the same errors.

First, whatever Mr. Yanega says on his own web page is irrelevant.  Neither he nor any other editor "owns" any Wikipedia page.  (Wikipedia in fact has an explicit policy on that matter at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Own)  No one owns the page or has any greater weight of
voice than any other editor.  His self-claimed "expertise" has no bearing on his edits - nor do his edits to the CCD page appear to be based any self-claimed expertise.

That said, some editors do build up a reputation for responsible editing and, over time, their voices can be given somewhat greater weight.  But that reputation must be earned on-wiki.  Wikipedia, like much of the internet, is pseudonymous - that is, you can claim to be anyone or have any credentials and it's effectively impossible to prove or disprove the claim.  Anyone can create an email address with almost any name.  Anyone can open a webpage and claim any degree.  I don't have time or resources to go to your alleged alma mater to double check it.  So the rest of us put up processes and filters so we don't have to try.  Whether you claim to have a PhD or not, do your arguments make sense?  Are they clearly and logically presented?  Are they supported by facts?  Are disputed facts attributed to externally-published and verifiable sources?  If they are over and over again, then and only then I might start to give you the benefit of doubt.

If you slash out several large paragraphs without bothering to create
an account or explain your edit, well, that looks a lot like routine
anonymous vandalism and will be promptly reverted.

Even then, I'll moderate the degree of trust I give you.  Expertise in one area does not necessarily imply expertise in other areas, though attention to detail and clear reasoning do generally cross over.

But that general problem is true for much more than just Wikipedia.  People make claims on this list all the time.  Over time, I've learned whose voices I can trust and whose posts just get a quick scan before deletion.  That's not why Wikipedia's article on CCD is so clumsy.

Wikipedia does have a problem distinguishing between the quality of published sources.  When The Register publishes some insane, nonsense theory (like "cell phones cause CCD") and it gets picked up by major new channels around the world, that starts to look like a credible citation to many readers.  (After all, surely that many new agencies couldn't have abdicated their responsibility to fact-check their stories.)  Wikipedia's policy says that those sources are legitimate until proven otherwise through weight of evidence as presented in other published sources.

The problem with the CCD page on Wikipedia is that no one's publishing the rebuttals to all those silly, fringe theories.  And frankly, I don't see them here either.  Just within the past few weeks, we saw a major confusion on this list about what constitutes a symptom of CCD.  Everyone keeps promising that the definitive article on CCD will be published "soon" and makes vague hand-waving assertions while avoiding details with the excuse that it would jeopardize the researcher's publication.  That may be true but until the article is published and available to the rest of it, it doesn't exist.  Any 'advanced release' that you make about it is unsourcable speculation that we must accept (or reject) based solely on the reputation of the person making the claim.  (Does that problem sound familiar?)

So if you want it fixed on-wiki, publish the right answer externally, then post a link or reference to that definitive publication on the article's Talk page.  You'll be surprised how quickly the page gets rewritten once the facts are truly known.  But don't expect that you can parachute in and say "I know better, trust me" or make vague promises about "articles to be published soon".    

Don't expect me to trust 'personal observation' either.  Anyone could make that claim.  Jerry says he has hard evidence about CCD.  I really want to trust him.  Lots of other claim to have seen hard evidence of CCD.  Frankly, I don't trust most of them - the tendency to over-diagnose to the crisis du jour is too well documented.  I'm still waiting for a comprehensive article published in a respectable journal that tells us what CCD really is.  From what I can tell, if anyone ever tried to write the article titled "Colony Collapse Disorder based on Scientific Research", the page would be blank.  If we can't find sources and present them here, how in the world do you expect Wikipedia to do it better?

Mike Rossander



      

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