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The Encarta and (I believe) World Book entries on "Fractal" were written by Benoit Mandelbrot. It's actually quite common for experts to write entries for an en

• tptacek 15y ago
  Benoit Mandelbrot is famous because he published in venues like _Science_, not because an encyclopedia commissioned him to write an article or two. I'm not saying experts can't write encyclopedia articles; I'm saying, credible experts don't use them as venues for research.
  • kevinpet 15y ago
    You are missing the point. Identifying an expert and asking them to write the article is exactly what traditional encyclopedia's do, while wikipedia actively discourages this.
    • tptacek 15y ago
      That's not true. Wikipedia does not have a policy of discouraging experts from writing there. I've personally said (a couple times here) that experts shouldn't write Wikipedia articles, because it is a waste of their time. But they are clearly welcome to do so. The only thing they're not welcome to do is to cite their own expertise instead of actual sources.
      • snowwrestler 15y ago
        But in this story, the author did cite actual sources but was still reverted by page-watchers.