David Shankbone - the next Elonka?, Is he going to get away with it? Options

[the fieryangel]

(This is a spinoff of the thread in WRR, at the request of the subject.)

The double standard in applying WP: COI has long been a subject of discussion here. There are instances, as in the case of Mr. Kohs, in which people who have clearly expressed their Conflict of Interest are crucified and others, such as Ms. Dunin, who are allowed to express their conflict of interest in their editing activities with the benediction, even the encouragement of the WPPTB.

Mr. Shankbone seems to be in the later category, even having his own category in Commons. Not only is his name all over these contributions, there are also numerous "contributions" which seem to concerned with documenting....David Shankbone himself :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Shankbone_2.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Al_Sharpton.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg (by the way, David, that black muscleshirt is at least two sizes too small....) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...00px-Self_2.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg

...just to point out a few conspicuous examples. It would seem that this type of activity has been attracting the attention of a particularly vicious stalker...and it would also seem that some Users are beginning to question the validity of the inclusion of many of these contributions.

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

It seems to me to be only a matter of time before Mr. Shankbone has his own article: indeed, this would seem to be the logical outcome of this entire process. Granted, he does seem to produce an awful lot of content, but to what aim?

It was suggested on another thread that editors seem to contribute in areas which are of interest to them: classical music, pokemon, grind films of the 1970s, uses for electric knives etc. It was also suggested that since Mr. Shankbone's principal interest is himself that it is only logical and indeed, in his way of thinking, "altruistic" to offer himself as the supreme gift to the project.

The only question I have at this point is whether 1. WP will get tired of this self-promotion and expel him from the system or 2. whether he gets to go for the Golden prize that Durova was trying for and become the official WP media liaison. At this point, either outcome seems possible.

At least at that point, he could then interview himself about how he felt about losing his hair, instead of having to use the pretext of interviewing somebody else to get that valuable information into Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[guy]

Most people who contribute a lot of their photos to Commons have a self-category

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:User_galleries

and indeed it is encouraged.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:...licy#Categories

So we can't criticise Shankbone for that.

[Random832]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

[jorge]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

Edwaert Collier 1640-1707 a contemporary artist? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

[the fieryangel]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

Edwaert Collier 1640-1707 a contemporary artist? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

No, he removed another artist's name (leaving the image, however) :

mage:bboard.jpg| Contemporary artist Linda Cassels-Hofmann's trompe l'oeil black board.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

I suppose that the David Shankbone section on commons is SOP, but quite a few people are getting irked by seeing his bylines all over the place.

[jorge]

I guess he removed Edwaert Collier by mistake as he was clearly notable and I don't think he's up to much self promotion being dead for 300 years. The other artist is contemporary so removing the name was fair enough.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

But artists hope to sell their work and AFAIK Mr Shankbone does not wish to sell his photographs?

[the fieryangel]

I guess he removed Edwaert Collier by mistake as he was clearly notable and I don't think he's up to much self promotion being dead for 300 years. The other artist is contemporary so removing the name was fair enough.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

But artists hope to sell their work and AFAIK Mr Shankbone does not wish to sell his photographs?

Well, that's the question. What is Mr. Shankbone selling? And why is his name more notable than the artist that he removed?

[Kato]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

[wikiwhistle]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I wouldn't quite describe it as that. He's an egotistical spirit doing his own ego-boosting thing as witnessed by his words "I send the mainstream media to you" and his visit to Israel as an ambassador of wikipedia or whatever. And his constantly going on about the 20 hours a week I have contributed to wikipedia and the numerous pictures I have uploaded (which incidentally are often pictures of himself.)


On the other hand, his motivation towards praise etc. does mean he does a lot of 'work'.

This post has been edited by wikiwhistle:

[David Shankbone]

Answers:

The self-promotion argument is so old, so tired, that I don't mind it because it is *so* easy to refute. It's been done time and again. Here's a conversation that I did *not* take part in. I can assure you, every time the self-promotion argument comes up, it goes a similar direction. Who cares if someone puts a name in the file name? I like to see how my work is used (if at all). For instance, my photo of a chest was used by an art class when they were learning figurative drawing. The site is now down, but they didn't credit me, they just uploaded the file from the Commons and it had my User name, so I found it.

It's very satisfying to be able to create something that other people want to use.

Is there a Conflict of Interest? This argument has also been discarded, such as here. If you look at that page there is a lot of heavy argumentation on my part, and I think I did not need to be so aggressive. I still have room to grow, although the discussion at Christian right is not an example (his arguments made no sense). I think what shows I have grown is that I have not taken part in any further Lower Manhattan arguments about one of my photos there (over which one person got blocked). It happens to be one of my favorite photographs, even though it's not of particularly high quality.

What I consider a Conflict of Interest?is what Robin Wong does. I'm not fucking off Robin here; she's a better photographer than I am. But that's just it: she's a professional. She has uploaded much needed photographs, with her name in the file name. But they are all essentially thumbnails, around 54KB. All of the image pages contain links to her photography site, where you can hire her or buy the better resolution versions of her work.

Fine, we don't have alternatives for her work. But you could argue this is more of an effort to "advertise" on Wikipedia than actually contribute to the project. I don't have a web site. I upload the largest size possible. I don't argue on behalf of photos I don't believe in. I thought the Sean Combs current lead was better than mine.

Is a COI to argue aggressively for my photographs? No, but it's not good form. That said, making arguments on behalf of my work is perfectly fine. As fine as someone arguing for a new section they wrote for an article, or a source they want to use. It would be insane to expect other Wikipedians to argue on my behalf every time someone makes a nonsensical argument, such as that guy on Christian right.

Do you know where your right, FieryAngel? The interviews *are* about me. They are about things I want to know. I have no responsibility to make sure I talk about one thing or another. Maybe Diane Sawyer's producer says, "You really should ask Whitney Houston about her drug use," but in the end it's up to Sawyer to decide. If she doesn't ask, people will wonder why not, because it was around the time there were photos of Whitney coming out of crack dens, etc. Why else would you have her on your show? She hadn't done anything recently.

The difference is, Diane Sawyer is paid and on broadcast television. I'm a volunteer who wants to get some recordings of their voices and I will ask what I want to ask. Even though you don't pay me, FieryAngel, like Sawyer's producer you can suggest I ask about certain topics. That's what happened when I interviewed the Dalai Lama's ambassador. Do you think I know the first thing about Shugden worship, or care about when the Dalai Lama is going to Latin America? No. They were questions people wanted me to ask.

Interviews are not easy, and I am empathetic to people. There is a lot of nuance in the world and a lot of things hit people out of left field, and they try to handle those things as best they can, given the circumstances. Sometimes, in hindsight, their best was not particularly good. Mistakes happen. It's part of life. I try to discuss current hot issues, but I'm not casting stones. I am not going to pillory someone when I really just want to have a conversation with them. One person on the talk page felt Senator Sam Brownback got away with a comment about Hugo Chavez that should have been challenged. I think I let him get away with not answering why God would have a problem with gay people. He started talking gay marriage. That's not what I was talking about, but fine, I let it slide. I thought it spoke for itself.

[David Shankbone]

One last thing, FieryAngel, you spend time here complaining about how nobody on Wikipedia takes responsibility for their work, and how the anonymity makes it such an ethically flawed project, but what do you do when someone *does* take responsibility for their contributions? Self promotion and Conflict of Interest. Make up your mind what you are asking of people on WP: to take responsibility, or become part of the nameless, faceless Wikipedia Borg. Your arguments are all over the place.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Proabivouac]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I can agree with that generally. Nor do I entirely disagree with Fieryangel's assessment: everyone has motives to do the work they do, and a feeling of importance is a common one. Because Wikipedia is a volunteer project, this is one of the few rewards WP has to offer to most contributors. Even so, Shankbone comes across as peacocking and preening, and rather full of himself. But that's not misbehavior, per se.

This post has been edited by Proabivouac:

[David Shankbone]

To me, David, it's the photographs of yourself and your various body parts that, more than anything else, give me this impression. As a simple matter of good taste, I do not believe Wikipedia should publish them, nor do I think it helpful for contributors to be subjected to photographs of one another's pubic hair. I wonder if you realize how this will come across to many onlookers.

It has long been consensus that body parts are photographed, and sex acts are illustrated. I can't point you to this, and maybe it's just a Wiki legend, but nobody has raised it again for clarification so it has stuck.

If you disagree with that consensus, then that's the question.

They aren't my body parts, and everyone else knows this except the occasional weirdo who sends me an e-mail complimenting my balls. We had a situation where every little "dude" and "bro" who starts working out thinks *their* bicep should illustrate what a bicep ought to look like. Or chest. Camera phone cock shots, every Brazilian waxing you can imagine. There's a site called WikiFilth that documents some of these uploads.

I have a friend who is a model, and I approached him if he would mind. That I would leave him unidentified. It was also an artistic effort on my part. It is just not often a person comes across an opportunity to do a nude photo shoot with a purpose. Or to photograph a professional BDSM dungeon, and the ladies spanking each other, etc.

I'm an experience junky. I don't know if I created a body of nude photos that could stand against the every-growing body of boobs and asses we get. I am curious, and sometimes I am surprised at the things I'm seeing. Yes, my photographs are the leads on Pornography, Pornographic film, and in many of the BDSM articles. I have around--this is a rough estimate--2,000 photographs on Wikipedia. Around 15-20 do people find objectionable. That really is not so bad.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Proabivouac]

They aren't my body parts, and everyone else knows this except the occasional weirdo who sends me an e-mail complimenting my balls.

Yes, I realized that only minutes after I'd posted, having intended to link to the thread where this was discussed, only to find that several posts down, Mr. Kohs had corrected the accusation. I apologize for having uncritically accepted it, and for having allowed it to influence my opinion of you.

[Milton Roe]

I'm an experience junky. I don't know if I created a body of nude photos that could stand against the every-growing body of boobs and asses we get. I am curious, and sometimes I am surprised at the things I'm seeing. Yes, my photographs are the leads on Pornography, Pornographic film, and in many of the BDSM articles. I have around--this is a rough estimate--2,000 photographs on Wikipedia. Around 15-20 do people find objectionable. That really is not so bad.

It is a little odd that Wikipedia bows down to the demands of photographers to have their works signed, but does its best to degrade the efforts of its writers. Likewise a bit odd that photographers like yourself do not want to contribute to the effort anonymously, but think that others from a different media should.

I, too, BTW, am an experience junkie of a sort, so I find Wikipedia's claims that it's uncensored, except when it is, to be hilarious. There's always something censorable by somebody. Everybody has their taboo lines. My quote for that comes from my beloved professor Farnsworth on Futurama: "Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oooooh, suddenly you've gone too far..." And likewise everybody's always in favor of showing naked body parts, but when you show an erect penis with a Scarlet Macaw perched on it, ooohh, suddenly you've gone too far. Even though (whatever it might be) it's surely more art than pornography. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

[bluevictim]

I have removed this comment, references to slavery by Shankbone is wrong, inappropriate, and untrue.

This post has been edited by bluevictim:

[Somey]

One last thing, FieryAngel, you spend time here complaining about how nobody on Wikipedia takes responsibility for their work, and how the anonymity makes it such an ethically flawed project, but what do you do when someone *does* take responsibility for their contributions? Self promotion and Conflict of Interest. Make up your mind what you are asking of people on WP: to take responsibility, or become part of the nameless, faceless Wikipedia Borg. Your arguments are all over the place.

You're thinking of someone else, aren't you? Or else just making assumptions. The fieryangel hasn't generally been one of those people demanding personal accountability, or that everyone should use his/her real name... When s/he first joined us, the main issue s/he was into involved people like User:Makemi and User:Mindspillage, and how they've had a history of uploading audio files of themselves singing, playing the oboe, or whatever, as public-domain recordings that then become exemplars of the craft, almost by default. IOW, they could tell people, "if you want to hear a sample of my singing voice, just look up the word 'singer' on Wikipedia!" Which could be quite a calling-card for a musician, given the search-engine ubiquity factor.

I also vaguely recall TFA being rather unhappy with User:Moreschi and User:Folantin over their rather biased and heavy-handed ownership of opera-related articles, but of course, opera isn't exactly one of those "hot-button" topics. Moreschi actually turned out to be not so bad in the end... (though he could always be really horrible in the front...)

Anyway, there's a big difference between accepting responsibility for one's opinions, vs. engaging in a campaign of self-promotion. Though I should also say that I personally don't see this as such a big deal. Wikipedia needs photographers desperately, almost as much as it needs technical and scientific illustrators. If I were going to become a WP contributor, that's probably what I would do... except for the genitalia shots, of course. It just seems like overkill, considering how much of that is available elsewhere on the internet.

[Kato]

***Contents removed at the request of Bluevictim.***

I heard the Macaw was furious about not getting his credit. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[David Shankbone]

Contents removed at the request of Bluevictim. No worries. We all make mistakes.

The Brooklyn Rail just published their interview with me about what I do on Wikipedia. It may explain more, or give more to criticize.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[bluevictim]

I would like the quotes of my post to be removed by Kato and David Shankbone. David, thank you for explaining. I consider the accusations of slavery to be inappropriate, wrong, and untrue. Out of respect, can David Shankbone and Kato please remove these?

[One]

For what it's worth, SandyGeorgia has made some of these same arguments, and I happen to admire that editor. However, I think it's a philosophic difference. Some just want to make content, and some want to be lauded for making content--the end result is the same, and David's content isn't terrible.

David Shankbone thinks that naming rights are his entitlement, and he thinks that he should talk about his family in interviews that he links from Wikipedia. Yeah, looks a little bit like COI--and as I recall the community has actually resisted his linking interviews from third-party BLPs, which led to the absurd do-nothing controversy about how Wikipedia supposedly shits on Wikinews.

Whatever. At least he discloses his COI and has a name. If everyone was like that, many of Wikipedia's problems would vanish.

Incidentally--don't I remember you being a Randian fieryangel? It seems to me that a Randian could only contribute to Wikipedia in order to satisfy their ego, like David does.

[the fieryangel]

Incidentally--don't I remember you being a Randian fieryangel? It seems to me that a Randian could only contribute to Wikipedia in order to satisfy their ego, like David does.

A Randian??? Bite your tongue. I'm definitely not a follower of that nonsense.

You're all arguing in terms black verses white. My position is quite a bit more nuanced.

I think that WP's COI policy is not at all workable for the obvious reason that the more one knows about any given subject, the more likely it is that COI issues would be involved. Any academic who contributes to his or her field of expertise is going to have COI issues, due to career issues, books for sale, recordings of music, stakes in having certain theories or positions enter into the accepted canon of academic thought. Unfortunately for WP, these are the very people who should be writing encyclopedia articles about subject, simply because only they have the perspective and years of experience in discussing the subjects.

COI is used as a means of keeping these people out of the project, because they go against the unexpressed objectives of WP itself, which is to break the control that academics have over these subjects and to validate the idea that "what everybody thinks" is somehow more valuable than the position of those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject.

However, in the cases of enlightened amateurs such as our friend Mr. Shankbone, Elonka, Makemi (she's becoming a librarian anyway, so I think her "professional singing days are pretty much behind her..) and many others, the obvious issues of COI are not ever invoked. Why the double standard?

The answer seems to be quite obvious: they are not accused of having COI issues because their contributions serve to undermine this project's ultimate objectives of forcing this notion of "free culture" created by unpaid volunteers on Society as a whole. Their own self-promotion becomes acceptable since it furthers the objectives of WMF as a whole.

However, what image does this give about culture, about journalism, about knowledge? What does this ultimately say?

Policies such as COI and NPOV should be used to control this kind of manipulation of this medium in order to create true, encyclopaedic content. The interviews, the personal photos, the amateur recordings made from questionable sources (Josquin des Prez on....the Bassoon??? nice trick, since he died in 1521....and the baroque bassoon dates from the 18th century, dulcian not withstanding...sheez...) do not advance the idea of "creating an encyclopedia".

So, what remains: once again the "MMRPG" aspects which seem to be the prime objective of what happens on WP. The buzz which in turn generates buzz of Wikia...and our friend Mr. Shankbone is spending 20 hours a week working on this thing....for what?

That's the question: for what? Why would anyone do this, especially since the content is being used to generate profit for lots of third-parties who are even unconnected with the WMF/Wikia contingent.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[Lar]

(from your sig)
President of the FieryAngel fan club.

How is that helpful, David?

(from your sig)
President of the David Shankbone Fanclub!

How is this helpful?

[David Shankbone]

COI is used as a means of keeping these people out of the project, because they go against the unexpressed objectives of WP itself, which is to break the control that academics have over these subjects and to validate the idea that "what everybody thinks" is somehow more valuable than the position of those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject.

However, in the cases of enlightened amateurs such as our friend Mr. Shankbone, Elonka, Makemi (she's becoming a librarian anyway, so I think her "professional singing days are pretty much behind her..) and many others, the obvious issues of COI are not ever invoked. Why the double standard?

The answer seems to be quite obvious: they are not accused of having COI issues because their contributions serve to undermine this project's ultimate objectives of forcing this notion of "free culture" created by unpaid volunteers on Society as a whole. Their own self-promotion becomes acceptable since it furthers the objectives of WMF as a whole.

However, what image does this give about culture, about journalism, about knowledge? What does this ultimately say?

I think you have this partially right. The idea behind Wikipedia is that "enlightened amateurs" can band together collectively and create something that one was the provenance of "those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject." Who is to say 'those who have done the work'? When you watch a talking head on television, do you *really* know what gives them the credibility to be questioned by the news hosts to proffer opinions?

If you have a British accountant who is a train enthusiast, really gets into the subject, reads the books, does the research, goes to the museums, and maybe even does some light engineering research to understand trains better... why is this person's information less valid than a person who is *paid* to teach about trains? That's the idea behind Wikipedia. This man has information to offer, regardless of his paid job. Indeed, this man would be more willing to offer it: perhaps to "show off"; perhaps simply to share his knowledge. In the end, it doesn't matter why he is doing it, the unpaid amateur expert is more likely to "give away" the information than the paid expert at a university.

Policies such as COI and NPOV should be used to control this kind of manipulation of this medium in order to create true, encyclopaedic content. The interviews, the personal photos, the amateur recordings made from questionable sources (Josquin des Prez on....the Bassoon??? nice trick, since he died in 1521....and the baroque bassoon dates from the 18th century, dulcian not withstanding...sheez...) do not advance the idea of "creating an encyclopedia".

I think it's bizarre you take some photos that I have uploaded for my User page and discuss it as if these photographs are found on Wikipedia articles. Do you know how difficult it is to get high-profile people to talk to you? It's more difficult than it looks, and if I make it look easy, then that's great. Because it's not. You may see the people who say "yes" but what you don't see are the people who say "no" or don't respond. People whose images are their livelihood are hesitant to give an untested person a chance.

Without my User page, I could not do what I do. People are busy, and they want to make quick decisions. Today I'm interviewing punk pioneer Richard Hell. I send him to my Wikipedia User page where he can quickly glance at who else I have talked to. He can quickly scan the page to see examples of my work. Maybe he will take a look at an interview or photo gallery. He can see photos of me with these people (proving I actually met them). My User page is the reason I am able to get doors to open. It tells people: "No, I'm not that stalker who has been sending you and your publicist bizarre letters and I'm not using Wikipedia to get to you; I'm for real. Here is my track record."

If you don't like that track record, it's a different question.

You criticize my Augusten Burroughs interview (he was told by a friend it was his best). It's difficult to interview a memoirist whose bits and pieces of their life they themselves have not already written about, mostly have discussed with other interviewers. I came up with ideas of questions only to hear Terry Gross ask them. I tried to do something different with the interview, which was more a back-and-forth conversation. That dinner lasted four hours. Only 2.5 hours did I record. Only one hour did I end up publishing. Some people have written me saying they liked the way it was done; others have found it distracting and annoying.

What can I say? The same thing I told the Brooklyn Rail: It's a learning experience to figure out how to interview. I'm *not* a professional - I'm someone who just wants to ask some questions, and questions that mean something to me.

You may say that everything I do is part of a bigger problem with journalism and the media, and FieryAngel, you may have a point: but you are swatting at flies. Your ire is directed at the wrong level: amateurs.

Your complaints are akin to yelling at a six month old for messing their diapers, when your eighteen year old teenager is doing the same thing.

So, what remains: once again the "MMRPG" aspects which seem to be the prime objective of what happens on WP. The buzz which in turn generates buzz of Wikia...and our friend Mr. Shankbone is spending 20 hours a week working on this thing....for what?

That's the question: for what? Why would anyone do this, especially since the content is being used to generate profit for lots of third-parties who are even unconnected with the WMF/Wikia contingent.

Because it is fun. Because it is satisfying. Because whether you like it or not, it *does* democratize information and the common person's ability to have a hand in it. I don't care if someone wants to use my photo in a collage they want to sell (a real example) or in a low budget movie about paraplegics (real) or my photo of Damon Dash on Bloomberg news. Or that novelist John Reed creates MySpace profiles for the characters in his new book using only my photographs (also real). Or if someone wants to make a calendar they try to sell to B&N. These things have made my otherwise droll and boring existence a bit more meaningful.

I think the MMRPG idea is an interesting way to look at Wikipedia, but it makes the work no less valid.

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist. And if the problem is that people give amateurs too much credibility, your ire is misdirected: it should be at the public. But you don't, because it's easier to blame "Wikipedia" than blame the people who blindly believe anything they read. It's easier to blame "lawyers" for the litigious nature of Americans, instead of Americans themselves who walk around saying things like, "I'm a lawsuit waiting to happen." Then you have the King of Tort Reform, Robert Bork, actually bring a slip and fall lawsuit against the Yale Club. Remember that? An expert, Ted Frank, thought that was something you didn't need to know about. An amateur, David Shankbone, thought it was an important nuance to not only the man, but the tort reform movement.

People never want to blame the audience, the society, they want to blame the visible things: broadcasters, lawyers, Wikipedia, et. al. A bunch of amateurs getting together to create a body of knowledge isn't the problem; it's the people who blindly believe everything they read.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[UseOnceAndDestroy]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

[the fieryangel]

(from your sig)
President of the FieryAngel fan club.

How is that helpful, David?

(from your sig)
President of the David Shankbone Fanclub!

How is this helpful?

Hey, I laughed. I would hope that dear Mr. Shankbone did too!

Don't you guys have any sense of humour?....Oh, yeah, I forgot....

Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.

7. A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.

[David Shankbone]

For what it's worth, SandyGeorgia has made some of these same arguments, and I happen to admire that editor. However, I think it's a philosophic difference. Some just want to make content, and some want to be lauded for making content--the end result is the same, and David's content isn't terrible.

No, SandyGeorgia took issue with one photo I tried to put on the Hugo Chavez article that she disagreed with. Since then, out of the rough estimate of 2,000 photos, SandyGeorgia thinks I add unnecessary images.

This is the photo I wanted to include on the Hugo Chavez article. I took this in 2006 during a Circus Amok performance. Circus Amok is the creative brainchild of the bearded lady, Jennifer Miller. It is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. It's a political circus that sings the praises of Socialism, and this was an homage to the crop of Socialist leaders that had recently been elected in South America (it was *not* making fun; it was a serious homage). Circus Amok has won major awards, and they receive a *lot* of support for the New York City creative community. This was not an insignificant event with puppets. My argument was that this showed how Chavez (and the other leaders) were affecting art, and how artists were depicting them. You may disagree with the argument, but it's not a sham - it's an argument I believe in.

SandyGeorgia and I disagree - that's all, but SandyGeorgia, completely contrary to WP:AGF, goes around talking about how I try to put on unnecessary photos. So she'll pop in arguments occasionally saying this, completely ignoring the body of my work.

(from your sig)
President of the FieryAngel fan club.

How is that helpful, David?

(from your sig)
President of the David Shankbone Fanclub!

How is this helpful?

I thought FieryAngel was funny - I laughed. I returned the joke. After all, a Harpy is also the giver of life, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

That's a statement that requires evidence, and I don't mean anecdotal, but real evidence. Do you have a study that shows Wikipedia is killing the effectiveness of amateurs on the Internet? That's really quite a claim.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Moulton]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

What arrested me in the above colloquy is not the meat of the competing theses, but the practices of crafting a theory of mind about an adversary, and spinning that haphazard theory into an instance of character assassination.

This is the kind of unprofessional journalistic practice that transforms simple disagreements into protracted personal animosities.

[David Shankbone]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

What arrested me in the above colloquy is not the meat of the competing theses, but the practices of crafting a theory of mind about an adversary, and spinning that haphazard theory into an instance of character assassination.

This is the kind of unprofessional journalistic practice that transforms simple disagreements into protracted personal animosities.

Moulton, that's not correct. I'm not participating in this thread as a journalist, but explaining my work and defending it. There is no such thing as "unprofessional journalistic practice" when I'm here talking about me; this isn't for a story. You are taking one thing I said, when I have been more the pilloried on the WR in many threads. Saying someone sounds like an elitist is very, very tame compared with some of the things that have been written and said about me both by FieryAngel and other Wikipedia Reviewers (from I am "pathetic" to I don't have an intelligence above a 10 or 11 year old). So, let's keep a little perspective.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[the fieryangel]

You may say that everything I do is part of a bigger problem with journalism and the media, and FieryAngel, you may have a point: but you are swatting at flies. Your ire is directed at the wrong level: amateurs.

Your complaints are akin to yelling at a six month old for messing their diapers, when your eighteen year old teenager is doing the same thing.

Yes, that's all very fine and well....but then why are you claiming "accreditation" on your user page, something which implies having been accepted as a "professional" which then accords the person "accredited" certain privileges? It seems to me that you're trying to have things both way, and at some point you can't. You can't interview people like Shimon Perez and then claim to be a "bumbling amateur". Have you considered what might have happened if you "screwed up" and asked the wrong question during your interview? Why do you think that it's so difficult to get a press card in most places in the World? Journalists have a responsibility not only to honestly and neutrally report the facts, but to respect the subjects that they are interviewing. It's called deontology and, wouldn't ya know it, there's a even a Wikipedia article on it! You might want to read that before you continue: think of it as intellectual toilet-training, to use your striking iimage.

So, what remains: once again the "MMRPG" aspects which seem to be the prime objective of what happens on WP. The buzz which in turn generates buzz of Wikia...and our friend Mr. Shankbone is spending 20 hours a week working on this thing....for what?

That's the question: for what? Why would anyone do this, especially since the content is being used to generate profit for lots of third-parties who are even unconnected with the WMF/Wikia contingent.

Because it is fun. Because it is satisfying. Because whether you like it or not, it *does* democratize information and the common person's ability to have a hand in it. I don't care if someone wants to use my photo in a collage they want to sell (a real example) or in a low budget movie about paraplegics (real) or my photo of Damon Dash on Bloomberg news. Or that novelist John Reed creates MySpace profiles for the characters in his new book using only my photographs (also real). Or if someone wants to make a calendar they try to sell to B&N. These things have made my otherwise droll and boring existence a bit more meaningful.

I think the MMRPG idea is an interesting way to look at Wikipedia, but it makes the work no less valid.

Unfortunately, you've got this backwards. Wikipedia and the Cabal has simply tried to dictate the validity of their "project" simply on the basis of its popularity in a certain demographic. I don't believe that they have come even close to proving the validity of their aims and have even, through their actions, proven that their stated aims are not reflective of their real agenda.

So, the validity of the "work" has not been proven even by a long shot, in my perspective.

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist. And if the problem is that people give amateurs too much credibility, your ire is misdirected: it should be at the public. But you don't, because it's easier to blame "Wikipedia" than blame the people who blindly believe anything they read.

People never want to blame the audience, the society, they want to blame the visible things: broadcasters, lawyers, Wikipedia, et. al. A bunch of amateurs getting together to create a body of knowledge isn't the problem; it's the people who blindly believe everything they read.

I do blame the audience, the society, the passive people who accept everything that comes out of their portable phones, their computer screens and their televisions. That does not make it morally right for people to pretend that a collection of "what white, middle-class, educated, male, first-world etc etc individuals think" is "the sum of all human knowledge. Anyone participating in this action is condoning this sham and also is responsible for what the distribution of this project will do to Society and Culture, especially to those famous "poor children in Africa" whose cultures are denied and degraded through this kind of pseudo-intellectual posturing.

That someone who self-identifies as part of a minority group would purposely buy into this whole exultation of cultural repression is another question entirely, but I have to wonder whether or not you've thought this through to its logical conclusion. From my point of view, you are participating in your own repression, much in the same way that "Log Cabin Republicans" validate those who are trying to repress them.

I spend quite a large percentage of my life in research libraries, piecing together portions of the past in my field of expertize (musicology) and 99% of the time, it's quite clear that what "everybody thinks" about whatever the subject may be is completely false when you finally get the facts out on the table. But then, given those facts, one has to make an assessment as what they might mean, even if that involves something as abstract as musical or mathematical symbols. One has to say "I believe that this is true..." and there goes NPOV. And then one has to defend one's position, and as a direct consequence, one generates one's own COI.

However, in order to get to this point, one has to spend months weeding through sources, analyzing other people's use of said sources and peeling back layer after layer of falsehood, deception and outright lies to get to...something which comes close to the truth.

What is WP doing? WP is glorifying all of those layers of junk that people learn and just accept--all of those layers that I have to spend months slowly, patiently, peeling away to try to get to what's real. We don't need any more of that and we certainly don't need a machine that generates this stuff.

WP is not telling people to look for the truth; it's saying "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!" And this creates another generation of people who cannot be bothered to question anything and who simply accept the stories of Newton and the Apple tree and Mozart telling fart jokes at parties.

It's junk. It's bad for Society and it's bad for culture. And it's what kids use for their homework.

And you're part of it. Shame on you!

Now, go interview Richard Hell. Do me a favor. Ask him to define the word "truth" for you.

He might just have something interesting to say about that.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[Lar]

Hey, I laughed. I would hope that dear Mr. Shankbone did too!

Don't you guys have any sense of humour?....Oh, yeah, I forgot....

Ten warning signs regarding people involved in/with a potentially unsafe group/leader.

7. A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.

Fair enough. It just seemed rather petty to me, and not particularly funny. (and not moving things forward) ... I think my sense of humor's pretty well intact, though perhaps not.

[the fieryangel]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

What arrested me in the above colloquy is not the meat of the competing theses, but the practices of crafting a theory of mind about an adversary, and spinning that haphazard theory into an instance of character assassination.

This is the kind of unprofessional journalistic practice that transforms simple disagreements into protracted personal animosities.

Moulton, that's not correct. I'm not participating in this thread as a journalist, but explaining my work and defending it. There is no such thing as "unprofessional journalistic practice" when I'm here talking about me; this isn't for a story. You are taking one thing I said, when I have been more the pilloried on the WR in many threads. Saying someone sounds like an elitist is very, very tame compared with some of the things that have been written and said about me both by FieryAngel and other Wikipedia Reviewers (from I am "pathetic" to I don't have an intelligence above a 10 or 11 year old). So, let's keep a little perspective.

Excuse me, Mr. Shankbone, but I did not call you "pathetic". I'll called your actions pathetic. Here is the direct quote:

Anybody who can read and reason can figure out what Mr. Shankbone is all about. He's trying to get himself a media career, piggybacking on Wikipedia. That's simply pathetic.

I don't find you "pathetic" personally. I do find your manipulation of the WP system to be so, however.

Fair enough. It just seemed rather petty to me, and not particularly funny. (and not moving things forward) ... I think my sense of humor's pretty well intact, though perhaps not.

All of this discussion is serious by definition? And moving things forward? Forward to where? What things are we moving? Why are we moving them? And why does this necessarily have to be settled?

Why does there always have to be one, preferably nice, solution to every problem?

Okay, if you want to play like that, I can think of one, perfectly neat and simple way to solve all of this.

Pull the plug on Wikipedia's servers.

There ya go, problem solved!

....somehow it doesn't quite replace the current discussion, does it?

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[bluevictim]

And show me where Fieryangel compares Shankbone's intelligence to that of an 11-year-old?

David, is "Shankbone" your real name?

[Moulton]

David, the practice of forming haphazard theories of mind regarding one's adversary, and translating such ungrounded beliefs into acts of character assassination pervade our culture, and establish a regrettable cultural norm that infects more than just informal banter outside of one's professional activities.

I point it out here, not because you stand out as an egregious instance of the practice (your 'tame' example is almost surely below radar for almost everyone here). Nor do I deny that the practice is widespread around the table.

My point is that these practices do become so pervasive at all levels of intensity and gravity that they show up where they patently have no place, such as in crafting BLPs, journalistic stories, mainspace articles, RfCs, ArbCom cases, serious blogs, and op-ed pieces in professionally edited media.

It becomes such an embedded part of the culture that it becomes corrosive not just of individual casual relationships, but of the reputation and respectability of otherwise serious media enterprises.

[guy]

(from your sig)
President of the FieryAngel fan club.

How is that helpful, David?

Did Lar notice that the FieryAngel in David's signature links to Harpy? That is even less helpful. At least FieryAngel only links to David Shankbone in her signature.

The idea behind Wikipedia is that "enlightened amateurs" can band together collectively and create something that one was the provenance of "those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject." Who is to say 'those who have done the work'? When you watch a talking head on television, do you *really* know what gives them the credibility to be questioned by the news hosts to proffer opinions?

That is a really brilliant summary of what is wrong with Wikipedia. Can a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, produce as good an article on a scientific topic as someone who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the topic? If someone is acknowledged by his peers as an expert, does it matter if a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, do not *really* know what gives them the credibility?

[Kato]

The idea behind Wikipedia is that "enlightened amateurs" can band together collectively and create something that one was the provenance of "those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject." Who is to say 'those who have done the work'? When you watch a talking head on television, do you *really* know what gives them the credibility to be questioned by the news hosts to proffer opinions?

That is a really brilliant summary of what is wrong with Wikipedia. Can a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, produce as good an article on a scientific topic as someone who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the topic? If someone is acknowledged by his peers as an expert, does it matter if a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, do not *really* know what gives them the credibility?

Yes. Shankbone proves himself an articulate Wikipedia critic alongside Andrew Keen and others and....

Oh crap. He was saying these were a good thing. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/huh.gif)

David, begin your reading with Keen's

The Cult of the Amateur
How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy

[Milton Roe]

That is a really brilliant summary of what is wrong with Wikipedia. Can a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, produce as good an article on a scientific topic as someone who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the topic? If someone is acknowledged by his peers as an expert, does it matter if a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, do not *really* know what gives them the credibility?

Yes, and I've heard the opposite argued on Wikipedia. Strangely, though, they still have a tag for use on certain articles which reads: "This article is in need of review by an expert in the subject." One wonders why they have it.

One guy told me that anybody with a 9th grade education should be able to effectively edit any article. I'm sorry I didn't say the obvious, which is why 9th? Why not 6th?

But I shut him up by pointing him toward the wiki on "Lie group"s. What about their connection to modern physics? Gosh, could U(1), SO(2) and SO(3) all really be embedded in that giant "simple" E8 in a way that makes them consistent with experimental reality? Like the surfer-dude thinks? And what part of the rest is the QM version of GR?

I never heard back, so I guess he's still over there at the Wiki working on it.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe:

[Yehudi]

But I shut him up by pointing him toward the wiki on "Lie group"s. What about their connection to modern physics? Gosh, could U(1), SO(2) and SO(3) all really be embedded in that giant "simple" E8 in a way that makes them consistent with experimental reality? Like the surfer-dude thinks? And what part of the rest is the QM version of GR?

Oh, any bright 9th grader (or year 10 pupil as we say in England, our children being a year more advanced than American children of the same age) could skim an article in some mathematical education journal and have a pot-shot at it. It's no harder than reading one tendentious article that alleges that Georg Cantor or Otto Lilienthal weren't Jewish and overruling half a dozen reliable sources.

This post has been edited by Yehudi:

[Milton Roe]

Oh, any bright 9th grader (or year 10 pupil as we say in England, our children being a year more advanced than American children of the same age) could skim an article in some mathematical education journal and have a pot-shot at it. It's no harder than reading one tendentious article that alleges that Georg Cantor or Otto Lilienthal weren't Jewish and overruling half a dozen reliable sources.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif) A guy named Cantor was JEWISH? There's a shock. Maybe even for your year 10'ers.
-- Harry Potter

[guy]

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif) A guy named Cantor was JEWISH? There's a shock. Maybe even for your year 10'ers.
-- Harry Potter

Oh, that was the stupidest thing I've ever seen in the Jewish lists arguments, which is saying something. I mean, he even used the Hebrew letter ?É as the symbol for infinity.

[dtobias]

One guy told me that anybody with a 9th grade education should be able to effectively edit any article. I'm sorry I didn't say the obvious, which is why 9th? Why not 6th?

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

[Milton Roe]

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif) A guy named Cantor was JEWISH? There's a shock. Maybe even for your year 10'ers.
-- Harry Potter

Oh, that was the stupidest thing I've ever seen in the Jewish lists arguments, which is saying something. I mean, he even used the Hebrew letter א as the symbol for infinity.

Have to have different classes of stupidty: א _0 , א _1

[Random832]

Have to have different classes of stupidty: ℵ _0 , ℵ _1

Fix'd, you can't use the letter for that due to directionality, there's a separate unicode char for the math symbol.

[One]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist. And if the problem is that people give amateurs too much credibility, your ire is misdirected: it should be at the public. But you don't, because it's easier to blame "Wikipedia" than blame the people who blindly believe anything they read. It's easier to blame "lawyers" for the litigious nature of Americans, instead of Americans themselves who walk around saying things like, "I'm a lawsuit waiting to happen." Then you have the King of Tort Reform, Robert Bork, actually bring a slip and fall lawsuit against the Yale Club. Remember that? An expert, Ted Frank, thought that was something you didn't need to know about. An amateur, David Shankbone, thought it was an important nuance to not only the man, but the tort reform movement.

"King of Tort Reform"?

bluevictim, if you don't have the ability to find David Shankbone's name (which is contained in many threads on this very site), then I can't help you.

[David Shankbone]

Now, go interview Richard Hell. Do me a favor. Ask him to define the word "truth" for you.

He might just have something interesting to say about that.

Here you go, FieryAngel: this is Richard Hell's response to "What is truth?" I don't think it was the answer you were looking for, this idea that there is a black and white idea of truth. We revisit the topic a few times during the interview (especially as it relates to writing memoirs and reality-based fiction), but this is the answer to your question, more or less, and what he thinks of Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[the fieryangel]

Here you go, FieryAngel: this is Richard Hell's response to "What is truth?" I don't think it was the answer you were looking for, this idea that there is a black and white idea of truth. We revisit the topic a few times during the interview (especially as it relates to writing memoirs and reality-based fiction), but this is the answer to your question, more or less, and what he thinks of Wikipedia.

How disappointing. Punk icon, Richard Hell, is a lazy bum. He doesn't really question the truth. He didn't even understand the question. He hasn't even asked himself these questions. How can he express anything without bothering to ask himself this essential question? What does it mean to be an American Punk Rock icon? Why does he bring Proust, of all people, into the discussion? Proust is the LAST person who would have understood, much less embraced, the punk rock aesthetic!

Hell's understanding of Proust is beside the point: Proust is about a specific cultural system which has absolutely nothing to do with Andy Warhol or aging (Proust died in his 40s, so he didn't have time to think about that....). It has to do with a specific time in French society, which most Americans simply do not understand. There's nothing wrong with that, but Proust was defining truth from the point of view of his society. Hell tries to define truth from the point of view of Proust...and so therefore "there is no truth". As Lévi-Strauss says, truth is only valid in a specific cultural system. Hell does not even see that he's part of a cultural system. He's more a victim than a protagonist. Too bad for him.

Too bad...but how predictable.

And how predictable that you are convinced that I am a "she"....not that I'm saying that I am or not...but look how connected you are to gender....what difference does it make??? What if I were a "he"? What would that change?

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[Milton Roe]

As Lévi-Strauss says, truth is only valid in a specific cultural system.

If I can pipe in here, I hope Lévi-Strauss wasn't a complete cultural relativist when it came to all branches of knowledge. After all, the airplane stays up and you stay up with it, no matter what culture you come from. Unless you do something to screw with aerodynamics, and then it comes down and you with it, and that happens also, no matter what culture you come from. It's the same way with a lot of technological truths, which in turn are based on natural science knowledge. And how can we know such knowledge is genuine? Because otherwise, the shear power of technology, which is independent of culture, would be something of a miracle!

Of course, if we're talking about "truths" (truthes?) that are outside the realm where technology holds sway, then all bets are off.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe:

[David Shankbone]

I, too, BTW, am an experience junkie of a sort, so I find Wikipedia's claims that it's uncensored, except when it is, to be hilarious. There's always something censorable by somebody. Everybody has their taboo lines. My quote for that comes from my beloved professor Farnsworth on Futurama: "Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oooooh, suddenly you've gone too far..." And likewise everybody's always in favor of showing naked body parts, but when you show an erect penis with a Scarlet Macaw perched on it, ooohh, suddenly you've gone too far. Even though (whatever it might be) it's surely more art than pornography. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

Did you read my Billy West interview? It's kind of the interview by which I judge other interviews. The connection was very satisfying. I really respect him.

And this was my interview with The Onion: "Almost every piece of hate mail starts with the line, 'Usually I love The Onion, but this time you’ve gone too far…' We responded to that with, 'Normally I love your pornographic website, but this time you’ve gone too far…' Someone will always be offended by something." - Chet Clem.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[David Shankbone]

Policies such as COI and NPOV should be used to control this kind of manipulation of this medium in order to create true, encyclopaedic content. The interviews, the personal photos, the amateur recordings made from questionable sources (Josquin des Prez on....the Bassoon??? nice trick, since he died in 1521....and the baroque bassoon dates from the 18th century, dulcian not withstanding...sheez...) do not advance the idea of "creating an encyclopedia".

This is just ridiculous, FieryAngel. This is all your own point of view of what this project should be. You sound more like a petulant child that some strict vision of what Wikipedia should and should not be has not been followed. The creative ways that editors on the site effort to create a living, breathing modern encyclopedia at times is one of the best things about it. There is a creative, do-it-yourself experience, that inspires people to to go better. If people take a better photograph than I do, and release a high-enough quality version, then I am fine with them replacing my photograph. It happened on Catwalk; it happened on Hematoma. I don't argue in those cases.

But you want to say what is right and what is wrong. You sound like an utter control freak, and you're right--control freaks don't do well on Wikipedia. The world, to you, is so black and white. Wikipedia has its flaws, but people will solve anything that jeopardizes the prized position the project has. They always do. The site doesn't have validity because people consistently find it wholly unreliable.

Taking issue, though, with the creativity that goes into obtaining video, audio, photographic and graphic illustration is the most amazing part of Wikipedia, and I am consistently in awe of the quality. Your arguments are just pure derision, and it diminishes you to be so shrill. If you think you can do better; if you think you can compete then you should proffer your own work instead of grousing.

But unfortunately, the job of the critic is much easier than the job of the creative person who puts themselves out there. Who actually goes out there and *does* things. It's easy to criticize my interviews and my photographs when you don't attempt to do them yourself. Roger Ebert is a good movie critics because, you know, he was actually out there *involved* in the movie industry, writing screen plays and such. But when one criticizes just for the sake of criticizing, from their anonymous you-don't-even-know-my-gender perch, it's just sounds shrill. You should really give what you write to other people you trust, and just ask, "Do I sound shrill?" If they are a friend, they'll tell you yes, and that's unattractive. It diminishes you.

Show us all you can do better. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean the world must agree. People like you consistently end up pissed off that the world just won't see it your way. So it's better to criticize every little thing that other people attempt, and as you said, "pack it in" with such pathetic attempts, and know your place. And if you don't agree with how I see things, from my arrogant anonymous computer, you're a "lazy bum" person who most likely is far more accomplished than I will ever hope to be.

One has to wonder about the worldview of someone who writes some of the things you write. I know one thing: we certainly don't share it. When I was reading Richard Hell's interview with Adam Travis for Bookslut, I thought you could be Adam Travis he was talking to.

Best,
David

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Kato]

The worldview of FieryAngel is quite well explained in this excellent blog post by the Angel.

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20071212/w...d-raising-ploy/

and in this posting

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080114/v...of-the-project/

...it is quite similar to that of Andrew Keen and several other Wikipedia critics.

It differs from yours, David. That's because it is rooted in reality.

[Proabivouac]

Fiery Angel makes many valid points about Wikipedia and "free culture."

However, I find the evident personal animosity towards and contempt for Mr. Shankbone surprising, and uncalled for.

Are we to surmise from your writings that you see him as some sort of picket-line crossing scab?

This post has been edited by Proabivouac:

[One]

A Randian??? Bite your tongue. I'm definitely not a follower of that nonsense.

Oh, and I'm very sorry. I found the post I was thinking about, and you were instead talking about how Jimbo Wales' position doesn't make sense for a Randian. I mostly agree with you on "Free Culture," and I often comment when you mention people like Lawrence Lessig, because few people are as wrong about good copyright policy as he is.

I apologize a thousand times for the slight.

This post has been edited by One:

[David Shankbone]

The worldview of FieryAngel is quite well explained in this excellent blog post by the Angel.

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20071212/w...d-raising-ploy/

and in this posting

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080114/v...of-the-project/

...it is quite similar to that of Andrew Keen and several other Wikipedia critics.

It differs from yours, David. That's because it is rooted in reality.

That's the thing, Kato, I would *love* for Wikipedia or Wikia to make money off my work. Please, do. Or if an immigrant wants to sell a poster of my Chrysler Building in his shop in Times Square with some Walt Whitman quote, great. If I could be so lucky to create something other people want to use, and get something back from. Do you realize that is every artist's dream? It's not money. It's knowing they affected people...that they connected, some way.

And if Kathleen Battle wants to start recording our Opera numbers, then she is welcome to post and I'm sure whoever is there now will gladly take a back seat. I'm sure Kat will stand down if Yitzhak Perlman, or Yo Yo Ma want to begin recording our instruments, or whoever is the oboe person is. But until then, those guys are awesome. And if you got something better, let the community decide that.

I find a lot of the arguments by some people (not all) on here are elitist, and those arguments never win. That's over. That's YouTube. That's SecondLife. That's the Internet. Elitists are dinos. Some of you have very valid criticisms on ways to improve, but if it boils down to amateurs can't do anything, and we all have to listen to the BS FieryAngel goes spouting about her esoterica. And then she has the nerve to call someone like Richard Hell a "lazy bum" when he more than explains his nuance with intelligence. She just doesn't agree with him, and if you don't agree with FieryAngel you get tarred. If I may quote Hell's response to Travis (it seems appropriate):

"Fuck you. If you want to say something like that, say it to my face. You don't hear me making claims about how "good" my poetry is, but who the fuck do you think you are? All this writing of yours is presented as if you're a person called upon to make judgments from some position of earned respect. That's not who you are. You're a callow kid with a job reading slush for a pretentious irrelevant "poetry" magazine [Poetry, not Bookslut]. You sought an interview from me, I was kind enough to grant it, and now you're being an asshole by exercising some grotesquely deluded misapprehension that your role in this includes some call to fucking critically assess my skills......Again, who gives a shit what your opinions are concerning "crappy" verse? What have you said or done for us to have any reaction but baffled impatience at your presumptuous, casual, throwing-around of such epithets? This writing of yours is what's crappy: it betrays nothing but unearned self-importance and a complete lack of understanding regarding the nature and purpose of the journalism it's purporting to practice." Richard Hell to Adam Travis.

I didn't say it.

David

[Somey]

Y'see, the reason strawman arguments are popular on Wikipedia is because they have a rule, called "WP:AGF," that essentially precludes people from accusing those who make strawman arguments of doing it for the reasons they usually do it, which are to make the other person look silly to anyone not paying attention, and force the other person to waste time making responses that should be completely unnecessary, like pointing out that nobody here has ever suggested that people like Kathleen Battles or Yitzhak Perlman are the sorts of musician that readers of Wikipedia should expect to find when looking for audio files of musical compositions. Obviously the issue isn't really the fact that the compositions are performed by amateurs; the issue is that they're performed by administrators. The former, in itself, would probably create no chilling effect whatsoever on other people wishing to upload audio files of themselves to replace, or even just augment, the currently available ones. The latter, however, probably does.

So right there I wasted almost 5 minutes of my time pointing out something that should be completely obvious to anyone. It doesn't sound like much, but it adds up.

I find a lot of the arguments by some people (not all) on here are elitist, and those arguments never win. That's over. That's YouTube. That's SecondLife. That's the Internet. Elitists are dinos.

You're not making any sense. If you ask me, the arguments that "never win" are actually the ones that start with a ludicrous premise, such as the idea that issues regarding Wikipedia can be boiled down to a starkly-contrasting conflict between "elitists" and "amateurs" that doesn't actually exist in the first place, except maybe in Larry Sanger's mind. Reality tends to be more complex than that...

That's still not to say that the basic question here can't be stated fairly simply. If traditional, commercial, peer-reviewed, editorially-accountable encyclopedias are driven out of business by one free-content, expert-averse, unaccountable encyclopedia-like website (bearing in mind that this has already happened), does the world benefit, or does it suffer?

Some of you have very valid criticisms on ways to improve, but if it boils down to amateurs can't do anything...

"Anything"? If you mean "create a reliable and well-written encyclopedia," well, I could see that maybe. Then again, I'd say amateurs do a much better job on the Pokemon stuff than professionals could do, no matter how hard they tried.

But more to the point (and I assume you didn't mean to include the word "if," since you left out the "then" part), it doesn't "boil down" to that at all. I suspect you're saying that because you don't generally get into ideological or administrative disputes, so I suppose it's forgivable... But just to be clear, if WP's critics were solely or even primarily concerned with the fact that WP is written and administered by amateurs, this website would be about a tenth the size it is now, and it would probably be a lot less reviled by WP'ers too, I'd say.

Come to think of it... "criticisms on ways to improve"? Hopefully you meant "criticisms that suggest ways to improve."

And then she has the nerve to call someone like Richard Hell a "lazy bum" when he more than explains his nuance with intelligence.

You're saying that because he's capable of explaining his nuance with intelligence, he can't be a lazy bum? I wasn't aware those were mutually exclusive. Besides, even though I can hardly blame him, he really didn't answer the question. "The truth is that there is no truth" is a cop-out, and besides, he probably stole that from a Boomtown Rats song called "Nice 'n' Neat."

Anyhoo, I liked "Blank Generation," but "Marquee Moon" was a much better album all 'round, really - suggesting that perhaps those guys were better off without him.

[the fieryangel]

I find a lot of the arguments by some people (not all) on here are elitist, and those arguments never win. That's over. That's YouTube. That's SecondLife. That's the Internet. Elitists are dinos. Some of you have very valid criticisms on ways to improve, but if it boils down to amateurs can't do anything, and we all have to listen to the BS FieryAngel goes spouting about her esoterica. And then she has the nerve to call someone like Richard Hell a "lazy bum" when he more than explains his nuance with intelligence. She just doesn't agree with him, and if you don't agree with FieryAngel you get tarred.

You're still not getting it. I'm not concerned with "elitists" (whatever that means, as I personally don't agree with organizing anything in terms of hierarchical structures, which I personally find to be basically meaningless outside of expressing one's own opinion) and "amateurs". An "amateur" can do just as good a job as an "elitist", as long as they start with one simple process: asking the question "why?".

My problem with you (which is, in essence my problem with Hell's response and by extension, my problem with Wikipedia) is that you don't ask yourself "why?" before you do anything. You just keep cranking out the content and then when somebody points out that "that photo isn't a cornsnake and that's not a mouse foetus" or "the photo of the outside of a building housing a right-wing organization doesn't tell us anything about what happens inside" or "your punk rock poet didn't answer the question", instead of actually THINKING about what is being said to you, you try to undermine the credibility of the messenger. You don't consider the consequences of what you're doing at all, you simply keep producing like a cog in the mindless machine that WP has become....or perhaps as WP was indeed initially conceived.

Your interviews are a case in point: you discuss...yourself, Wikipedia, the media, sexuality, fashion etc etc...and pretty much everything except for....the subject of the interview itself. You're bouncing the Wikipedia experience off of all of these famous names to get to the point where you can point to them and say "SEE, they all think that WP's important too!".

But what does this teach us about the World and Existence, especially those of us who have said "no, thank you" to the delicious koolaid?

Images, concepts, points of view, expressions, are all parts of ways we define our society. Artistic, editorial and scientific acts which have value are those that provoke reactions in others and allow us all to progress. Having this kind of exchange take place requires first an initial conception of what the act means. It all starts with asking the question "why?" and then finding the answer.

This content-generating machine simply produces meaningless noise which, as it is "free", is specifically engineered to be "valueless". I'm being to think that this is the whole point: it's the specific "dumbing down" of Society through an exultation of the "white noise" that makes up the daily existence of the lives of many people. And since analysis of the information (NPOV/RS) and creativity (NOR) are specifically forbidden, the phenomenon is basically of a non-thinking army of worker ants mindlessly spouting back images and expressions of Society's definition of what is acceptable and accepted.

Now, the question : Why has this been thought to be necessary? It's not as if there weren't perfectly valid encyclopedias out there. Even the poor can go to public libraries (yes, they even have those in Africa, you know??) and look things up for free. And what does the encyclopedia business have to do with all of the "spin-off" projects, especially Wiki-news?

Clearly, this is not the agenda.

I don't have the answer to this question yet, but I keep looking. Lots of us do that here. Sometimes we get things wrong, but we've been right on more than one occasion. However, one idea keeps coming back to me with more and more frequency and that is:

People who don't think are much easier to manipulate.

Somehow, I think that the key to understanding this project is hidden inside this idea.

Fiery Angel makes many valid points about Wikipedia and "free culture."

However, I find the evident personal animosity towards and contempt for Mr. Shankbone surprising, and uncalled for.

Are we to surmise from your writings that you see him as some sort of picket-line crossing scab?

I'm very sorry that you find my direct comments about Mr. Shankbone to be aggressive, Proabivouac, but I can assure you that I have no animosity nor contempt for him personally.

Might I remind you that we are not on Wikipedia here and that I personally feel that the focus on issues of "civility" associated with that project are a means of keeping people from expression their opposition to certain aspects of that project? I do agree that standards of decorum should be upheld here, but I don't think that I've crossed the line in any way in this discussion, a discussion which was started in another thread by the subject himself and then transfered here at his request.

Now, it is difficult to discuss Mr. Shankbone's activities on Wikipedia without discussing him personally because....in my opinion, that's exactly the focus of all of his activities on Wikipedia. It's specifically this thoughtless exploitation of the system that I object to and these objections cannot be expressed without a discussion of the subject.

So, I will apologize for causing you distress, but I fail to see how we can discuss this (or any other) editor without...discussing the editor.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[the fieryangel]

A Randian??? Bite your tongue. I'm definitely not a follower of that nonsense.

Oh, and I'm very sorry. I found the post I was thinking about, and you were instead talking about how Jimbo Wales' position doesn't make sense for a Randian. I mostly agree with you on "Free Culture," and I often comment when you mention people like Lawrence Lessig, because few people are as wrong about good copyright policy as he is.

I apologize a thousand times for the slight.

Apology accepted. However, I wasn't really upset. So, forget about it.

(PSSTTT!! David, over here! I enjoyed the Daria reference, but did you know that there is an article about The Fiery Angel on Wikipedia???? Honestly, there is!

The Fiery Angel; or, a True Story in which is related of the Devil, not once but often appearing in the Image of a Spirit of Light to a Maiden and seducing her to Various and Many Sinful Deeds, of Ungodly Practices of Magic, Alchymy, Astrology, the Cabalistical Sciences and Necromancy, of the Trial of the Said Maiden under the Presidency of His Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, as well as of Encounters and Discourses with the Knight and thrice Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, and with Doctor Faustus, composed by an Eyewitness.

How about that???)

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[Moulton]

One of the hazards of being of a creative mindset is that one is potentially tempted to craft a highly imaginative theory of what's in the other person's mind.

One of the hazards of being cocksure to the point of hubris is that one is potentially tempted to publish such haphazard theories of mind as if they were the irrefutable ground truth.

[the fieryangel]

As Lévi-Strauss says, truth is only valid in a specific cultural system.

If I can pipe in here, I hope Lévi-Strauss wasn't a complete cultural relativist when it came to all branches of knowledge. After all, the airplane stays up and you stay up with it, no matter what culture you come from. Unless you do something to screw with aerodynamics, and then it comes down and you with it, and that happens also, no matter what culture you come from. It's the same way with a lot of technological truths, which in turn are based on natural science knowledge. And how can we know such knowledge is genuine? Because otherwise, the shear power of technology, which is independent of culture, would be something of a miracle!

Of course, if we're talking about "truths" (truthes?) that are outside the realm where technology holds sway, then all bets are off.

I think that Lévi-Strauss' point was that in a society in which airplanes did not exist, that the statement "the airplane stays up and you stay up with it" has no meaning within that society. You can demonstrate what your society understands about this, but that does not mean that the other society will understand the same concept that you're describing. They may perceive the same event as something else. However, it is meaningless to call either society "advanced" or "primative" based on this interaction because the two systems are not using the same basis to make judgements about the World.

I am reminded of a trip that I made to Japan a few years ago. My hosts (from a respected University) took me to a Shinto shrine and asked me to have my fortune told by one of the monks there. I did and suddenly there was quite a lot of discussion in Japanese, with no translation offered and afterwards, it was announced that I would be traveling back home one week later than planned and I was given no choice in the matter. Since my hosts' institution was paying for my trip and expenses, it was all taken care of ....and to this day, I have no idea what happened. I am convinced that even if somebody had explained it to me, that I wouldn't have understood the explanation. And this all happened in Tokyo in a community of University educated people.

The phenomenon of the Internet trying to get us all in the same mindset is working towards making these types of situations less likely, but do we really want everybody to think exactly the same things, everywhere? I certainly don't.....

[Emperor]

Shankbone,

You're wasting your time here if you're expecting any of the long-term members to break ranks. The decision about you has already been made in secret. Now the pack is just trying to keep you from mauling any of its weaker cubs.

Emperor

[UseOnceAndDestroy]

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

That's a statement that requires evidence, and I don't mean anecdotal, but real evidence. Do you have a study that shows Wikipedia is killing the effectiveness of amateurs on the Internet? That's really quite a claim.

O, the irony. The great defender of the "amateur" voice against the elite - unless the voice is dissenting, in which case it "requires" a "study".

You're either misdirecting, or you haven't been paying attention. I recommend you re-read everything that's been posted on this site for the last couple of years, for starters. (Feel free, honestly, re-reading old posts isn't "stalking").

[Moulton]

The analysis that I've been reading suggests the opposite -- that the cult of amateur is effectively displacing authentic and credentialed subject matter experts.

This is the problem that GlassBeadGame, Raymond Arritt, and Bob Stevens (User:Filll) have been worrying about under the label "Expert Withdrawal."

[SenseMaker]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I have to agree here. David Shankbone seems to be oblivious to a lot of things, not that self-aware and a needy, but other than that he seems to be relatively harmless (unless oblivious needy people get on your nerves.)

This post has been edited by SenseMaker:

[Somey]

Shankbone,

You're wasting your time here if you're expecting any of the long-term members to break ranks. The decision about you has already been made in secret. Now the pack is just trying to keep you from mauling any of its weaker cubs.

But at the root of it, isn't this really just another incident where someone from Wikipedia shows up here and says, "This place would be a lot better if everyone didn't dislike Wikipedia so much"? Why would that require a "secret decision," and why would we "break ranks" over something like that?

I actually think Mr. Shankbone makes quite a few good points; it's just that they're in danger of drowning in strawmen and self-promotionalism. I don't think he's just here to waste our time, and of course I don't blame him for the self-promotionalism at all, but the strawmen... I mean, look at Dan Tobias, for example. He did a lot of that stuff at first, but over time he came to realize we weren't having any, he altered his tactics, and now he's remarkably (if grudgingly) well-respected among us, at least for a pro-Wikipedia member.

The same could easily be true of Shankbone, if he decides to stick around. He just has to give us a little more credit for, I dunno, maybe not intelligence, but at least an ability to see past the distraction ploys and layers of abstraction that WP proponents like to use, if only because those things work so well over there.

[Kato]

David Shankbone raised some interesting points, and was rare in that he exuded some of the positive reasons why people get involved in Wikipedia. Though I disagree with a lot of his ideas about that site, I always like hearing someone talking about the act of creation no matter what the consequences.

I have offered to conduct a brief PM discussion / debate with David which we could edit for the blog with mutual agreement. Portraying two different points of view at their clearest, without the gamesmanship and goading that can occur on the forum.

[Moulton]

Good idea, Kato. I'm all in favor of civil and enlightening dialogue.

[dogbiscuit]

Good idea, Kato. I'm all in favor of civil and enlightening dialogue.

I think the most threatening thing about the podcast was that everyone came across as reasonable. This is the cabal's worst nightmare, especially when people read rants like Raul's.

I'm glad Durova is a reformed character, because at this point she would have been pointing out that being reasonable was all just a feint.

Sometimes it is useful to remember that we will not convert the die-hards, but if we want to change hearts and minds in the general public and "disinterested" editors, espcially via the press, then appearing to be normal people is a good way to go (being normal would be better, but we have to work with what we have got!).

[Somey]

Sometimes it is useful to remember that we will not convert the die-hards, but if we want to change hearts and minds in the general public and "disinterested" editors, espcially via the press, then appearing to be normal people is a good way to go (being normal would be better, but we have to work with what we have got!).

I suppose that's true... I mean, I considered trying to explain my theory of how gateways to parallel universes can be opened by sprinkling table salt on fermented onions while watching re-runs of T.J. Hooker, but it seemed just a smidgen off-topic at the time.

[Moulton]

You have to use Sea Salt.

[Milton Roe]

The analysis that I've been reading suggests the opposite -- that the cult of amateur is effectively displacing authentic and credentialed subject matter experts.

This is the problem that GlassBeadGame, Raymond Arritt, and Bob Stevens (User:Filll) have been worrying about under the label "Expert Withdrawal."

One thinks of the famous George Lyman Kittredge of the Harvard English Dept., who for years was the acknowledged world expert on Shakespeare and several other topics, but never did get his Ph.D. When asked why not, he famously replied, "But who would examine me?" Here's a guy who had some credentials but not others.

I'd like to pursue the topic more broadly, if you will. What do we do in Wikipedia or Citizendium with the narrowminded mad amateur, so beloved in the UK, who really is the world expert on some topic, and everybody (even in academia) knows it, and they go to him when they really need the answer. His articles for Train History Mag or Gun Magazine or Night Moth Collectors Magazine or whatever are read by the profs who have subscriptions, and use his or her material when they need to. Sometimes with attribution and sometimes not (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sad.gif) . Or think of the American tinkerer-- the Wright brothers or John Browning or Burt Rutan and a hundred others in the tradition. Mt. Everest was climbed by amateurs (Hillary was a beekeeper in Summers to pay for climbing in Winters)-- in fact most mountains have historically been first climbed by amateur people with "day-jobs," because rarely did could you find anybody to pay you to climb moutains-- the modern culture of "product endorsement" and "tourist guiding" is a relatively new thing. And the era of government-sponsored "big-science" research really only dates from WW II-- before that it was a few academic labs and otherwise mostly by private patronage, and those people who did it, were either wealthy or had "day jobs," too. IOW, they were technically amateurs. Arthur C. Clarke wasn't a professor of communications when he suggested the idea of a comsat in geosync orbit. The first guy to deliberately build a radiotelescope, Grote Reber, did so in his back yard (it was the Depression in 1937), and so on and so on. These guys all published, of course, which is how we know about them and their priority, but often not (at first) in any pubs with any decent reputations. Wireless World, a hobby mag, for Clarke? Say what?

So what do we do with these guys? In the real world, working groups of men have a very serious discussion tussle with newbies to find out where they go on the knowledge heirarchy, before they decide what to do with them on teams. This has very little to do with credentials and everything to do with what you've done and when. I think it goes all the way back to hunting bands of neolithic guys trying to decide who was to be trusted in the band to do their job at "the other end of the mammoth." This kind of thing is important, since your life depends on it. If you've been part of any kind of techno or amateur culture in the doing of ANYTHING you've seen this assessment going on. It stands in for a lot of the formal rank markers that you see in academia or the military, but it still works.

In Wikipedia, one of the problems is that this kind of thing is lacking or it is screwed up. Sure, there are the rank-badges of a sort for the various grades of Wikiadminship, but those are only for the medium itself, and have nothing to do with real world knowledge on the subject matter. THAT heirarchy really has to be hashed out on the TALK page, and the admins, who are really only supposed to be moderators, quite often get in the way of it. Imagine, for example, a group of international climbers who meet at the bottom of a very difficult rock and ice route, and they are trying to decide which one of them will lead on the rope for the attempt, and the cops show up and demand that they not talk about their real names and previous climbs and reputations, and that if they do mention them, they must be limited to only what they've published in Climbing Magazine or something. No talking "shop." Can you imagine the chaos? The team never would dare set foot on the thing. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif) Hope you see my point.

Have to have different classes of stupidty: ℵ _0 , ℵ _1

Fix'd, you can't use the letter for that due to directionality, there's a separate unicode char for the math symbol.

Yeah, I figured that out (blasted Hebrew reads the wrong way), but was out of time. The Aleph above still looks wrong, but everybody will get the idea.

[Moulton]

Part of the problem is that terms like 'professional' and 'amateur' have two distinct sets of meaning.

On the one hand, we use the terms to indicate whether a person is making a living at it or not. A professional gets paid; an amateur does it for the love of the activity, not for remuneration to earn a living.

But we sometimes use 'amateur' in the sense of 'rank amateur' meaning not particularly competent at the activity.

The problem with wikipedia is one of 'rank amateurism' rather than competent non-professionals whose reward is emotional satisfaction rather than a salary.

Most competent professionals are perfectly content to collaborate with competent non-professionals.

This post has been edited by Moulton:

[Kato]

Jon Awbrey wrote something about this previously:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=52741

I confess that I have read only snippets of what Dawkins and Keen have said about amateurism in Wikipedia, but just from that sample there is something about it that doesn't quite ring true.

I think that it's this. Amateurs are not the dominant force in Wikipedia — amateurs are people who engage in a skilled activity for the pure love of doing it. I am such an amateur in many areas that I've studied as an avocation for decades, but my love of the subject draws me on to learn ever more about it, even when I can't get paid for it. I don't see many people like that in Wikipedia. At any rate, true amateurs like that seem to end up as the same kind of road-kill as experts and professionals, the common factor being that they are people who genuinely care about their chosen subjects.

There is some other motive that drives the dominant culture in Wikipedia that has nothing to do with loving a given subject area. There are those who evidently love exerting their will to power over a topic that they neither know nor love for its own sake. There are those who get their jollies from bashing another person over the head. But I do not count that as being the same thing at all.

What Wikipedia has spawned is a whole new species of sub-amateurs, even anti-amateurs. They are fighters not lovers.

[Moulton]

Kato, I appreciate your keen eye for recollecting and recalling especially cogent observations and insights that, all too often, are buried in the noise.

[Jon Awbrey]

That whole bit about the Cult Of The Amateur (COTA) has always been a mis-diagnosis of What's Wrong With Wikipedia (WWWW). Amateurs are, by definition and etymology, people who pursue a skilled activity purely for the love of doing it — those of you who are old enough to remember when the Olympics were for amateurs may know what I mean. Nothing about being an amateur says that you have to be an abject klutz at what you do, or despise people adept and lucky enough to get paid for doing it, or envy those with more experience and skill so badly that you refuse to learn what they know, or obstruct people from contributing in areas that you never bothered to learn about.

No, Wikipedia is the Cult Of The Incompetent (COTI), and the only way they know to make themselves feel better about their own dim place in the Sum Of Knowledge is by banning those who might teach them something.

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

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey:

[Moulton]

However, they are very competent at finding ingenious ways of banning people, such as concocting haphazard theories of mind about the person they wish to ban, and then acting on such ungrounded flights of fancy as if they were the ground truth.

[Kato]

That whole bit about the Cult Of The Amateur (COTA) has always been a mis-diagnosis of What's Wrong With Wikipedia (WWWW). Amateurs are, by definition and etymology, people who pursue a skilled activity purely for the love of doing it — those of you who are old enough to remember when the Olympics were for amateurs may know what I mean. Nothing about being an amateur says that you have to be an abject klutz at what you do, or despise people adept and lucky enough to get paid for doing it, or envy those with more experience and skill so badly that you refuse to learn what they know, or obstruct people from contributing in areas that you never bothered to learn about.

No, Wikipedia is the Cult Of The Incompetent (COTI), and the only way they know to make themselves feel better about their own dim place in the Sum Of Knowledge is by banning those who might teach them something.

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

Keen's diagnosis is broader than Wikipedia and he is also referring to a more literal meaning of the word Amateur. He fears the dissolution of professional organizations at the hands of amateur projects and the impact that will have on people's livelihoods if nothing else. This is a valid fear, and relates to Wikipedia in that Wales's big-bag-o-trivia is actively putting professional encyclopedias out of business. The longer fear is that once these professional outfits are downed, they can never come back.

Between FieryAngel's blog posts, David Shankbone's replies in this thread, Andrew Keen's writing, those two Jon Awbrey posts and Moulton's definitions above, we got a pretty good circle of arguments that illustrate a whole element of Wikipedia we don't hear enough of.

[Proabivouac]

Jon Awbrey wrote something about this previously:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=52741

I confess that I have read only snippets of what Dawkins and Keen have said about amateurism in Wikipedia, but just from that sample there is something about it that doesn't quite ring true.

I think that it's this. Amateurs are not the dominant force in Wikipedia — amateurs are people who engage in a skilled activity for the pure love of doing it. I am such an amateur in many areas that I've studied as an avocation for decades, but my love of the subject draws me on to learn ever more about it, even when I can't get paid for it. I don't see many people like that in Wikipedia. At any rate, true amateurs like that seem to end up as the same kind of road-kill as experts and professionals, the common factor being that they are people who genuinely care about their chosen subjects.

There is some other motive that drives the dominant culture in Wikipedia that has nothing to do with loving a given subject area. There are those who evidently love exerting their will to power over a topic that they neither know nor love for its own sake. There are those who get their jollies from bashing another person over the head. But I do not count that as being the same thing at all.

What Wikipedia has spawned is a whole new species of sub-amateurs, even anti-amateurs. They are fighters not lovers.

I'm tempted to call this one more aspect of Wikipedia's formal content neutrality: it doesn't matter what you know, or what you create, but only how you conduct yourself relative to the rules and norms of the project.

These rules and norms, though arcane to outsiders, are much easier to learn than becoming an expert in any scholarly subject. Six months on Wikipedia and you can be made an administrator. In a year or two, you can be a checkuser and/or an arbitrator.

To privilege experts - including amateur ones - would mean disenfranchising all these people, or at least significantly degrading that franchise by handing the real leadership of the project - overt editorial responsibility - over to another class.

[Jon Awbrey]

I'm tempted to call this one more aspect of Wikipedia's formal content neutrality: it doesn't matter what you know, or what you create, but only how you conduct yourself relative to the rules and norms of the project.

These rules and norms, though arcane to outsiders, are much easier to learn than becoming an expert in any scholarly subject. Six months on Wikipedia and you can be made an administrator. In a year or two, you can be a checkuser and/or an arbitrator.

To privilege experts — including amateur ones — would mean disenfranchising all these people, or at least significantly degrading that franchise by handing the real leadership of the project — overt editorial responsibility — over to another class.

If you are talking about the advertized rules and norms, then what you say is total bull.

If you are talking about the actual hidden agendas, then you have just defined a cult.

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

[Moulton]

Nonetheless, there are plenty of otherwise amateurish and immature editors who are gifted at wiki-lawyering and gaming the system. I couldn't begin to compete with them on that front.

[the fieryangel]

I'm tempted to call this one more aspect of Wikipedia's formal content neutrality: it doesn't matter what you know, or what you create, but only how you conduct yourself relative to the rules and norms of the project.

These rules and norms, though arcane to outsiders, are much easier to learn than becoming an expert in any scholarly subject. Six months on Wikipedia and you can be made an administrator. In a year or two, you can be a checkuser and/or an arbitrator.

To privilege experts - including amateur ones - would mean disenfranchising all these people, or at least significantly degrading that franchise by handing the real leadership of the project - overt editorial responsibility - over to another class.

This is the real problem: you can't replace experience by process. People who are considered to be experts are considered so because they, at one point or the other, have "delivered the goods". They've written the definitive biography about somebody, or established the "correct" catalog of a certain composer's works, or they are the person who can look at a painting and can say whether or not it painted by a certain artist or not.

You don't just get that kind of knowledge by using bookshelf references for six months. You only get that way after years of dealing with in the ins and outs of a subject, going through boxes in archives, talking to others, arguing (that's when you really see what you know and what you don't!), writing about your subject. It's a very long process and you cannot make it go any faster than the time that it takes.

I am reminded of another situation in which I sat on a European arts commission to discuss aspects of discrimination against female musicians in European arts circles. There were several twenty-something members of the panel, but everyone quite naturally wanted to elect the fifty-something woman who was the universally known expert on the subject of women and music to be the committee chair. The twenty-somethings got quite irate and started in with the idea of "age discrimination" and the fact that someone who was in their age group should be elected to the chair, as a matter of course. The discussion got quite violent until somebody asked the right question: "what have you done?". And the answer was, of course, "not much yet, I'm only twenty". Then the same question was asked to the fifty-something woman and she gave her credentials. The situation was then resolved.

The point being is that you can't replace experience and artificially creating some sort of credentials such as "wiki-accreditation for reporters" is not a solution. It's going to be seen among those who have the credential as being the equivalent of monopoly money, and quite rightly so.

The obvious solution is to get the experience, to do the work and then honestly claim the credential. You can't skip any of the steps, the Internets not withstanding.

[Proabivouac]

The obvious solution is to get the experience, to do the work and then honestly claim the credential. You can't skip any of the steps, the Internets not withstanding.

From the typical administrator's/vested contributor's point of view, they have the needed credentials: experience editing (and gaming) Wikipedia. They've paid their dues, while the real-life expert who arrives and begins arguing with them has not. They can ask, well, what have you done? You only have fifteen edits.

It's deceptive to say, as we often hear, that the Wikipedia is uninterested in credentials. What they've done is substitute their own set for that of the real world.

Who cares if you're a tenured professor at Oxford? We don't recognize class distinctions here. User:NewbieEater is the Grand Poobah Lotus Dragon of the Third Circle of Acolytes, and you're not even an initiate. That's what counts.

I'd agree that some measure, "well, what have you done for the project?" is an appropriate consideration, people who have done good work over a period off time should be empowered (at least provisionally) regardless of previous credentials, but it's taken way too far, and to the exclusion of any other considerations. No one even asks if it might not be a good idea to have a few real-life (non-anonymous and verified) academic and journalistic editors and publishers on the Arbitration Committee, much less proposes any scheme to set this in motion.

This post has been edited by Proabivouac: