Comment #2: Those Who Can Teach, Those Who Teach Do

This is my comment to Exploding Breaker's blog, check the user's blog at Those Who Can Teach, Those Who Teach Do and here is my comment:

Hey, I found your blog to be particularly interesting, asking what constitues 'knowledge'. This is my overall view on how 'experts' are identified.Burns explains that in the collaborative online communities, ‘experts’ or roles as ‘leaders’ are ultimately decided by the quality of active content from participants, regardless of their role in the academic hierarchy. The ability regarding online users to be assessed of importance based on their personal user-led content is I think the most appropriate way of discovering an ‘expert’ in a certain field of knowledge. Isn’t this how ‘experts’ are identified? Not by their qualifications or level in the academic hierarchy; but their skills, knowledge and ideas that are exemplified in their user-led content. The produsage community is becoming more increasingly popular and relevant towards academic research. Researchers seeking proper knowledge for a subject no longer search by looking up experts, but by users whose academic profession and credentials are frequently never shown. And as part of the online collaborative community, the content that could possibly be faulty can always be judged, edited and commented on by other users (much like what I am doing to your blog). As Axel Burn refers to in one of his readings, that outcomes of users will always remain unfinished and continually under development-that this is sharing of knowledge and ideas. However that does not mean that users who provide quality user-led content on the web2.0 may be creditable, I am just saying in the collaborative online community, we all have the ability to set what is right.