"These policies have become the social contract for Wikipedia's army of apparently insomniac volunteers."
*LOL*

"Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. (...)"

Actually, it is quite mathematic. It's the law of masses. If you ask any question to a) an expert b) a large group, then the latter may give you the better answer. Why? Because it's just the way Wiki works: a large group has a broader range of knowledge, sources, experiences, interests and observations.

The sum of the knowledge is always bigger than that of one individual. The accumulated sources...

"These policies have become the social contract for Wikipedia's army of apparently insomniac volunteers."
*LOL*

"Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. (...)"

Actually, it is quite mathematic. It's the law of masses. If you ask any question to a) an expert b) a large group, then the latter may give you the better answer. Why? Because it's just the way Wiki works: a large group has a broader range of knowledge, sources, experiences, interests and observations.

The sum of the knowledge is always bigger than that of one individual. The accumulated sources may inhibit other experts, nearly-experts or sources that are otherwise linked to the subject. There's a realistic chance that the expert's knowledge is part of the big source. People might have read the expert's books about the subject.

Also, there's less pressure on the individuals or non-experts in the population, to give the right answer. It's more of a burden for the single expert, because he's regarded as an authority on the matter. He/she HAS to give an answer, even if he/she has doubts about it. From a statistical point of view, this would be worse, because the weight of default error to be considered is far more bigger with experts than with a larger population. The larger the number of answers, the less influence wrong answers have on the outcome.

Therefore, the chance of getting the same or better answer is the highest when asking many people.

I remember a Dutch research (social science I believe) which proved this principle. The team asked dozens of people on the street to estimate the height of the famous Domtoren in Utrecht (it's the tallest churchtower in The Netherlands and was build in the 13th century). The result was a variety of altitudes, but the statistic median of the combined answers was only a few centimeters off from the true height (112,32 meter).