Linus is a smart guy - if he offered an opinion on "rocket ships, film production, oil recovery techniques, sociology, religious history or automobile engineering" that opinion would influence my own opinion on the subject, and I think for good reason.
I.e. I think a model whereby the credibility of a person is specified by a single measure has value. The model could be improved by measuring credibility on multiple axes, but a single measure model is still useful.
Linus would clearly have a positive credibility by pretty much any measure you would reasonably want to use. Perhaps the author's complaint is really that this measure is elevated way beyond where it should be due to his celebrity status.
But how do you measure credibility of relative nobodies? Without good information on credibility, it is pretty rational for the casual observer to overweight the general opinions of people like Linus in forming their own opinions.
We are working very hard on this problem and more at backrecord.com. We don't have a go-live-notification list set up, but if you'd like to know when we make the website live, feel free to send me an email at the address in my profile.
I.e. I think a model whereby the credibility of a person is specified by a single measure has value. The model could be improved by measuring credibility on multiple axes, but a single measure model is still useful.
Linus would clearly have a positive credibility by pretty much any measure you would reasonably want to use. Perhaps the author's complaint is really that this measure is elevated way beyond where it should be due to his celebrity status.
But how do you measure credibility of relative nobodies? Without good information on credibility, it is pretty rational for the casual observer to overweight the general opinions of people like Linus in forming their own opinions.
We are working very hard on this problem and more at backrecord.com. We don't have a go-live-notification list set up, but if you'd like to know when we make the website live, feel free to send me an email at the address in my profile.