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Im pretty much annoyed by this term and its imho mis-use for many pseudo-experts. Experts for terrorism, amok, climate, babysitting... you probably all know this phenomenon of people designated in german TV interviews etc. as so-called experts.

So there are different levels when everyone of us starts to trust somebody. Appearance, Oratory,... but apart from these superficial wrong-leading criterions when can one/you call someone an expert?

Your answers will probably be coloured by different subjective criterions but actually i want to know if there are objective criterions when language-proofed institutions like TV stations/newspapers start calling one an expert, as it makes audience supposing alot of credibility. Is there a objective convention of speech. Often it looks to me like they nominate just one who was due to his journalistic career for long in touch we a specific topic. But thats not really expertise like doing a PHD. Even a PHD in physics is no expertise talking about climate physics, but you find many blogs-networks of self-acclaimed experts.

Has the internet and mass of information and necessary social interpretation of it eroded the Experte term? It already has to me a negative connotation like ideology and i personally dont know if you do someone a favour calling/introducing him publicly as expert.

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This discussion is not really on topic for German language and usage. – Takkat♦ Jul 23 '11 at 15:11
@takkat do you mean in general for any SE language forum or only for German? I dunno understand whats the problem with it. Its similar to ideology/weltanschauung. When can/should you use a term, whats todays meaning and connotation. I dont see a discussion arising... Would it be ok to formulate it to "Whats the exact defintion of? an Experte"? – Hauser Jul 23 '11 at 15:20
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It's an interesting topic and I mostly agree with you, but I think it's not the right place to discuss it. It's not a German specific question, so I'll close it. I hope you'll understand. Thanks! EDIT I'll wait for some more comments. Maybe I'm wrong about it. – splattne♦ Jul 23 '11 at 15:20
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@Hauser: If you further edited your question to get it to a more German language topic (e.g. has "expert" in English a different meaning to "Experte" in German) you might get on topic again. If however this led to a lengthy or subjective discussion we might still need to close it just because of this (does not fit to SE design) - we'll see what the community thinks. To define what is on topic or off topic you could also start a meta question. – Takkat♦ Jul 23 '11 at 15:29
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I've voted to close. This would be a good question for some other stackexchange site and artificially restricting answers to linguistic aspects just to make it on topic would not do it justice and is generally not how the network should be working. – Stefan Walter Jul 23 '11 at 17:09
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closed as off topic by Takkat♦, Gigili, user unknown, Stefan Walter, Stefano Palazzo Jul 23 '11 at 19:54

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