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_ News Worth Discussing _ Sunday is making me ill

Posted by: Peter Damian

"Mr Know It All is giving up billions" -today's Sunday Times. Deferential profile of the great man 'would rather be a carpenter than an architect'; "I've absolutely no idea, I know about as much as the next guy".

It's half to be expected, given the 10th anniversary. But half our fault. I meant to sketch out an article for one of the British dailies, but never got round to it. I turned down an interview with Radio 4 (frankly I was too embarassed to have my family and friends know I am involved with Wikipedia, but that idea is for another thread).

Is there any way of turning off this stream of diarrhea? The "comments campaign" clearly hasn't worked - not enough people read these. What is needed is PR for the other 'Wikipedia Story' on US or British or other national media. Any ideas?

QUOTE
Amid the vitriolic political debate in modern America, the code of civility that Wales hs imposed on Wikipedia is notable - not just in the way users are addressed, but also the courteous manner in which vexatious contributors are discouraged. To his way of thinking, diplomacy and conflict resolution invariably win out over those who 'shout loudest'.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

It's not like it's all our fault by any means, but this anusversary spate of viral PR is just another measure of how badly The Wikipedia Review is falling down on the job of educating the public about the real nature of Wikipedia, Wikia, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled Akadummy Awards Festivities …

Jon hrmph.gif

Posted by: RDH(Ghost In The Machine)

It's still disheartening to see how myopic, amnesiac and sheepish the lamestream mediocracy has become.
In the entire daisy chain circle jerk, http://mashable.com/2011/01/15/wikipedia-10-years-survival/.
It's almost like nothing has happened since 2006...Essjay...Doren, Mazoli's, Marsden...even the pr0n war from last year, all ancient history now down the memory hole.
Where have you gone Cade Metz? The Review turns its lonley eyes to you...oooo.

But if l'histoire se répète, Jimbeau and his eunuchs will smoke all this crack crap up, wash it down with their patented Fool-Aide™, start thinking they can do no wrong again and then do something embarrassingly, colossally stoopid. And then...out come ze volves! Unt ze knives! Unt ze volves mit knives! Oh sweet day that will be.

In the meantime, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12200725, a great actress and a great lady whom I shall miss a lot more than Dikipedia when it finally succumbs.




Posted by: thekohser

If the Wikipedia Review can scrape together $125,000 a year for me, I'll be happy to go full-time on the Wikipedia criticism front.

Posted by: Cedric

This too shall pass. Heimdall will sound his horn, by and by.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(thekohser @ Sun 16th January 2011, 1:23pm) *

If the Wikipedia Review can scrape together $125,000 a year for me, I'll be happy to go full-time on the Wikipedia criticism front.

Were I rich I'd hire you to do only that. $125,000 a year would translate into about $5 million dollars of damage from WP refusing to get their act together.

Of course the problem with all bad institutions is that their the jobs of the people who run them come first, the continuation the institution second, and the quality of the work-product it turns out, only a distant third in cases where the quality of that product has a distant or very delayed effect on the institutional income.

This is the busted feedback loop problem once again. If Ford starts making crappier cars and they start to sell less, the company doesn't necessarily do anything about it for quite some time, because it has no impact whatsoever on the pay of the people in the boardroom OR the people on the company floor. Eventually it does, but the feedback time might be a decade. In that time, people retire with pensions or bail with golden parachutes, and leave somebody else holding the bag.

Take all this and imagine a car company that gives away its vehicles, and survives on donations brought in by some dude in a beard reminding the world how cool it is that they can get a free ride sometimes. How does the quality control feedback loop work THERE? It's horrible to contemplate. Here at WR, we've been contemplating it for some time, and it's not pretty.