Using OPML to Exchange Lists of "Experts"

By Dennis D. McDonald

EirePreneur has a real interesting use of OPML files and GRAZR -- a personal list of experts that is shareable. Check it out; it generates discussion about a variety of interrelated topics including tagging, taxonomy, what is an expert, and sexual discrimination (I kid you not).

I've just gotten through with updating my own feeds-on-web-page so I have some questions about the cumbersome nature of this process, but I like the idea.

One frustration I have about the blog post, though, is that I don't know who EirePreneur is -- I can't tell if it is one person, a collective, a male or female, or whatever. I'm sure the people who are close to EirePreneur know all these details but, viewed from across The Pond, I'm having some difficulty visualizing!

So what, you say? Well, I would be the first to admit that if someone wants to maintain anonymity, that's fine with me. But when I consider the various ingredients of what go into defining an "expert," there are some social and interpersonal aspects that might argue against anonymity. (That's not intended as a criticism of EirePreneur it's just how I think about the social and interpersonal aspects of what we mean by "expertise.")

Comments

[James Corbett]

Dennis, thanks for your interesting thoughts on this issue

"So what, you say? Well, I would be the first to admit that if someone wants to maintain anonymity, that's fine with me. But when I consider the various ingredients of what go into defining an "expert""

Good points Dennis but I would argue that this is exactly the reason why a distributed OPML based solution works best. People who've been following my blog for a long time will know my real name - James Corbett - and that I'm the sole author. I wouldn't want those who don't know that information deciding that I'm an expert on anything! And thankfully they're unlikely to do so. BTW, a small bit of Googling and/or a Technorati search also pull up my real name.

Thanks for your comment also to my own blog where you've suggested a registration based wiki but my objection to this is the centralised nature and the obvious connotations of elitism. Wikis, in my opinion, work best when they're based around a set of facts that at least bear a chance of consensus. But they're weak and unwieldy for opinion based documentation.

We've seen how Google, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Share Your OPML, etc, all work their magic based on the wisdom of the crowd, the distributed crowd. That is the same model which I think would work best for publication of Expert Lists.