The Purpose Of Criticism, & The Critique Of Pure Pose Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

With respect, or lack thereof, to Wikipedia, there appear to be at least two schools of thought that prevail among the members of this Review.

• There are those who, having entered Wikipedia, have abandoned all hope of saving it.
• There are those who wait in Casablocca, and wait, and wait, and wait, ..., and wait ...

For my part, the good of this Review, in concert with the purpose of criticism at large, is far broader than a focal fixation on the fate, good or ill, of Wikipedia.

For me, the main attraction of this forum, however strange, is cued by the phrase, "for general discussion of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects", where the extension to "other Wikimedia projects" remains, in a choice word, critical.

That's the e-scape clause that affords us a port to the future.

So let's not muff the opportunity.

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

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Jonny Cache]

If I remember the etymology, the word criticism springs from a complex of roots that have to do with sifting and sorting and eventually settling on a course of action. This involves considering each choice in the light of conceivable alternatives, choices that we know to present themselves already or choices that we are able to conceive of constructing. As a consequence, we have this maxim:

• Criticism properly conceived is always comparative and constructive.

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

[Somey]

But are we talking about alternatives to Wikipedia, i.e., other online encyclopedias built on better software or social models? Or are we talking about other collaborative web-based "knowledge-gathering" projects in general?

Just to throw out an example - and this is also a Wikimedia project - I was just looking at OmegaWiki the other day. It used to be known as WiktionaryZ, and it's a multi-lingual dictionary with a relational database back-end... Now that, to me, is something the world could really use. The concept presumably isn't completely resistant to bias, inaccuracy, or abuse, but I would think it's far more so than Wikipedia.

The reason these smaller projects aren't as popular almost has to be the fact that people aren't attracted to them as a means of promoting their own versions of the truth, not to mention the fact that the communities aren't as big and lively, making them less fertile ground for the average narcissist. So really, I have to applaud the people who work on things like OmegaWiki - they're really doing it for the sake of helping to make a good idea actually work better, rather than making a bad idea worse.

[Jonny Cache]

Somey,

Just to clear up one quick point -- as I will need to save the rest for later today.

Most likely because I'd been working on other wikis before I fell into Wikipedia, I'm reading wikimedia as wiki media, that is, in a generic, non-proprietary sense. That's my understanding, and I'm sticking to it.

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

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[the fieryangel]

Jonny,

I really wanted to believe that wikis were a valuable concept. I really tried. But the whole thing is flawed because it's.....I hate to say it, but the word is "populist".

Knowledge has been, is, and probably always will be elitist. To know anything, you have to spend years just studying ONE thing. And even then, there's absolutely no guarantee that what you've learned is going to be of value. However, this idea that "anybody can edit it" and it becomes magically "the gift of knowledge" is just false. It doesn't work that way.

The more you know, the more you discover that you don't know. People who edit Wikis think that they know everything, which basically proves to me that they know nothing.

What's the solution? Simple:

Do your work. The work that you're supposed to be doing. Don't worry about anything else. Don't listen to what anybody else thinks about it. Just do the work.

Then use the tools that are there on the web to get your work out. When I think about all the things that are possible because of the web today (you can press single unit CDs, you can print your own books, you can publish instantly), it amazes me that just having this at our disposal isn't enough.

Leave the Wikibizness to the drones who don't have anything else to say (or who don't think that they have the right to say anything new).

Just don't let people think that the "wikiway" is what it claims to be. That's the message that's got to get out here. There IS another way.

There! two cents plus two cents equals less than a nickle! Maybe we'll get to a quarter if I get inspired....

[Jonny Cache]

Again just a brief reply for now, as it's quickly approaching the chillin' hour here.

Nobody should confuse wikis in general with the agenda and the ideology that have come to dominate Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.

I've worked on several different wiki projects and they all had different protocols. The pseudo-populism of "any ediot can edit anything" model is just one way of doing things. By its fruitcakes we may judge it.

Ding !!! An Sich ...

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

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Jonny Cache]

Recent events prompt me to post the following notice:

To those who wait in Casablocca ...

You have observed how that breed of Wikipooch behaves and you have observed how doggone persistent that behavior is. That is hard empirical data. Value it. Learn from it. It is no longer rational to expect that species of critter to behave any differently than what you have seen already. I repeat -- no longer rational. All we can hope to do here is to post the appropriate warning signs so that other unsuspecting passersby will not get bitten. If people ignore the signs, they ignore them at their own risk.

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

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Jonny Cache]

But are we talking about alternatives to Wikipedia, i.e., other online encyclopedias built on better software or social models? Or are we talking about other collaborative web-based "knowledge-gathering" projects in general?

I am thinking of critique being relative to a context of competing alternatives, but the field of view can be as wide or as narrow as you want to make it, so long as there is any degree of freedom at all. I think that we naturally tend to evaluate things in mutiple overlapping frames, unless some form of coercion is holding our gnosis to the grindstone.

So that's an open question to me ...

Just to throw out an example -- and this is also a Wikimedia project -- I was just looking at OmegaWiki the other day. It used to be known as WiktionaryZ, and it's a multi-lingual dictionary with a relational database back-end. Now that, to me, is something the world could really use. The concept presumably isn't completely resistant to bias, inaccuracy, or abuse, but I would think it's far more so than Wikipedia.

The reason these smaller projects aren't as popular almost has to be the fact that people aren't attracted to them as a means of promoting their own versions of the truth, not to mention the fact that the communities aren't as big and lively, making them less fertile ground for the average narcissist. So really, I have to applaud the people who work on things like OmegaWiki -- they're really doing it for the sake of helping to make a good idea actually work better, rather than making a bad idea worse.

That's definitely one of the factors in the mix -- your guess about what makes the difference, I mean. But I think that there is something more specific about the Jimbo-Larry ideology that leads their projects down the road to wikiperdition.

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

In-Corrigendum. "Mutiple"? I like it. I think I'll stet it.

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Jonny Cache]

I really wanted to believe that wikis were a valuable concept. I really tried. But the whole thing is flawed because it's ... I hate to say it, but the word is "populist".

As I said before, let's not confuse the wiki software paradigm with the bastardizations of it that we find in the English Wikipedia and more lately in Citizendium. I, too, gave both of these enterprises my best college tries before I concluded after multiple trials that they had fallen and could not get up. Each of them suffers from a pathological mutation of social dynamics that is hard-wired into its very foundations, and no amount of patchwork will save them.

But let's end the mystification about populism once and for all.

Both Wikipedia and Citizendium are just about as elitist as any gang of apes can be. All that sets them apart from the selective pressures of real world society is what you have to do in order to qualify for the local elite. In Wikipedia you earn your merit badges by sucking up -- lickety-split -- to the Jimbo Wales-dominated cabal. In Citizendium the tenure committee consists of exactly one person, Larry Sanger. Given those two choices, give me the old-fangled elites any day of the week, where at least the postulants have to do something of real value in order to earn their places in the sun.

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

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[Jonny Cache]

Candidate for Partial Recycling …

Jon Awbrey

[GlassBeadGame]

With respect, or lack thereof, to Wikipedia, there appear to be at least two schools of thought that prevail among the members of this Review.

• There are those who, having entered Wikipedia, have abandoned all hope of saving it.
• There are those who wait in Casablocca, and wait, and wait, and wait, ..., and wait ...

For my part, the good of this Review, in concert with the purpose of criticism at large, is far broader than a focal fixation on the fate, good or ill, of Wikipedia.

My critique of Wp has evolved and benefited from contact and interaction with of other WR posters. Currently I have begun to let go of the objective of burying Wikipedia. I have come to the decision that Wikipedia's survival is none of my business, not one way nor the other. Instead I have developed what I would refer to as an Externalist Critique. I attempt to view all actions of Wikipedia, "the community," the Wikimedia Foundation through the lens of a reasonable, civicly engage person seeking to hold these institutions to a standard of social responsibility.

I wish to uphold such standards and promote discussion analyzing Wikipedia making reference to other websites, encyclopedias non-profit organizations, online collaborative projects and social media. By these yardsticks Wikipedia falls painfully short. Because I see Wikipedia's internal processes flawed (dysfunctional social networking community) my approach to reform, when that seems possible at all, is usually orientated toward the application of external intervention, outside dispute resolution, and new resources and controls brought to bear by responsible and trusted 3rd parties.

[gomi]

Currently I have begun to let go of the objective of burying Wikipedia.

I quote the esteemed Frank Zappa: "Some say that the world will end in fire or ice, but I think there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia." The same could be said for Wikipedia.

[Jonny Cache]

Currently I have begun to let go of the objective of burying Wikipedia.

I quote the esteemed Frank Zappa: "Some say that the world will end in fire or ice, but I think there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia." The same could be said for Wikipedia.

And the same could be said for The Wikipedia Review.

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

[gomi]

It seems clear to me that Wikipedia Review will meet its demise before Wikipedia. However, I also believe that by that time, Wikipedia's demise will be assured, only slower.

On a different note, as I'm sure it didn't take you two months to think of that clever retort, Jonny, what brings this issue to your attention now?

[Jonny Cache]

It seems clear to me that Wikipedia Review will meet its demise before Wikipedia. However, I also believe that by that time, Wikipedia's demise will be assured, only slower.

On a different note, as I'm sure it didn't take you two months to think of that clever retort, Jonny, what brings this issue to your attention now?

Do not go Gentile into that good night …
Rummage, rummage, against the dying of the light.

But, y'see, that's one of those things that I've been saying here for almost two years now — that the Purpose of Criticism goes beyond the Particular to the Genre. All unheeded. The sad fact is that even many Revusniks still buy into the Wikipediot Ideology — however unwittingly — and this blinkers (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif) them from seeing that the Vet should outlive the Dead Horse, or what's a Vet for.

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

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Wolfe]

I really wanted to believe that wikis were a valuable concept. I really tried. But the whole thing is flawed because it's.....I hate to say it, but the word is "populist".

Knowledge has been, is, and probably always will be elitist. To know anything, you have to spend years just studying ONE thing. And even then, there's absolutely no guarantee that what you've learned is going to be of value. However, this idea that "anybody can edit it" and it becomes magically "the gift of knowledge" is just false. It doesn't work that way.

What makes you think that an elite would come to a much greater degree of agreement than Wikipedia does?

The sciences are probably the area within academia where there is most agreement, given shared methods and a relative lack of politically controversial material.

The more you move away from that, the more venomous and diffuse the disputes become. It has to do with the nature of the subject matter. Scholarly consensus is often a myth foisted upon the laity.

Oddly enough, this is true of Wikipedia. The science articles tend to be among the best ones, while the controversial stuff is the subject of venomous edit warring.

[Kato]

The sciences are probably the area within academia where there is most agreement, given shared methods and a relative lack of politically controversial material.

Not true at all. The Sciences are born of disagreements. But modern scientific practices allow for the endless disagreements to be played out in a comparatively productive, progressive manner. Yet on WP scientific methods have been utterly eschewed by Wales and his useless dispute resolution practices, much to our loss.

[Moulton]

The only way it's gonna end in nostalgia is if someone has the chutzpah to master the Bardic Arts well enough to transform all this ferchachta paperwork into a Gothic Comic Opera.

[Jonny Cache]

I really wanted to believe that wikis were a valuable concept. I really tried. But the whole thing is flawed because it's … I hate to say it, but the word is "populist".

Knowledge has been, is, and probably always will be elitist. To know anything, you have to spend years just studying ONE thing. And even then, there's absolutely no guarantee that what you've learned is going to be of value. However, this idea that "anybody can edit it" and it becomes magically "the gift of knowledge" is just false. It doesn't work that way.

What makes you think that an elite would come to a much greater degree of agreement than Wikipedia does?

The sciences are probably the area within academia where there is most agreement, given shared methods and a relative lack of politically controversial material.

The more you move away from that, the more venomous and diffuse the disputes become. It has to do with the nature of the subject matter. Scholarly consensus is often a myth foisted upon the laity.

Oddly enough, this is true of Wikipedia. The science articles tend to be among the best ones, while the controversial stuff is the subject of venomous edit warring.

Anyone who's been paying attention knows that the Very Idea Of An Elite does not disturb Wikipediots so much as the Very Idea Of Not Having Their Own. Now they do.

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

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[Moulton]

Collaboration is still a good idea, and in many contexts a better model than competition.

But collaboration requires trust and conflict management -- something that can be dispensed with in all-out competition.

The Wiki model presumes a collaborative environment where the participants are able to trust each other.

That's where Wikipedia's social model fails. It fails to build trust, and thereby fails to build a functional collaborative community.