Institute Of Network Cultures, Koolaid Is The New “Kritikal� Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

The Institute of Network Cultures maintains an engaging complex of activities, blogs, conferences, discussion groups, and assorted websites. A lot of what I read there is bit too much the Helium Hermenautical Armchair (HeHa) for my down-to-earth tastes, but I do see a concerted effort toward real understanding that is but rarely encountered these days.

I'll just collect a few links here �

Institute of Network Cultures : Main Portal

Society of the Query : Collaborative Research Blog

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Geert Lovink posted notice of a First Monday article by Jutta Haider and Olaf Sundin, titled “Beyond the Legacy of the Enlightenment? � Online Encyclopaedias as Digital Heterotopias�.

On that same topia, er, topic, Andrew Famiglietti posted notice of his essay, “Tasty Theory Clusters�, found on his blog, Hackers, Cyborgs, and Wikipedians.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Patrick Lichty has been stressing his interest in wiki-based communities in general, a meta*perspective that naturally appeals to me.

Here's a comment I posted in regard to that Big Picture POV �

Having participated in several wikioid start up projects before I ever heard of Wikipedia, and still participating in a wide variety of similar projects today, I share this point of view.

The feature of social-technical architecture that most markedly distinguishes a wiki system is its "erasability". This is a major boon to people, like me, who never manage to write anything anywhere near the way it needs to be on the first 20 or 30 drafts or so. And its aid to collaboration is clear, at least, among folks who are capable of genuine dialogue in pursuing joint work.

The point where erasability becomes a disabling bug in the groupware is when some participants in a debate discover that they can "win" arguments simply by deleting the opposing arguments.

Once that happens, even a little, the people who resort to this type of easy win almost always become hopelessly addicted to it � it becomes an automatic reflex, often literally enforced by bots � inquiry is short-circuited and the "community" has to be protected by scare-quotes from then on out.

� Jon Awbrey, 18 Mar 2010, CET 19:18

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Mathieu O'Neil announced his paper, “Shirky and Sanger, or the Costs of Crowdsourcing�. It appears in the current special issue of the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) on Peer-to-Peer and User-Led Science.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Juliana Brunello posted an excerpt from the First Monday article, “Signs of Epistemic Disruption : Transformations in the Knowledge System of the Academic Journal� by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis.

Andreas Kemper added an interesting comment about missed opportunities for author funding as it affects the German scene, but I don't know enough about this to know if it has more global implications.

Maybe Greg could take a look at it?

Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

I posted an update on the progress at the Magna Farta con-stitutional con-vention �

CPOV Pilgrims who are following WikiPlex's Progress --
to wit, its "foundering" attempts to up-date itself
to the Year 1215 -- will find that a portion of the
action has shifted to the scenes of Meta-Wiki-Medea:

meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag

Ciao,

Jon

I suppose we should start a pool on when the purges of e-ristocrats will commence � but positive numbers only, no fair counting pre-purgees …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

TheUsualSuspect incites a discussion of our Imperious (Co-)Leader's imperiosity …

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

I posted another comment on the thread Greg needled to ask the question, “Community Run or Royal Decree?�

Some of you will have heard it before …

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Juliana Brunello posted a list of tools for researching various aspects of Wikipedia.

I think we have discussed almost all of these at one point or another, but a few of them I don't recall having seen before, and it's handy in any case to have them all listed in one place.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

From Alan Shapiro, an n-teresting pointer to a wild and wooly link-o-rama, n-cidentally tangent to the m-bedding thread that I x-tracted for x-amining Joseph Reagle's e-vocation of the Universal Encyclopedia Vision (UEV).

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Juliana Brunello needled a thread on the recent Global Politician interview with Sam Vaknin, titled “The Wikipedia Cult�, that is already being discussed here on its own thread.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Juliana Brunello needled a thread on “The Wikipedia Cult�, the recent Global Politician interview with Sam Vaknin, which was also being discussed on its own thread here.

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

Reply to objections on the use of the word "cult" �

The good of a concept or a term of description, more or less following Kant and Peirce, is that it unifies a manifold of sense impressions.

As it happens, my work on social and technical means of facilitating inquiry led me to study the factors that "block inquiry", in other words, that inhibit critical reflective thinking, long before I ever encountered the worldview of the Wikipedian true believer. One of the telltale signs of a closed belief system that I kept noticing was one that I dubbed the "cul-de-sac" � rhymes with "cultist act". This is any plank of a belief platform that keeps those who stand on it from reflecting critically on its fundamental structures and evaluating their suitability for the espoused common purpose.

For my part, I am skeptical of the hypothesis that "Peter Damian" asserted to lead off that sample thread � I don't think I'd trace every deleterious effect of the Wikipedia Complex to a single mad belief � but I can see some sense in trying to unify the manifold of otherwise senseless impressions.

Jon Awbrey, 31 May 2010

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Taking off from Sam Vaknin's article on “The Wikipedia Cult�, a lively discussion of the whole cult issue has ensued on the CPOV List.

I don't like copying other people's comments without permission, so I'll just give links to theirs and copy my own responses here.

Re: Nathaniel Tkacz and Seth Finkelstein

Wikipedia's cabalism, cultishness, groupthinkitude, whatever you want to call it, is very real, and Vaknin's article describes it quite accurately. I frankly wish we could be discussing the future of knowledge work on the Web, relative to which Wikipedia furnishes a wealth of data about how badly a naive idea can can wrong, but other people keep bringing it up, so those who know are forced to say what they know.

This is of course a hoary old topic at The Wikipedia Review. I once began a "meta-thread" in the Meta-Discussion Forum to collect various reflections on the subject. It appears to be something of a dead horse over there, but here it is, FWIW:

Meta-Thread On Cult Dynamics

I am slightly incited to resuscitate the jockey if not the horse.

Jon Awbrey, 03 Jun 2010

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Re: Juliana Brunello

The topic of "dysfunction" is another one with a long record of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. The first thing to know about dysfunction is that it is relative to a function, that is, a goal, ideal, objective, purpose, or value.

That brings us to the issue of "espoused values" versus "actual values", as emphasized, for instance, by systems thinkers like Argyris and Schön. One of the first questions to ask about a group project like Wikipedia is whether the values that are "actually" actualized by it are consistent with the values that group members are constantly espousing. When we see a wide divergence between the two, as most long-term observers see in Wikipedia, we have the task of explaining that difference. The complex of activities associated with Wikipedia may be perfectly functional with respect to certain goals � the fact that these activities persist in spite of every attempt to modify them should give us a clue � the question is, "What are those goals?"

Jon Awbrey, 03 Jun 2010

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Re: Seth Finkelstein

Seth's remarks about "pre-existing vulnerable people" ties in with another one of those much-discussed topics at The Wikipedia Review. Many observers have noticed the commonalities that connect 3 types of "usual susceptibles":

1. the predisposition to become addicted to online role-playing games,
2. the psychological profile of the typical mark in a confidence game,
3. the susceptibility to sudden belief system conversion, as in cults.

The engine that drives the game forward in all of these cases is an unbridled expectation buried in the psyche of the exploited person, an irrational drive that the exploiter uses to rein and ride the mark.

Jon Awbrey, 05 Jun 2010

[Jon Awbrey]

CPOV Listings …

Re: Alan Shapiro

Being a Peircean pragmatic thinker, by virtue or maybe by dint of long-continuing auto-inculcation, I can't help coloring outside the lines of dyadic thinking for very long, so let me let that business pass.

One of the lessons that my teachers pounded into my head over many long years of alio-inculcation was that education and inquiry have as much to do with process as product, as much to do with conduct as content.

Wikipedia, just to take up the current example, begins to look like a very different proposition when we start to examine the reality of practice that prevails in its orbit.

Maybe it would help to focus, one by one, on particular practices that distinguish Wikipedia Culture from other systems that we know?

One practice that is very symptomatic of cults, dogmatic organizations, faith-oriented groups, religions, sects, whatever you want to call them, is the practice of banning, shunning, or excommunicating onetime members of the group, members who were once considered "good faith" participants.

Jon Awbrey, 03 Jun 2010