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 Jimbo's lording over Wikiversity again, This time, Privatemusings gets the axe |
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| Somey |
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Can't actually moderate (or even post)
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QUOTE(thekohser @ Sat 13th March 2010, 12:20am)  Jimbo, Jimbo, when will you ever learn? You cause more trouble than it's worth. Well, you just have to remember, it's not the "breaching experiment" part that bothers them - to them, that's just more participation, and therefore a good thing. It's the "ethical" part they can't deal with, because they know deep down inside that what they're doing by trying to maintain the Wikipedia edifice is, itself, deeply and fundamentally unethical. Anything that threatens to expose the truth of that must be suppressed - there will never be any point in trying to organize these things on a Wikimedia-funded "project." I'm afraid Mr. Privatemusings never really had a chance, unfortunately. It's an interesting problem... it seems like you can only claim valid results if you can maintain secrecy, but then who do you trust? You almost have to do the whole thing single-handedly to make sure, and that's a lot of effort if you want to put together a big-enough sample to mean anything. Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious! |
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| Subtle Bee |
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melli fera, fera...
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QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 13th March 2010, 12:05am) QUOTE(thekohser @ Sat 13th March 2010, 12:20am) Jimbo, Jimbo, when will you ever learn? You cause more trouble than it's worth. Well, you just have to remember, it's not the "breaching experiment" part that bothers them - to them, that's just more participation, and therefore a good thing. It's the "ethical" part they can't deal with, because they know deep down inside that what they're doing by trying to maintain the Wikipedia edifice is, itself, deeply and fundamentally unethical. Anything that threatens to expose the truth of that must be suppressed - there will never be any point in trying to organize these things on a Wikimedia-funded "project." I'm afraid Mr. Privatemusings never really had a chance, unfortunately. It's an interesting problem... it seems like you can only claim valid results if you can maintain secrecy, but then who do you trust? You almost have to do the whole thing single-handedly to make sure, and that's a lot of effort if you want to put together a big-enough sample to mean anything. Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious! Wikipedia is an ethical klein bottle - there is no "deep down inside" in which to know things. They just don't like bad press. I'm not sure what PM is up to, but I'm rooting for him. Who doesn't enjoy Wales breaching? (IMG: smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif) |
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| SB_Johnny |
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It wasn't me who made honky-tonk angels
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QUOTE(Eva Destruction @ Sat 13th March 2010, 6:28am) Are all you Wikiversity people aware that your Main Page's "News" section contains four items, the most recent of which is from August 2009? (Is Wikiversity the Movie still going ahead? Who's going to play Moulton? I understand noted actor Michael Schmidt may have some time on his hands soon, and he has previous experience playing a troll.) Are you confusing him with JWSchmidt? Frankly I've never gotten involved in the main page: it's always been at the center of various dramas. Ah, here's the "previous discussion". Nice. Who the hell is this guy? |
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| SB_Johnny |
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It wasn't me who made honky-tonk angels
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| Eva Destruction |
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Fat Cat
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QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Sat 13th March 2010, 3:42pm) QUOTE(Eva Destruction @ Sat 13th March 2010, 10:36am) QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Sat 13th March 2010, 3:27pm)
Jimbo's threatening to close Wikiversity again...
" If you don't let me make up new rules I'm taking my ball and going home." Does he even have the power to close Wikiversity (or any of the WMF projects) unilaterally even if he wanted to? If he does, I'd imagine there'd be a valid case for any WMF donor to demand their money back as it's no longer being used for the purpose for which it was solicited. (IANAL when it comes to Florida, but AFAIK that's a basic principle of charity-law US-wide.) I'm fairly sure he doesn't. The disturbing thing is that this is the same thing he said when pressuring us about Moulton, and we collectively tucked our tails between our legs. There is a valid case to be made for closing Wikiversity (and even more so Wikinews) as not-best-use-of-funds-or-time as regards the WMF's sole legal object ("to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally") towards which all those millions of Google dollars are supposed to flow. I somehow doubt that's what he means, though. |
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| thekohser |
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QUOTE(Eva Destruction @ Sat 13th March 2010, 10:36am) QUOTE(SB_Johnny @ Sat 13th March 2010, 3:27pm)
Jimbo's threatening to close Wikiversity again...
" If you don't let me make up new rules I'm taking my ball and going home." Does he even have the power to close Wikiversity (or any of the WMF projects) unilaterally even if he wanted to? If he does, I'd imagine there'd be a valid case for any WMF donor to demand their money back as it's no longer being used for the purpose for which it was solicited. (IANAL when it comes to Florida, but AFAIK that's a basic principle of charity-law US-wide.) While he is being a cry-baby, he did at least say he was going to take a recommendation to the The Board to close Wikiversity. So, he's not really saying "he" will close Wikiversity. The thing about demanding money back is interesting, but in practice, it will be irrelevant -- because clearly 99.9% of the financial donors to the Wikimedia Foundation don't even care whether their money is being used effectively or not, given that a critique like this hasn't dissuaded them yet. They are brainwashed. If they are told by Jay Walsh and Sue Gardner and Jimbo Wales that the closure of Wikiversity was necessary to further the goals of the Foundation, the cult followers will believe. That's how a cult works. Now, Hale-Bopp is approaching, and our spaceship outta here is hiding from NASA radar behind that comet. Brothers and sisters and Wikimedia donors, take these pills, put on your track suits, and lay down in your bunk beds. |
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| SB_Johnny |
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It wasn't me who made honky-tonk angels
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QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Sat 13th March 2010, 11:26am)
Wikiversity seems an especially ill focused wing of the WMF projects. I really don't know what it is suppose to be. It seems to have no interest in any kind of instruction whatsoever. Perhaps it is merely some kind of phony research institution. If so it is a miserable failure at that too.
One thing that has always struck me as odd about WP as "a learning community" is that it has a complete absence of people who actually have interest in learning anything. It is more of a vehicle for expresson of the rampant smarty-pants-ism that infects Wikipedians.
I have spent considerable time in recent months in various on-line communities of people pursuing language acquisition. Things are much different in such communities as many participants are very motivated in learning from other participants. This combines nicely with the fact that an ordinary person who is a native speaker of a language is in many ways a better authority than someone with graduate training in the same language. The result is a kind of humility and cooperation that is the exact opposite of WMF projects. These online communities may offer a viable alternative to WP to people interested in learning communities, unless of course they are only interested in their own brand of smartypantsism.
Well, not a complete absence. My original involvement on WP was making stubs for obscure weeds and wildflowers I was researching, and they were added to by others who knew more, etc. Stress there on "others who knew more" though: this was before the BLP circus had infected everything to the point that a simple addition of information about an obscure weed or wildflower was instantly reverted under "WP:V". My original involvement on wikiversity was pretty much on the same lines: working on the Bloom Clock was certainly educational for me personally, and my contributions there are now an "open notebook" for anyone who wants to continue it (in fact, my employees refer to the keys there frequently when boning up on the plants we work with). The wiki's mission and scope are rather hard to fathom (to me, too!), and it's never really had much in the way of positive attention from the foundation. In fact, I'm leaning toward the opinion that our association with the foundation has done much more harm than good over the years. |
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