Balkan Balderdash, Serendipity DooDa Options

[Jon Awbrey]

Balkan Balderdash

[Moulton]

Preamble to the Declaration of Indignation

We hold these Truths to be Self-Evident -- That all Scholars are Created Equal and are Endowed by their Creator (and by the WMF Mission Statement) with Certain Unalienable Rights, and that among these are Login, Edit, and the Pursuit of the Ground Truth.

[Moulton]

Philosopher/Logician, Raymond Smullyan, makes the distinction between "for a purpose" and "to a purpose." This corresponds to Jon's observation, above, that a system may happenstantially serve a purpose other than the one originally envisioned or intended by those who conceived and constructed the system.

We commonly use the term, "abuse", to label a misuse of a system for inappropriate purposes other than the ones for which the system was originally intended to be used. We also use the term, "adaptation", to label a serendipitous use of a system, above and beyond the worthwhile functional purposes originally envisioned.

Readers here who have not been in a coma for the past two years will no doubt be aware of my answer to the implied question, "To what unforeseen or unintended purpose has Wikipedia been usurped or adapted?"

Is this a serendipitous adaptation, or an abusive misuse of the resources of the project, with respect to the WMF Charter, Values, Mission, and Vision?

[Moulton]

Unfucking believable that Jon Awbrey would discard this carefully crafted essay, in response to the present inquiry in this thread.

Philosopher/Logician, Raymond Smullyan, makes the distinction between "for a purpose" and "to a purpose." This corresponds to Jon's observation, above, that a system may happenstantially serve a purpose other than the one originally envisioned or intended by those who conceived and constructed the system.

We commonly use the term, "abuse", to label a misuse of a system for inappropriate purposes other than the ones for which the system was originally intended to be used. We also use the term, "adaptation", to label a serendipitous use of a system, above and beyond the worthwhile functional purposes originally envisioned.

Readers here who have not been in a coma for the past two years will no doubt be aware of my answer to the implied question, "To what unforeseen or unintended purpose has Wikipedia been usurped or adapted?"

Is this a serendipitous adaptation, or an abusive misuse of the resources of the project, with respect to the WMF Charter, Values, Mission, and Vision?

What the fuck is wrong with you, Awbrey?!?

[Jon Awbrey]

You know, Moulton, you can create your own topics here.

Thinking of apt titles is half the work of writing for me — and trying to come up with apt titles for your {{I can't think of the word for them}} is getting to be more work than I want to do.

So why don't you do that and start your own threads?

Jon Awbrey

[Moulton]

You know, Moulton, you can create your own topics here.

Thinking of apt titles is half the work of writing for me — and trying to come up with apt titles for your {{I can't think of the word for them}} is getting to be more work than I want to do.

So why don't you do that and start your own threads?

Jon Awbrey

Jon, do you really want to balkanize the discussion threads by taking my essays (that's the apt word for them) and petulantly pitching them into a bumptiously named discard pile?

Jon, your academic career is predicated on scholarly inquiry. Your wife, Susan, worked for years with my neighbor, the late Jerry Pine, on Teacher Action Research. Are you now rejecting everything that you and Susan have staked your respective academic careers on?

How did it come to pass that you became an hypocritical apostate with respect to your own chosen academic discipline?

This post has been edited by Moulton: Wed 4th August 2010, 2:38pm

[GlassBeadGame]

You know, Moulton, you can create your own topics here.

Thinking of apt titles is half the work of writing for me — and trying to come up with apt titles for your {{I can't think of the word for them}} is getting to be more work than I want to do.

So why don't you do that and start your own threads?

Jon Awbrey

Jon, do you really want to balkanize the discussion threads by taking my essays (that's the apt word for them) and petulantly pitching them into a bumptiously named discard pile?

Jon, your academic career is predicated on scholarly inquiry. Your wife, Susan, worked for years with my neighbor, the late Jerry Pine, on Teacher Action Research. Are you now rejecting everything that you and Susan have staked your respective academic careers on?

How did it come to pass that you became an hypocritical apostate with respect to your own chosen academic discipline?

Moulton, you seem to be growing increasing bitter and desperate over your failure to gain sufficient traction for your ideas on Wikiversity or some other learning community. Lashing out at Jon in such personal terms seems unlikely to help.

[Moulton]

Moulton, you seem to be growing increasing bitter and desperate over your failure to gain sufficient traction for your ideas on Wikiversity or some other learning community. Lashing out at Jon in such personal terms seems unlikely to help.

Jon has earned a tongue lashing. It takes a hell of a lot to arouse my anger, GBG.

I can forgive someone for being a jerk if that's their professed role in life.

But Jon's professed role is one of a scholar who promotes inquiry.

It troubles me to see him foolishly throw away the most important value in his professional life.

[Moulton]

Just dashing off a quick observation here...

Jon Awbrey —

The Wikipedia Cult / Focal Problem / Banning

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

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

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

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

It occurs to me that a collegial and congenial demeanor enhances both the process and the product of a course of inquiry. As Richard Feynman points out, there is a pleasure in finding things out.

But as many of us here on W-R know from bitter experience, there is no pleasure in being thrown out.

Pray tell, what better practices prevail in the orbits of W-R in general (and the Meta Forum in particular)?

Jon, I am unclear what you seek to learn by adopting, sustaining, and perpetuating the deprecated practice of banning, ejecting, shunning, disregarding, excommunicating, or discarding good faith participants in the inquiry process.

Do you seek to learn a better way of expressing one's displeasure at that unwholesome turn of events?

[Jon Awbrey]

Whereof One Cannot Seren Dip
Thereof One Must Roll A Clip

[Moulton]

Truth in Badvertising

Awbrey clip a fargenigen
Awbrey snip men ken a bootkick krigen
A schnook, a Kort, a campy scream
Brengt areyn dayn klenem zing.

(Cut Speech.)

[Zoloft]

I am certain there used to be something here that made sense in response to the intitial post, so I'm going to take my trusty Spatula Of Insolence (a level 5 magical kitchen implement) and see if I can scrape some frosting from the mixing bowl.

*clears throat*

Jon, what was it about the rather bizarre and confrontational ethnic music advertisement you started this topic with that aroused your wry ire?

[Jon Awbrey]

I am certain there used to be something here that made sense in response to the intitial post, so I'm going to take my trusty Spatula Of Insolence (a level 5 magical kitchen implement) and see if I can scrape some frosting from the mixing bowl.

*clears throat*

Jon, what was it about the rather bizarre and confrontational ethnic music advertisement you started this topic with that aroused your wry ire?

[Zoloft]

I am certain there used to be something here that made sense in response to the intitial post, so I'm going to take my trusty Spatula Of Insolence (a level 5 magical kitchen implement) and see if I can scrape some frosting from the mixing bowl.

*clears throat*

Jon, what was it about the rather bizarre and confrontational ethnic music advertisement you started this topic with that aroused your wry ire?

Uh, I think my work here is done. *flees*

[Moulton]

Uh, I think my work here is done. *flees*

I'm afraid to say, Zoloft, that the work to be done here is a bit beyond your pay grade.

[Jon Awbrey]

I am certain there used to be something here that made sense in response to the intitial post, so I'm going to take my trusty Spatula Of Insolence (a level 5 magical kitchen implement) and see if I can scrape some frosting from the mixing bowl.

*clears throat*

Jon, what was it about the rather bizarre and confrontational ethnic music advertisement you started this topic with that aroused your wry ire?

Uh, I think my work here is done. *flees*

Nothing new here. Moulton just keeps on keeping on high-jacking every thread on site with his idée fixe that Drama Engines are the be-all end-all of all we do by way of inquiry — but he gets his fix from that idea only so long as everyone lets him be the Auto-Elected Drama Engineer of the whole shebang. Drama unto him as he dramas unto others, and he starts hollering that you jumped the track of Congenial Collegial Conscriptuality.

Well, Tschitti Tschitti Bäng Bäng, that's not how we roll here —



And pretty soon it's gonna be … wait 4 it … wait 4 it …



Jon