What I wanted to emphasize, in pointing out that we all have areas of expertise to contribute, is that our efforts at Expert Labs aren’t going to demonstrate that fear that a lot of policy makers have, which is based on the idea that being completely open to public input is akin to allowing for mob rule. Obviously, people who are experienced on the web know that we actually have great ways to collaborate together without just highlighting the worst behaviors or least inspired ideas in a group, but other folks who are less familiar with the web’s successes can be a bit (understandably!) nervous about these things.

I’ll try to make this clearer in the future, but my belief is that we’re all expert at something, and those are the topics we can weigh in on. I don’t want to build a system that just rewards the noisiest folks (who aren’t always the most informed on a topic), but I certainly think we can open the doors to participation from anybody who’s developed expertise on a topic, whether that’s through traditional means or not.

I hope that clears things up! Let me know if there’s a better way to get that message across.