> Based on a quick google search, I concluded the author of this blog post appears to only write short, shallow blog posts. [...] Okay, why is there no quick link to a summary of his qualifications in direct support of the article's central premise?
Well, there was this at the bottom of the article: "Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an adjunct at the Harvard Extension School." Anybody interested in evaluating or expanding upon these credentials could do so with (not to be trite) a quick Google search.
> Either way, my argument stands: On the internet, if you don't have name recognition and want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate your expertise, because any layperson can quote a wiki article. It takes more than simply saying "I am an expert".
Your mistake is to look for demonstrations of expertise in the form of Google rank and other manifestations of popularity. That's not what actual demonstration of expertise looks like. Laypeople like us (relative to the field of public policy) have two options for evaluating domain expertise: (1) expend the significant effort required to become actual experts in those fields ourselves, or (2) accept the collective opinion of the larger body of experts in that field. The latter generally takes the form of academic credentials, professional awards, CVs, and the like – and as undemocratic as it may feel to yield to the judgment of a bunch of ivory tower elites, as laypeople it's all we have to go by if we value truth.
PageRank is a popularity contest. It answers neither (1) nor (2) above.