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Wikipedia criticism, and why it fails to matter, vipulnaik |
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Kato |
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dhd
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http://whatisresearch.wordpress.com/2009/0...ails-to-matter/"Over the past few months, I’ve been collecting newspaper and magazine articles about the phenomenon of Wikipedia. (I’ve myself written two blog posts on Wikipedia here and here). Prominent among the Wikipedia critics is Seth Finkelstein, a consulting programmer who does technology journalism on the side and publishes columns in the Guardian. Seth’s criticism is largely related to the politics of getting people to work for free. The Register has published many news and analysis articles critical of Wikipedia, such as this, this, this, and many others. The Register points out the many flaws in Wikipedia’s editing system, and has been critical of what it terms the cult of Wikipedia."This guy also writes: QUOTE Of course, this hardly completes the list of Wikipedia critics. There’s Wikipedia Watch and Wikipedia Review, both started by Daniel Brandt, a confirmed Wikipedia critic. There’s Robert McHenry, former Britannica editor-in-chief, who has written pieces critical of Wikipedia such as this and this. And there’s the self-described anti-Web-2.0 polemicist Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. One of the Wikipedia-critical pieces that often gets quoted is Digital Maoism: The hazards of the new online collectivism by Jaron Lanier. Wikipedia Review started by Daniel Brandt? News to me. (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)
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dogbiscuit |
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Could you run through Verifiability not Truth once more?
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QUOTE(gomi @ Tue 24th February 2009, 8:07am) His analysis is tremendously facile: don't bother to criticize Wikipedia because people will go to it anyway because it is always the first link on Google. Oh, and criticizing it might help it a little. Not exactly an incisive conclusion.
Perhaps not facile, perhaps resigned. I thought the conclusion, though uninspiring was simply reiterating a view often pointed out on this forum: QUOTE a serious decrease or diversion of usage (and consequently, of editing effort) from Wikipedia can happen only in the presence of a competing resource that offers at least similar levels of ubiquity, ease of use and quick reference, and probably visibility in search engines.
In other words, every time some numbskull responds to a criticism with "fork your own version"* it is evident that it would have little effect - hence the intrigue as to what impact Knol might have (especially at the point where Google deem it has sufficient momentum that they can start downgrading Wikipedia and uprating knols). In criticising his conclusion, you are just observing that the problems of Wikipedia are fairly obvious to anyone who has hung around here, given that the solutions tend towards the impossible (and hence the need for alternatives to simple criticism to undermine Wikipedia). Perhaps the saving grace of the Web is that it is not long until the next great thing comes along. I don't think Wikipedia is an Amazon, Google or eBay, it lacks the astute management. *You know who you are (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/mad.gif)
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Jon Awbrey |
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Ï„á½° δΠμοι παθήματα μαθήματα γÎγονε
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My è-graved invitation didn't make it through somehow — could I possibly be banned (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/banned.gif) already ??? — at any rate, I posted another comment: QUOTE Green Wiki-Peacers and Sports-Phishing Phans who are earnestly tracking which off-shore trawlers are netting the lyin's share of ad-banner fish might want to tackle some of the data at the end of this thread: Spamalot — Or Not!'Cause I know that David Gerard is really concerned about commericialization. Jon (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)
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Jon Awbrey |
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Ï„á½° δΠμοι παθήματα μαθήματα γÎγονε
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Some pretty lively discussion going on there — here's my latest 2¢ —QUOTE Just going by my own experience, the only thing that drives contributors away is their own experiences trying to develop high quality educational materials and practices in a place where that is obstructed by the actual agenda of the management and the real function of the site. Like most things in life where you do not listen to others ahead of time, you tend to learn these lessons the hard way. But it can be a confusing time of transition as you try to reconcile the contradictory beliefs, the mental viruses, that you have allowed to infect your brain while working in a disinformational environment. The purpose of a critical review enterprise, then, is not to pour cold water on the shipwreck victims, but merely to provide them with lifeboats, encouragement, and directions to shore. Comment by Jon Awbrey — February 25, 2009 @ 4:26 pmOkay, yeah, sometimes you have to slap the more hysterical ones around a bit. But I’m sure you’ve seen all the movies. Comment by Jon Awbrey — February 25, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
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Jon Awbrey |
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Ï„á½° δΠμοι παθήματα μαθήματα γÎγονε
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QUOTE [Repost. Hmmm, the Word-O-Press Bot seems to be rejecting any post where I link to my Wikipedia Review profile — I hope it's not using the Wik-I-Pedia MetaBadList as a censor or something like that.] Somey Says, “I’m afraid Jon is right —†Be afraid, be very afraid …But seriously folks, let’s look at this from the perspective of an Educational Systems Designer. (I happen to know people with degrees in just that.) What we’ve got here is a transitional object that is going through a transitional phase. I have reason to hope that it’s a brief transition, but that depends on your time frame. Depending on your scope and what aspects of the system you choose to inspect, some of the features of this design paradigm have been ruling the day, perhaps every other day, for only the last 60 years, the last 20 years, or the last 5 years, again, it all depends on what you are looking at. Another hair that needs splitting is the one I mentioned in regard to Usenet — there is the autonomous dynamics of the system in its own reich and then there is the impact that it has on our everyday lives and greater enterprises. Gestalt dynamics is such that some part of the minimally attended Ground can always go Figure again — sometimes suddenly and sometimes unpleasantly, so we have to watch out for that — but time after time some things we once cared a whole lot about just fade away and never trouble our whirried mind again. My question is — How does our grasp of dynamic systems need to evolve in order for us to take these contextual, hermeneutic, interpretive, or pragmatic factors into account in decidedly more sensible ways than we have in the past? Comment by Jon Awbrey — February 26, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
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Milton Roe |
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Known alias of J. Random Troll
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QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 25th February 2009, 9:36am) Some pretty lively discussion going on there — here's my latest 2¢ —QUOTE The purpose of a critical review enterprise, then, is not to pour cold water on the shipwreck victims, but merely to provide them with lifeboats, encouragement, and directions to shore.
Hmmm. I could've sworn I'd seen Jon pouring saltwater into the wounds of many a shipwreck victim, as well as providing survivors staggering from the desert of WP, with a covered silver serving platter, hiding a peanut butter sandwich and a message of (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif) . So what's all this, then? (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif) "Lifeboats, encouragement, and directions to shore," is now the new code for "Just stop editing the Φucking thing, you noOb! Ja, Ja, (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif) " ?
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vipulnaik |
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I'm the author of the original post. I apologize for getting some facts about the Wikipedia Review wrong in my original post (i.e., making the false claim that it was started by Daniel Brandt). I made the correction to the post after Jon Awbrey pointed this out in a comment.
I'd like to thank people from the Wikipedia Review for selecting to highlight the article, and offering their comments and perspective.
Vipul
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Jon Awbrey |
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Ï„á½° δΠμοι παθήματα μαθήματα γÎγονε
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Speaning of Webers, here's an Invitation to the Dance …QUOTE Vipul, It may be time, as it recurrently is, to reflect more critically on the features of the regnant design paradigm that I mentioned above. In order to pursue that discussion in a more leisurely way than we might be able to achieve here, I have opened a topic in the Meta Discussion Forum of The Wikipedia Review entitled “ Fallacies Of Dyadicism, Connectionism, Behaviorismâ€. Comment by Jon Awbrey — March 1, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
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