In my experience of trying to find useful information, I find that there are usually too few real experts, at least real experts that have shared their knowledge online in a useful and readable way.

However there may well be too many fake experts that have thrown up sites on subjects they don't know really much about and have researched very superficially if at all..

Recently I asked a question about humane ways of getting rid of mice. I also did a fair bit of online research myself to try to discover what I wanted to know.

My experience was typical of many times when I try to discover something on the net. There are plenty of pages out there, but most are pretty poor. Even if what they say is actually right, there is no way to know if they are really trustworthy or not. As I said in one of my comments in the thread....

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Do you know if any of these things work?

I'm pretty sceptical about the how much effort sites like that put into actually finding useful and reliable info. I'm afraid a lot of "articles" on the net tend to whipped up quickly by people who know very little about the topic they're writing on, and their research consists of just repeating material they found on the net which is also written by other people who know equally little. :)

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You mentioned SEO considerations as a force driving people to become experts.

As far as I can see search engines are just not that good at distinguishing real expertise from plausible looking baloney. But it is far more time consuming and difficult to develop real expertise than do some skimpy research and write plausible baloney. Hence there is a lot of plausible baloney out there.

What's more the plausible baloney brigade are usually a lot better at SEO than the real experts. The real experts have better things to do than learn about SEO, research keywords, promote their pages etc. If you happened to be a real expert on what works and doesn't work in controlling home pests, you probably make a living from that, not from writing articles about it. If you do write articles, they're most likely either a minor consideration for you or a part of your advertising.

All in all, finding real experts freely sharing their knowledge with no agenda is often difficult.

I would say yes and no.

Yes. Because of the internet. It has became accessible to everyone. Everyone can have a web page. Everyone can claim to be an expert on a subject. Everyone can pose as a specialist on a topic. But where is the background of those people. Where is the assurance that he/she is the expert or specialist. Now there is even a title 'evangelist' on a certain field. I mean ... come on 'evangelist' what is that.

No. Because the true experts, those who are reliable and have background and facts to back up their claims are those who are not exposing them self's on the net. Those are the scientists and experts who are professors on the leading universities in the world. Those are people on positions in big enterprises and are taking a bunch of money for their opinion. Because knowledge costs money. It's not advertised for free.

I don't have any links or sources because this is my personal opinion.
You can use the links of every major university in the world to find out who ar those people.

BR
Alex

Knowledge is endless, boundless and it is evolving. It's part of us human beings already. But in order to be famous, you should excel among others.

I am sure that there are. The only thing is that we probably do not know about them. Here, I do neither mean nor believe that only a very learned or educated man can be called an expert. Anybody who has expertise in his field/work can be called an expert.

Going by that, I believe that almost everybody is an expert in his own particular field.

I did not do any research on this however, because I did not think it was necessary.

Opinions may differ however..

Thanks

Your question reminds me a bit of the Socratic Dialogues by Plato. If my memory serves, one of Socrates' beliefs was that the truly wise person is the person who realizes how very little they actually know. If it was true for the Greek philosophers, it is probably even more true today. It might be helpful if people would value an awareness of what they do not know - what are still questions and therefore full of possibilities. Let me end with a "tongue in cheek" comment about the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Points on a graph are data, and a line going through the points is information. Knowledge is knowing what the line means, but wisdom is knowing what the line doesn't mean.

Years online have taught me one very important lesson: In the internet, Everyone is an expert at Everything.

I refrain from calling anyone an expert, unless there is a formal education towards a very specific field, independent research/findings, and perhaps a publication on the subject at hand. Only then I would say that an individual is an expert at a very specific field.

Our lives are short and there is simply not enough time for anyone know everything. An expert on X or Y field will know his subject of choice like the palm of his hand without the need of online sources, books and guesses. He/she will be an expert on the topic with the required tools, or without them.

I'm no expert, but that's my opinion

I think Mahalo is a perfect example. People ask questions that matter to them. These questions tend to take a pattern over time. Subject matter experts are needed in these particular areas. So I guess the point that I am making is that people should become experts in areas that matter to their clients.

In my expert opinion...JK

I don't think there is too much (accurate) information - even though there is an awful lot of it out there, not every person will see every bit of information that there is to see.

People seek out and pay attention to the information that interest them. I may be interested in doves and the next person may be interested in locomotives - we will probably never see the same (detailed) information that is available because we are looking in totally different directions.

No matter the subject, there is someone out there who can gain knowledge from the information available on that particular subject. Even if someone write an expert article about 'how to wear clothes' (which, I think, is something everyone should know how do do), there will be someone, somewhere who will someday look for that information and it will be there for them.

My opinion is excluding the info that is incorrect and useless.

I think there are too many people who "allege" to be subject matter experts. There are not enough people who are experts especially in more niche topics.