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Posted by: Jonny Cache

Picking up on one of Kato's «Key Questions» and generalizing another:

I suggest that the answer will come from pursuing the question:

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think we have to watch every last episode of the Wikipediot Soap Opera, much less every spin-off like Citzendium, ConservaToryPedia, VergoPedia, AdNauseaPedia that comes down the WikiPike in order to figure out the answer to this question once and for all.

So permit me to extract my most recent mini-manifesto on this score from the pages of the Soap Opera Digest (SOD) — where it is likely to get buried beneath the fray of WhoScrewedWhoToday — and reprint it here.

I keep trying to share what clues I've gathered, but folks at The Wikipedia Review are as just as blind as folks at Wikipedia and all the clueless InterNeuts in the Wowie-Zowie-Web-O-Sphere.

Maybe folks didn't read the same books My Generation did in school and college. The scenario was laid out clearly enough in all of those Prophetically Dystopian novels of my childhood, and the basic principles of media dynamics that are involved in Wikipediac Devolution were all laid out by http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ so long ago that they passed from Archetype to Cliche when I was an Undergrub, and apparently into Oblivion now.

You all keep being distracted by one damn Message after another when you ought to be looking at the kind of Medium that is being so craftily crafted under your very noses.

For example, people on all sides waste so gawdawful much time trying to figure out what side the Cabal is on — when it comes to this or that economic, political, religious, or scientific tiff.

The Cabal is not on any side but the Cabal's side.

Sure, maybe the Cabal is taking the side of North-North-West Eurasia today, but it can just as easily shift to taking the side of Southerly Eurasia any time that it becomes convenient to do so.

What does that mean for the Media Operating Characteristic (MOC) that will selected as their Most Favoured MOC?

It means that their Most Favoured MOC cannot allow itself to get phase-locked forever into any one POV. More precisely, it must be agile enough to shift its phase 180° in a period of time just ε-greater than the modal attention span of the viewing public.

How long is that?

Your Mullage May Vary, but if we look at the US case in the last Dubya-Dubya Police Action, the US media were reporting on the Future Sea Battle for just about 6 months before it started to look downright silly not to go ahead and have it.

Six months is not exactly turning on a dime, and I think that the Powers That Bee are probably trying to get that down to a temporal turning radius ≤ 6 weeks.

For now …

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: the fieryangel

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 21st October 2007, 2:25pm) *


What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?



Short answer : follow the money and you'll find out...

I think that it started as tax shelter for Jimbo and has grown into something else....but is much more profitable than Jimbo initially imagined...

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(the fieryangel @ Sun 21st October 2007, 11:22am) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 21st October 2007, 2:25pm) *

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?


Short answer : follow the money and you'll find out …

I think that it started as tax shelter for Jimbo and has grown into something else … but is much more profitable than Jimbo initially imagined …


Yes, I did start out with the word "created" instead of "control", but I changed it deliberately and precisely so that we wouldn't get distracted by a genetic φallacy.

Plus, I have known way too many projects over the last decade or so that look like they were upstarted by this or that hit-or-miss upstarter or other, and then one day a Man In Black Or Grey Flannel Or Olive Drab Or Shiny Sharkskin Or Some Other Gang Color approaches them with an offer they can't refuse.

So the emphasis must be placed squarely on Who's Walking You Home Today (WWYHT)?

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I am reviving this thread on account of its relevance to various hypotheses that we have been discussing in connection with the Current Issue of ArbComics on the Theme of WP:NOR,

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

It occurs to me that there is a clue in Jimbo's testimony earlier this week on E-Gov 2.0, in which he touted the Wiki technology model as extensible to other public enterprises beyond encyclopedia writing. It looks to me like he wants to corner the market on public applications of Wiki-based systems.

Google, however, is positioned to provide alternative Web 2.0 technologies that may be more intelligently designed and better adapted to the task.

Jimbo seems to be enamored of the media, but he lacks Google's ability to craft the media tools that are best adapted to the public need. Wiki technology, as implemented and demonstrated on Wikipedia, supports and encourages oligarchical thuggery rather than genuine information democracy.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Work In Progress —

Picking up on one of Kato's «Key Questions» and generalizing another:

I suggest that the answer will come from pursuing the question:

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?

I don't think we have to watch every last episode of the Wikipediot Soap Opera, much less every spin-off like Citzendium, ConservaToryPedia, VergoPedia, ad nauseum that comes down the pike in order to figure out the answer to this question once and for all.

So permit me to extract my most recent mini-manifesto on this score from the pages of the Soap Opera Digest (SOD) — where it is likely to get buried beneath the fray of WhoScrewedWhoToday — and reprint it here.

I keep trying to share what clues I've gathered, but folks at The Wikipedia Review are as just as blind as folks at Wikipedia and all the clueless InterNeuts in the Blogosphere.

The basic scenario was laid out clearly enough in those Dystopian novels that I read as a youth and the basic principles of media dynamics that govern Wikipediot Devolution were laid out by http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ so long ago that they passed from Archetype to Cliche when I was an undergraduate, and apparently into Oblivion now.

People keep being distracted by one damn Message after another when they ought to be looking at the kind of Medium that is being so craftily crafted under their very noses.

For example, people on all sides waste so much time trying to figure out what side the Cabal is on — when it comes to this or that economic, political, religious, or scientific tiff.

The Cabal is not on any side but the Cabal's side.

Sure, maybe the Cabal is taking the side of North-North-West Eurasia today, but it can just as easily shift to taking the side of Southerly Eurasia any time that it becomes convenient to do so.

What does that mean about the Media Operating Characteristic (MOC) that is the Cabal's MOC of Choice?

It means that the Cabal's most favored medium must be extremely agile, ductile, flexible, malleable, and plastic. It cannot be a medium that allows of being rigidly phase-locked into any one position or any one POV. More precisely, it must be agile enough to shift its phase 180° in a period of time just ε-greater than the modal attention span of the viewing public.

How long is that?

Your Mullage May Vary, but if we look at the US case in the last Dubya-Dubya Police Action, the US media were reporting on the Future Sea Battle for just about 6 months before it started to look downright silly not to go ahead and have it.

Six months is not exactly turning on a dime, and I think that the Powers That Be are probably trying to get that down to a temporal turning radius ≤ 6 weeks.

¤ ¤ ¤

QUOTE(the fieryangel @ Sun 21st October 2007, 11:22am) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 21st October 2007, 2:25pm) *

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?


Short answer : follow the money and you'll find out …

I think that it started as tax shelter for Jimbo and has grown into something else … but is much more profitable than Jimbo initially imagined …


Yes, I did start out with the word "created" instead of "control", but I changed it deliberately and precisely so that we wouldn't get distracted by a genetic φallacy.

Plus, I have known way too many projects over the last decade or so that look like they were upstarted by this or that hit-or-miss upstarter or other, and then one day a Man In Black or Grey Flannel or Olive Drab or Shiny Sharkskin or Some Other Gang Color approaches them with an offer they can't refuse.

So the emphasis must be placed squarely on Who's Walking You Home Today (WWYHT)?

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 6:51am) *

It occurs to me that there is a clue in Jimbo's testimony earlier this week on E-Gov 2.0, in which he touted the Wiki technology model as extensible to other public enterprises beyond encyclopedia writing. It looks to me like he wants to corner the market on public applications of Wiki-based systems.

Google, however, is positioned to provide alternative Web 2.0 technologies that may be more intelligently designed and better adapted to the task.

Jimbo seems to be enamored of the media, but he lacks Google's ability to craft the media tools that are best adapted to the public need. Wiki technology, as implemented and demonstrated on Wikipedia, supports and encourages oligarchical thuggery rather than genuine information democracy.


He can corner the market on a losing proposition that will ultimately be regulated by the Fed. for being abusive and counter to U.S. privacy laws. Further, if it won't work for MySpace or Facebook, it is gone.

Lord Of The Flies ends poorly...and the aftershock is also not pretty.

The WMF will ultimately lose protection that it gets from the charitable status.




http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/12/14/google.knol/


I will put my money with Google; Bill Gates; free market capitalism.

Jimmy, Angela, Durova and JzG will ........ ohmy.gif

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(WhispersOfWisdom @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:21am) *

QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 6:51am) *

It occurs to me that there is a clue in Jimbo's testimony earlier this week on E-Gov 2.0, in which he touted the Wiki technology model as extensible to other public enterprises beyond encyclopedia writing. It looks to me like he wants to corner the market on public applications of Wiki-based systems.

Google, however, is positioned to provide alternative Web 2.0 technologies that may be more intelligently designed and better adapted to the task.

Jimbo seems to be enamored of the media, but he lacks Google's ability to craft the media tools that are best adapted to the public need. Wiki technology, as implemented and demonstrated on Wikipedia, supports and encourages oligarchical thuggery rather than genuine information democracy.


He can corner the market on a losing proposition that will ultimately be regulated by the Fed. for being abusive and counter to U.S. privacy laws. Further, if it won't work for MySpace or Facebook, it is gone.

Lord Of The Flies ends poorly … and the aftershock is also not pretty.

The WMF will ultimately lose protection that it gets from the charitable status.


If you read the previous discussion on this thread, you may notice that I am taking some pains to avoid falling into two types of error —The combination of those two sources of error in the present case leads people to answer questions about the present purpose of Wikipedia by speculating on what the purpose of its founders might have been at the beginning of its life.

I think that is likely to prove a red herring.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

It occurs to me that a thorough analysis will examine each plausible factor, including the two that you worry about over-weighting.

Perhaps they do carry zero weight in the final analysis, but that should be an outcome of an objective analysis, not an assumption going into it.

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom



http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/12/14/google.knol/




Now you will be able to contribute your works to an encyclopedia that will pay for your work (via optional ad space) and the product may guarded from the work of vandals. Leave it to Google and Microsoft, and it will be wildly successful.

The kids will still be able to play at WP, MySpace, and Facebook, albeit educators and professionals will work on a system that is founded upon real life credentials and wisdom.

Build it and they will come.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 14th December 2007, 8:11am) *

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?


I think you need to have a broad understanding of what 'those who control Wikipedia' means in order to get a useful answer to this. If you look narrowly, you can probably find answers in psychological needs: Jimbo Wales, possibly in response to becoming a father, wants to be known for something other than pornography; Linda Mack wants to combat the forces of wickedness that she sees in the world; etc.

But in the broader sense, Wikipedia is part of a long-standing matter of modern democracy. Prior to there being any meaningful democracy, the "ruling elites" pretty much did what they want. With democracy, however, the "ruling elites" are mostly still there, but now they have to get the consent of most of the people in order to do what they want. So you need to control the press, and most of the press, including all major media, is pretty well controlled. Not to the extent of controlling particular broadcasts, but to the extent of being sure that certain "shared values" will always be respected. CNN, for example, which in the early days endeavored to be an international news outlet, now will routinely report things as Americans (sometimes as Westerners), and openly gush about what is good for America, regardless of whether it is right or wrong or good for the rest of the world.

All of this, however, was predicated upon the social structure of the corporation, which is extremely un-free and un-democratic: there is no right to free speech in a corporation and there is a rigid hierarchical control. If you step out of bounds in a corporation, you are expelled from the corporation with no trial and no questions asked. (This may be less true outside of the US, but it is still generally true.)

But the internet threw a potential wrench into the works: there is no central control of the information broadcast around the internet. But you do have things like Google, which endeavors to be a center for retrieving information from the internet, and like Wikipedia, which endeavors to be a central collection site for information on the internet. If a majority of the people could be relied upon to get most of their internet information through either something already under corporate control or through Google or Wikipedia, the potential problem of information on the internet becomes a lot more tractable. Google, first of all, is a corporation, so it can be brought to rein in the normal way. Wikipedia, however, is a more amorphous thing.

So, how do the "ruling elites" make sure that the proper "shared values" are enforced at Wikipedia?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:52am) *

It occurs to me that a thorough analysis will examine each plausible factor, including the two that you worry about over-weighting.

Perhaps they do carry zero weight in the final analysis, but that should be an outcome of an objective analysis, not an assumption going into it.


Those are simple heuristic cautions that trained observers and trained theoreticians are trained to be on guard against. They got their names and their local habitations within various disciplines through long histories of experience with systematic errors that people just naturally tend to make. They are of course not intended as absolute rules or substitutes for thought. You will notice that, as often happens with heuristic rules, they tend to come in pairs that nudge the mind in opposite directions.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Purposive systems can have both expressed and implied intentions, as well as emergent and contingent purposes. Teasing these apart will be a challenge, given the changing Web 2.0 landscape, competitive threats, and cultural feedback.

There are elements of unmanaged autopoiesis in the evolution of Wikipedia, as well as express and implied (mis)direction from the top.

Not to mention nefarious misappropriation of system resources for unauthorized, irregular, or scandalous purposes.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 11:25am) *

Purposive systems can have both expressed and implied intentions, as well as emergent and contingent purposes. Teasing these apart will be a challenge, given the changing Web 2.0 landscape, competitive threats, and cultural feedback.

There are elements of unmanaged autopoiesis in the evolution of Wikipedia, as well as express and implied (mis)direction from the top.

Not to mention nefarious misappropriation of system resources for unauthorized, irregular, or scandalous purposes.


Sorry, I learned my systems theory back in the days when it led out of automatopoesycybermystification.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

I plan to be on the lookout for chiastic anti-structure, too.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 14th December 2007, 8:11am) *

What is the real purpose of those who control Wikipedia?


QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:56am) *

I think you need to have a broad understanding of what 'those who control Wikipedia' means in order to get a useful answer to this. If you look narrowly, you can probably find answers in psychological needs: Jimbo Wales, possibly in response to becoming a father, wants to be known for something other than pornography; Linda Mack wants to combat the forces of wickedness that she sees in the world; etc.


I believe that I take a rather broad view of this question. Indeed, I have not assumed that we know the identities of the agents who could be called the «Controllers Of Wikipedia» (COW). We know some people who push and pull the system this way and that — some of them to what looks the very limits of human endurance — but I can't say that we know for sure who's really in charge of mission control.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:56am) *

But in the broader sense, Wikipedia is part of a long-standing matter of modern democracy. Prior to there being any meaningful democracy, the "ruling elites" pretty much did what they want. With democracy, however, the "ruling elites" are mostly still there, but now they have to get the consent of most of the people in order to do what they want. So you need to control the press, and most of the press, including all major media, is pretty well controlled. Not to the extent of controlling particular broadcasts, but to the extent of being sure that certain "shared values" will always be respected. CNN, for example, which in the early days endeavored to be an international news outlet, now will routinely report things as Americans (sometimes as Westerners), and openly gush about what is good for America, regardless of whether it is right or wrong or good for the rest of the world.


I don't see much about Wikipedia that could be called democratic, non-elitist, or populist in the genuine sense of those words.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:56am) *

All of this, however, was predicated upon the social structure of the corporation, which is extremely un-free and un-democratic: there is no right to free speech in a corporation and there is a rigid hierarchical control. If you step out of bounds in a corporation, you are expelled from the corporation with no trial and no questions asked. (This may be less true outside of the US, but it is still generally true.)


Nor do I see much about Wikipedia that supports free speech or pluralism. Don't make me laugh.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:56am) *

But the internet threw a potential wrench into the works: there is no central control of the information broadcast around the internet. But you do have things like Google, which endeavors to be a center for retrieving information from the internet, and like Wikipedia, which endeavors to be a central collection site for information on the internet. If a majority of the people could be relied upon to get most of their internet information through either something already under corporate control or through Google or Wikipedia, the potential problem of information on the internet becomes a lot more tractable. Google, first of all, is a corporation, so it can be brought to rein in the normal way. Wikipedia, however, is a more amorphous thing.

So, how do the "ruling elites" make sure that the proper "shared values" are enforced at Wikipedia?


I am not sure what values you are talking about, or among whom they are supposed to be shared.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey

QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 6:51am) *

Google, however, is positioned to provide alternative Web 2.0 technologies that may be more intelligently designed and better adapted to the task.
Google is better positioned to provide for the task. Absolutely. Some people on this site hate them, and it is true that their level of power was a bit overwhelming, but they behave as a company should. This cannot be said of Wikipedia (and I dont care if it is a 501c3, that's no excuse for how Wikipeida dealsl.
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 14th December 2007, 6:51am) *

Jimbo seems to be enamored of the media, but he lacks Google's ability to craft the media tools that are best adapted to the public need. Wiki technology, as implemented and demonstrated on Wikipedia, supports and encourages oligarchical thuggery rather than genuine information democracy.
Jimbo is a flash in the pan. In 20 years he'll be like Evil Kneival (sp?). Someone you heard of a long time ago.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

A major theme in systems science is the duality between control and information, a theme whose names are legion, for example:

This trade-off has a significant bearing on one of the discipline-defining problems of systems science, namely, System Identification (SI).

In order to control a system, you have to know something about it, and knowledge about a system comes mainly from two sources:Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 14th December 2007, 1:48pm) *

I don't see much about Wikipedia that could be called democratic, non-elitist, or populist in the genuine sense of those words.


It might have had these things, though.

QUOTE
I am not sure what values you are talking about, or among whom they are supposed to be shared.


The over-riding value is 'maintaining control.' But the 'values' that are to be shared are whatever allow those who believe themselves to be in control to do what they want to do, when they are shared by enough of the population. They might be, in the real world, the belief that America has the right to kill lots of innocent people in order to secure its energy supplies, or to 'fight terrorism.

In Wikipedia, we see much of the same thing, wrought small. To an extent, it is only necessary to foist the 'shared values' onto Jimbo; these might include 'we're here to make an encyclopedia!' which of course segues into banning 'trolls' and otherwise controlling content. But a critical mass of control of Wikipedia, semi-independent of Jimbo, exists, such that it is generally necessary to work with this group in order to promote whatever you want to promote. Probably, however, a lot of these are up to the same sorts of things you are, whether for being up to the same thing you are or for their own personal reasons, so they might be easy to work with.

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, nor considering it from a perspective novel to you, so I sort of wonder what the point of your feigned confusion is.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Fri 14th December 2007, 2:49pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 14th December 2007, 1:48pm) *

I don't see much about Wikipedia that could be called democratic, non-elitist, or populist in the genuine sense of those words.


It might have had these things, though.

QUOTE

I am not sure what values you are talking about, or among whom they are supposed to be shared.


The over-riding value is 'maintaining control.' But the 'values' that are to be shared are whatever allow those who believe themselves to be in control to do what they want to do, when they are shared by enough of the population. They might be, in the real world, the belief that America has the right to kill lots of innocent people in order to secure its energy supplies, or to 'fight terrorism'.

In Wikipedia, we see much of the same thing, wrought small. To an extent, it is only necessary to foist the 'shared values' onto Jimbo; these might include 'we're here to make an encyclopedia!' which of course segues into banning 'trolls' and otherwise controlling content. But a critical mass of control of Wikipedia, semi-independent of Jimbo, exists, such that it is generally necessary to work with this group in order to promote whatever you want to promote. Probably, however, a lot of these are up to the same sorts of things you are, whether for being up to the same thing you are or for their own personal reasons, so they might be easy to work with.

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, nor considering it from a perspective novel to you, so I sort of wonder what the point of your feigned confusion is.


Believe me, I never have to feign confusion, and unless there are rather blatant marks of a rhetorical question, I normally ask a question because I want further information.

Indeed, I revived this thread because of some questions that other people asked on the recent ArbCom WP:NOR thread, and because I dimly remembered answering them, however dimly, on a previous occasion.

Taking both threads into account, we are really just asking —

Why would SlimVirgin & Company be so hell-bent to bend to their will what had been the character of Wikipedia's long-standing policy page on WP:NOR?

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Let us try to stick with the question of what purpose Wikipedia is being purposed to serve.

Moulton said «Search Engine Dominance» (SED), but that is clearly not so much an end in itself as a means to an end.

The closest that I came to suggesting a thesis of my own was along these lines —

QUOTE

The basic scenario was laid out clearly enough in those Dystopian novels that I read as a youth and the basic principles of media dynamics that govern Wikipediot Devolution were laid out by http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/ so long ago that they passed from Archetype to Cliche when I was an undergraduate, and apparently into Oblivion now.

People keep being distracted by one damn Message after another when they ought to be looking at the kind of Medium that is being so craftily crafted under their very noses.

For example, people on all sides waste so much time trying to figure out what side the Cabal is on — when it comes to this or that economic, political, religious, or scientific tiff.

The Cabal is not on any side but the Cabal's side.

Sure, maybe the Cabal is taking the side of North-North-West Eurasia today, but it can just as easily shift to taking the side of Southerly Eurasia any time that it becomes convenient to do so.

What does that mean about the Media Operating Characteristic (MOC) that is the Cabal's MOC of Choice?

It means that the Cabal's most favored medium must be extremely agile, ductile, flexible, malleable, and plastic. It cannot be a medium that allows of being rigidly phase-locked into any one position or any one POV. More precisely, it must be agile enough to shift its phase 180° in a period of time just ε-greater than the modal attention span of the viewing public.

How long is that?

Your Mullage May Vary, but if we look at the US case in the last Dubya-Dubya Police Action, the US media were reporting on the Future Sea Battle for just about 6 months before it started to look downright silly not to go ahead and have it.

Six months is not exactly turning on a dime, and I think that the Powers That Be are probably trying to get that down to a temporal turning radius ≤ 6 weeks.


Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

If I understand you, Jonny, I don't think I agree.

We might divide information into two types: immediate information and background information. These appellations are almost self-explanatory, but I'll give an example just to be clear: immediate information would be something like a radio/television/newspaper report that the US is invading some country; background information would be the context in which this happens, which would include encyclopedia entries on the regions and any ongoing tensions therein, as well as scholarly (and non-scholarly) books and articles going into more depth on these matters. While Wikipedia is apparently pretty good at efficiently collecting breaking, 'immediate information' news on a given matter in one place, I suspect that its utility as a tool for controlling information of this sort is very limited: most people learn about such matters from their radio/television/newspaper, accept whatever they find out from these sources and think no further on the matter. Not many people hear that Liza Minelli collapsed on stage and rush to Wikipedia to get something close to real-time updates from almost all possible news sources on exactly what happened. Nor would many people do anything similar on any other immediate news item.

Background information, however, is a different matter. Mostly, people don't research this, either. But a few do, and these people influence the opinions of other people. If I happen to have taken an interest in Liza Minelli's life, I might be able to drop the remark that perhaps her collapsing on stage recently is related to the dizziness that she has reported experiencing for several years (I'm making this up, and I have no reason to believe that Ms. Minelli has experienced any more dizziness than anyone else). And memes like this take on a life of their own; before long there would be a web of self-important sentiment centered around me that is pretty sure that Liza Minelli's recent collapse is related to her chronic dizziness.

And for that sort of information, people do (sadly) refer to Wikipedia, although it would be nice - hopefully Google will do it with their service - if numbers of views for individual pages were disclosed. (This would probably be bad for business for Wikipedia: why spend countless hours documenting that capital punishment really does reduce violent crime, and edit-warring with those who want to stifle such information, if only 17 people a month view the article, including 4 who are actively editing it?)

But background information doesn't seem to be what you have written about, unless you are thinking in terms of an unachievable ideal: people do not abandon or refresh their background information frequently, if they even do it at all. I took a class on the US Military System twenty years ago, and I have not since updated my understanding that the Army's underlying philosophy comes mostly from Clausewitz; the Navy's mostly from Mahan; and the Air Force's mostly from Douhet.

Moreover, I think that if Wikipedia or any other medium endeavored to flip-flop people's background knowledge, it would mostly come off as flakey and unreliable ... which maybe goes more toward demonstrating that that really is what the Wikipedia powers that be have tried to do, but still ...

So have I read you incorrectly?

I had been thinking, by the way, that it might serve to define as precisely as possible what it is that the Wikipedia powers do that we believe does not serve a 'legitimate' purpose: an alternative hypothesis is that Linda Mack bans scores of people because that is pretty much what the legitimate purpose of creating a useful online encyclopedia requires.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Salt,

This is not a day when I can focus, except intermittently, so I'll have to break up your comments into smaller pieces and take things one chunk at a time.

My overall impression is that we may be operating from different funds of assumptions, so it may be necessary to re-examine the grants that we severally take for granted.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 1:39am) *

If I understand you, Jonny, I don't think I agree.

We might divide information into two types: immediate information and background information. These appellations are almost self-explanatory, but I'll give an example just to be clear: immediate information would be something like a radio-television-newspaper report that the US is invading some country; background information would be the context in which this happens, which would include encyclopedia entries on the regions and any ongoing tensions therein, as well as scholarly (and non-scholarly) books and articles going into more depth on these matters.

While Wikipedia is apparently pretty good at efficiently collecting breaking, 'immediate information' news on a given matter in one place, I suspect that its utility as a tool for controlling information of this sort is very limited: most people learn about such matters from their radio-television-newspaper, accept whatever they find out from these sources and think no further on the matter. Not many people hear that Liza Minelli collapsed on stage and rush to Wikipedia to get something close to real-time updates from almost all possible news sources on exactly what happened. Nor would many people do anything similar on any other immediate news item.


Right off, it appears that you and I entered Wikipedia through very different doors and that we have arrived at very different opinions about a whole host of issues.

I have a logical-semiotic quibble with the term «Immediate Information» since «Immediate» means «Unmediated» and since all information is mediated by signs. I can use that term so long as everyone knows that it's just loose talk, but when push comes to shove in the final analysis it will be necessary to use other terms, say, «Short-Term Information» (STI).

I cannot agree with these assertions:Perhaps more importantly, it never would have occurred to me that an Encyclopedia was supposed to be a resource for short-term information. In Normal Usage, a usage that is apparently news to the WikiΦaithful, there are wholly different names for the variety of publications that fall into the category of «Short-Term Information Resources» (STIR's).

So what are the consequences of this Highly Original Innovation (HOI) in the Normal Usage (NU) of the term «Encyclopedia»?

No doubt there are those who would say that the consequences of this Initial Idiosyncrasy are trivial and can be neglected. I would object to the contrary that the long-term practical effects of this Wikipedious Originality (WO) are profound and ultimately debilitating to the whole project.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I continue to continue …

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 1:39am) *

Background information, however, is a different matter. Mostly, people don't research this, either. But a few do, and these people influence the opinions of other people. If I happen to have taken an interest in Liza Minelli's life, I might be able to drop the remark that perhaps her collapsing on stage recently is related to the dizziness that she has reported experiencing for several years (I'm making this up, and I have no reason to believe that Ms. Minelli has experienced any more dizziness than anyone else). And memes like this take on a life of their own; before long there would be a web of self-important sentiment centered around me that is pretty sure that Liza Minelli's recent collapse is related to her chronic dizziness.

And for that sort of information, people do (sadly) refer to Wikipedia, although it would be nice — hopefully Google will do it with their service — if numbers of views for individual pages were disclosed. (This would probably be bad for business for Wikipedia: why spend countless hours documenting that capital punishment really does reduce violent crime, and edit-warring with those who want to stifle such information, if only 17 people a month view the article, including 4 who are actively editing it?)


You appear to putting forth what is known in semiotics as an «Interpreter Model» (IM), that is, a theory about the population of interpreters being addressed by a particular collection of signs. In that context, one speaks of a typical member of the model population as a «Model Interpreter» (MI).

If I read you right, you are saying something like this:Let me know if that sounds right …

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:18am) *

I have a logical-semiotic quibble with the term «Immediate Information» since «Immediate» means «Unmediated» and since all information is mediated by signs. I can use that term so long as everyone knows that it's just loose talk, but when push comes to shove in the final analysis it will be necessary to use other terms, say, «Short-Term Information» (STI).


I agree; your appellation is better.

QUOTE
I cannot agree with these assertions:
  • Wikipedia is pretty good at efficiently collecting STI.


Why not? I'll see if I can find a good example, but mainly I remember seeing a real-world news article about how Wikipedia's page on some breaking event was being updated with leaks almost concurrently with different news agencies releasing different information.

QUOTE
  • Wikipedia's utility as a tool for controlling STI is very limited.


Again, why not? In what way do you think Wikipedia might effectively be used to control STI?

QUOTE
Perhaps more importantly, it never would have occurred to me that an Encyclopedia was supposed to be a resource for short-term information. In Normal Usage, a usage that is apparently news to the WikiΦaithful, there are wholly different names for the variety of publications that fall into the category of «Short-Term Information Resources» (STIR's).

So what are the consequences of this Highly Original Innovation (HOI) in the Normal Usage (NU) of the term «Encyclopedia»?

No doubt there are those who would say that the consequences of this Initial Idiosyncrasy are trivial and can be neglected. I would object to the contrary that the long-term practical effects of this Wikipedious Originality (WO) are profound and ultimately debilitating to the whole project.


Well, forget that it is nominally an 'encyclopedia.' What is it, really? Isn't it really a forum where a lot of people with too much time on their hands enter stuff that is presented as information, with a second wave effort of monitoring the stuff to see that it passes muster as the sort of information that the powers that be want to have presented? And isn't this second wave much less efficient/rapid than the first wave, with exceptions for closely monitored articles?

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 5:46pm) *

You appear to putting forth what is known in semiotics as an «Interpreter Model» (IM), that is, a theory about the population of interpreters being addressed by a particular collection of signs. In that context, one speaks of a typical member of the model population as a «Model Interpreter» (MI).

If I read you right, you are saying something like this:
  • In your theory, the Model Interpreter (MI) of Wikipedia content treats background information and breaking news information differently.
  • As a result, the Message Controllers (MC's) of Wikipedia content have different degrees of control over background information and breaking news information.
Let me know if that sounds right …

Jon Awbrey


I would at least phrase it differently. First, I would consider the MI of the vast swarm of information media available ubiquitously, and note that this MI treats background information and breaking news information differently, and that the typical MI of this group does not generally retrieve breaking news information from Wikipedia. This in spite of my belief that one thing that Wikipedia does pretty well at is collecting breaking news in one location.

Second, I don't think that the problem of the MCs of Wikipedia in controlling breaking news information as opposed to background information is particularly a result of how anyone differently treats the two types of information; it is primarily a matter of the information itself. The MCs mostly do not have the time to manipulate breaking news information in the same way that they can manipulate background information, and - remembering that it is generally breaking news information to them as well - they have a greater chance of screwing up in easily recognizable ways when they try to manipulate breaking news information. Basically, with background information, there is a lot of stability in from where and at what rate the information seeps into the 'general knowledge' of the set of all MIs, and so the MCs of Wikipedia can plan around this in their manipulations. With breaking news information, this it not so, and if the MCs try to bury reports of torture at Abu Graib, for example, they run the risk that this very information will become a very big story, and that their efforts at censorship will be painfully obvious to anyone, limiting their ability effectively to manipulate information in the future.

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

Does anyone really believe that there is any incentive to "break news" at Wikipedia? Hardly.

Professional writers, educators, and scholars will never go to a place like Wikipedia with their original works, and as such, nothing breaks there, albeit there seems to be plenty of underemployed people spending countless hours sleuthing and changing things more and more toward a mean and mediocre status quo.

I suspect that, on balance, Wikipedia will always be many a stones throw away from anything truly new and / or current, save for youngsters copying the major media centers only to be questioned as to whether or not said information is original. wacko.gif

Posted by: Saltimbanco

Let me clarify that I think Wikipedia works pretty well at collecting breaking news, not at breaking it. What I mean is, if an airliner crashes in a major city somewhere tonight, you would pretty quickly find a Wikipedia article on it that would get updated with links when even obscure news outlets add information about eye-witness accounts, passenger lists, etc. And these links sometimes reach more deeply than you might get via Google, which might be why Jimbo imagines that he might cobble together a search engine to challenge Google.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 9:29pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:18am) *

I have a logical-semiotic quibble with the term «Immediate Information» since «Immediate» means «Unmediated» and since all information is mediated by signs. I can use that term so long as everyone knows that it's just loose talk, but when push comes to shove in the final analysis it will be necessary to use other terms, say, «Short-Term Information» (STI).


I agree; your appellation is better.


That was somewhat spur of the moment, but a better term is bound to occur to us eventually.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 9:29pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:18am) *

[I disagree that] Wikipedia is pretty good at efficiently collecting STI.


Why not? I'll see if I can find a good example, but mainly I remember seeing a real-world news article about how Wikipedia's page on some breaking event was being updated with leaks almost concurrently with different news agencies releasing different information.


I guess I give more weight to the "pretty good" condition than the "efficiently" condition. Things that I consider "pretty bad" are the lack of multiple independent fact-checking in the bum's rush of Junior Jimbo Olsens to get the scoop. Wikipedia's notable capacity for the efficient generation of unchecked gossip is the sort of thing that prevents me from even bothering to glance at Wikipedia's breaking news stories.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 9:29pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:18am) *

[I disagree that] Wikipedia's utility as a tool for controlling STI is very limited.


Again, why not? In what way do you think Wikipedia might effectively be used to control STI?


First let me say that I have not bought the premiss that Wikipedia's Message Controllers (MC's) have any less control over breaking news and current events information than they have over what is more properly called — by more proper callers — "encyclopedic" information.

So the generic question is —

«How Do Wikipedia's Message Controllers Control Information?»

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

In order for Wikipedia to ever effectively compete with Google on any meaningful scale, there would, in fact, have to be an incentive for the next 10 million or so people to start adding content to same on a timely basis; in effect, breaking the news. Then they would have to have a substantial stake and/or compensation package to keep them there. Now, let's see...Google is worth how much and has how many potential access points for ad-revenue?

Google survives nicely without Wikipedia but I doubt the reverse thesis works.

"Knol" is going to be a very interesting project.

Google will have an incentive to direct traffic to Google.


Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:44pm) *

So the generic question is —

«How Do Wikipedia's Message Controllers Control Information?»


By blocking the way of inquiry, of course.

QUOTE(WhispersOfWisdom @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:52pm) *

In order for Wikipedia to ever effectively compete with Google on any meaningful scale, there would, in fact, have to be an incentive for the next 10 million or so people to start adding content to same on a timely basis; in effect, breaking the news. Then they would have to have a substantial stake and/or compensation package to keep them there. Now, let's see...Google is worth how much and has how many potential access points for ad-revenue?

Google survives nicely without Wikipedia but I doubt the reverse thesis works.

"Knol" is going to be a very interesting project.

Google will have an incentive to direct traffic to Google.


I don't think it would need 10 million people; if you just have people monitoring a broad spectrum of news outlets and making updates based on them, that would suffice. I agree that there is no real incentive for people to do this, and yet, people do it.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 11:28pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:44pm) *

So the generic question is —

«How Do Wikipedia's Message Controllers Control Information?»


By blocking the way of inquiry, of course.


Strictly speaking, they banned the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User:Way_of_Inquiry, but close enough.

QUOTE
  • 04:17, 11 March 2007 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs) blocked "Way of Inquiry (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite‎ (banned User:Jon Awbrey)
  • 11:54, 12 September 2006 Way of Inquiry (Talk | contribs) New user account

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:44pm) *

I guess I give more weight to the "pretty good" condition than the "efficiently" condition. Things that I consider "pretty bad" are the lack of multiple independent fact-checking in the bum's rush of Junior Jimbo Olsens to get the scoop. Wikipedia's notable capacity for the efficient generation of unchecked gossip is the sort of thing that prevents me from even bothering to glance at Wikipedia's breaking news stories.


Obviously, any information gleaned from Wikipedia is to be sipped rather than gulped: much of it is likely to be crap; some of it is likely to be outright disinformation; and all of it is likely to be poorly written.

But if you take a look at Wikipedia's breaking news you find a pretty broad representation of news agencies. I'll go to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11_December_2007_Algiers_bombings, on the guess that it is less likely to have some villain hovering over it than the other selections. Here we have links to CNN, CBC, al Jazeera, the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press, a UN agency, and some Chinese news outfit. Most of these come up in a Google search of "Algiers bombing," along with one from Haaretz that seems to be a rehash of an al Jazeera report. But the Chinese one does not, at least not in the top 10 results. In this instance, the additional information from the Chinese site - that a Chinese national was among those killed - is not earth shattering, other than for his friends and relatives, but it illustrates I think the potential for a Wiki model to collect news links,

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 11:57pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sat 15th December 2007, 10:44pm) *

I guess I give more weight to the "pretty good" condition than the "efficiently" condition. Things that I consider "pretty bad" are the lack of multiple independent fact-checking in the bum's rush of Junior Jimbo Olsens to get the scoop. Wikipedia's notable capacity for the efficient generation of unchecked gossip is the sort of thing that prevents me from even bothering to glance at Wikipedia's breaking news stories.


Obviously, any information gleaned from Wikipedia is to be sipped rather than gulped: much of it is likely to be crap; some of it is likely to be outright disinformation; and all of it is likely to be poorly written.

But if you take a look at Wikipedia's breaking news you find a pretty broad representation of news agencies. I'll go to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11_December_2007_Algiers_bombings, on the guess that it is less likely to have some villain hovering over it than the other selections. Here we have links to CNN, CBC, al Jazeera, the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press, a UN agency, and some Chinese news outfit. Most of these come up in a Google search of "Algiers bombing", along with one from Haaretz that seems to be a rehash of an al Jazeera report. But the Chinese one does not, at least not in the top 10 results. In this instance, the additional information from the Chinese site — that a Chinese national was among those killed — is not earth shattering, other than for his friends and relatives, but it illustrates I think the potential for a Wiki model to collect news links,


Look, «Rule Numero Yuno» in my Book Of Critical Semiotics is «Consider The Source».

I have seen how the WikiPepperoniâ„¢ is made, and it's enough to make me swear off that brand for good.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Saltimbanco

Possibly I have a greater general contempt for most news outlets than you do, Jonny, such that the badness of the Wikipedia brand, while extraordinary, does not set it completely apart from the others.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sun 16th December 2007, 12:34am) *

Possibly I have a greater general contempt for most news outlets than you do, Jonny, such that the badness of the Wikipedia brand, while extraordinary, does not set it completely apart from the others.


I don't remember praising establishment media especially extravagantly here.

In the case of professional news sources, however, especially those that still maintain a modicum of old-fangled professional ethics and standards, one comes to know over time roughly what kind of spin to expect from each media outlet — and from each byline within that outlet — and all of that is what it means to «Consider The Source».

That consideration of the source is simply not available with Wikipedia.

And that does set Wikipedia completely apart from other media outlets.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

I disagree, Jon.

First, how much do you ever really know about a real reporter? I have only ever looked into the background of one or two, and that mainly to see if there might be a genetic reason for a bias I'd thought I'd been seeing beforehand. Beyond that, a real reporter is a professional; if he wanted to lie to me, I expect that he'd do a better job of it than almost anyone at Wikipedia.

And second, you generally can follow various editors around Wikipedia, and get an idea of their spin. Any experienced user of Wikipedia knows that the discussion pages are an essential part of any article, albeit most of them indicate that nothing in the article should be trusted in the least. The cabal at Wikipedia has not yet been so powerful that they can impose their preferred spin on articles without there being a trail of the shenanigans in the discussion pages.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sun 16th December 2007, 1:09am) *

I disagree, Jon.

First, how much do you ever really know about a real reporter? I have only ever looked into the background of one or two, and that mainly to see if there might be a genetic reason for a bias I'd thought I'd been seeing beforehand. Beyond that, a real reporter is a professional; if he wanted to lie to me, I expect that he'd do a better job of it than almost anyone at Wikipedia.

And second, you generally can follow various editors around Wikipedia, and get an idea of their spin. Any experienced user of Wikipedia knows that the discussion pages are an essential part of any article, albeit most of them indicate that nothing in the article should be trusted in the least. The cabal at Wikipedia has not yet been so powerful that they can impose their preferred spin on articles without there being a trail of the shenanigans in the discussion pages.


I have to pack it in for the day, but I remind you that we are currently arguing about how good a newspaper a publication advertized as an encyclopedia makes, which is right up there with arguing how good a hawk something packaged as a handsaw makes. I frankly do not see how you expect to win such an argument, since even if you convince me that something packaged as a handsaw makes a good hawk, then I will have to observe that there is something really out of joint with the packaging.

G'night, Sweet Wiki-Prince …

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Above the fold, Wikipedia is a volatile compendium of popular culture.

Below the fold, it's a bewildering MMPORG with a disingenuous "rule-book" that resembles a plate of spaghetti with a randomly variable sauce of the day.

Calling it an "encyclopedia" is like peddling fecal matter in baby food jars.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 16th December 2007, 1:18am) *

I have to pack it in for the day, but I remind you that we are currently arguing about how good a newspaper a publication advertized as an encyclopedia makes, which is right up there with arguing how good a hawk something packaged as a handsaw makes. I frankly do not see how you expect to win such an argument, since even if you convince me that something packaged as a handsaw makes a good hawk, then I will have to observe that there is something really out of joint with the packaging.


(Does it make a good encyclopedia, though?)

What Wikipedia has succeeded at is in getting thousands of people to contribute content to the Internet in a more or less tractable form. (A lot of that content isn't worth much, but still.) And as the repository of that content, Wikipedia gets a lot of eyeballs. This is what makes it valuable to those who want to influence what people believe.

For the reasons I have given previously, I think that it is easier to influence background information in Wikipedia than breaking news information, and I think that a full-court press is underway, at least with regard to certain topics, to control information at Wikipedia. I wouldn't say that Wikipedia makes a good newspaper; more like a RSS feed that sometimes has intelligent input. But for this use, Wikipedia is better than it is in being used as an encyclopedia.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

… and flowers never bend …

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 1:39am) *

But background information doesn't seem to be what you have written about, unless you are thinking in terms of an unachievable ideal: people do not abandon or refresh their background information frequently, if they even do it at all. I took a class on the US Military System twenty years ago, and I have not since updated my understanding that the Army's underlying philosophy comes mostly from Clausewitz; the Navy's mostly from Mahan; and the Air Force's mostly from Douhet.


You seem to be equivocating the term «Background Information» at this point.It is of course the latter class of Model Inquirer that a knowledge resource is designed to serve.

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sat 15th December 2007, 1:39am) *

Moreover, I think that if Wikipedia or any other medium endeavored to flip-flop people's background knowledge, it would mostly come off as flakey and unreliable … which maybe goes more toward demonstrating that that really is what the Wikipedia powers that be have tried to do, but still …


Exactly. In my experience with Wikipedia, that is precisely one of the reasons why people who do have the relevant background knowledge in a given subject area judge Wikipedia to be so utterly "Flakey And Unreliable" (FAU).

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sun 16th December 2007, 10:26am) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 16th December 2007, 1:18am) *

I have to pack it in for the day, but I remind you that we are currently arguing about how good a newspaper a publication advertized as an encyclopedia makes, which is right up there with arguing how good a hawk something packaged as a handsaw makes. I frankly do not see how you expect to win such an argument, since even if you convince me that something packaged as a handsaw makes a good hawk, then I will have to observe that there is something really out of joint with the packaging.


(Does it make a good encyclopedia, though?)

What Wikipedia has succeeded at is in getting thousands of people to contribute content to the Internet in a more or less tractable form. (A lot of that content isn't worth much, but still.) And as the repository of that content, Wikipedia gets a lot of eyeballs. This is what makes it valuable to those who want to influence what people believe.

For the reasons I have given previously, I think that it is easier to influence background information in Wikipedia than breaking news information, and I think that a full-court press is underway, at least with regard to certain topics, to control information at Wikipedia. I wouldn't say that Wikipedia makes a good newspaper; more like a RSS feed that sometimes has intelligent input. But for this use, Wikipedia is better than it is in being used as an encyclopedia.


You are forgetting about the 10,000,000 people that will have an incentive to contribute to Google.

By going to Google, you get WP. From now on, that will change, as will the numbers and types of people that will contribute to the new Google prototype.

Right now, those people are contributing to their own educational communities and news networks.

When the new paradigm opens up at Google, there will be change. Wikipedia was a great start; for that, Mr. Sanger and Mr. Wales are to be congratulated.

Next? smile.gif

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Sun 16th December 2007, 1:09am) *

I disagree, Jon.

First, how much do you ever really know about a real reporter? I have only ever looked into the background of one or two, and that mainly to see if there might be a genetic reason for a bias I'd thought I'd been seeing beforehand. Beyond that, a real reporter is a professional; if he wanted to lie to me, I expect that he'd do a better job of it than almost anyone at Wikipedia.

And second, you generally can follow various editors around Wikipedia, and get an idea of their spin. Any experienced user of Wikipedia knows that the discussion pages are an essential part of any article, albeit most of them indicate that nothing in the article should be trusted in the least. The cabal at Wikipedia has not yet been so powerful that they can impose their preferred spin on articles without there being a trail of the shenanigans in the discussion pages.


Point 1. I'm not talking about knowing what they had for breakfast or what kind of dog they have. I'm saying that you get to know what to expect from CBS versus CNN, or Buchwald versus Safire, by taking in what they put out over time. And whether you want to believe it or not, people who live up to professional standards — or find themselves with no credibility and/or no paycheck — conduct themselves very differently from the great mass of Wikipediots.

Point 2. Please, why don't you think about this one first and try it again.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 16th December 2007, 7:46pm) *

Point 1. I'm not talking about knowing what they had for breakfast or what kind of dog they have. I'm saying that you get to know what to expect from CBS versus CNN, or Buchwald versus Safire, by taking in what they put out over time. And whether you want to believe it or not, people who live up to professional standards — or find themselves with no credibility and/or no paycheck — conduct themselves very differently from the great mass of Wikipediots.


TRB?

QUOTE
Point 2. Please, why don't you think about this one first and try it again.


I think it's tangential, in any case.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 16th December 2007, 11:30am) *

You seem to be equivocating the term «Background Information» at this point.
  • There is the sort of background information that our Model Readers already have and that they are content to maintain in the style to which they are currently accustomed. In that case they are hardly to be found actively seeking more.
  • There is the sort of background information that our Model Readers do not already have in sufficient breadth or depth to be content with it, that they are therefore seeking to increase, and that they may reasonably expect that other sources have already accumulated.
It is of course the latter class of Model Inquirer that a knowledge resource is designed to serve.


The main distinction in your bifurcation seems to be in having or not having. I'm not convinced that this is a worthwhile distinction to make, at least not for a purpose that I recognize in what you have written.

It might be worthwhile for me to back up and elaborate on what I mean by 'background information.' 'Background information' is a set of broadly mutually reinforcing beliefs, all of which are accepted as true, and in the context of which any new information is considered. That it is all accepted as true and that it is all broadly mutually reinforcing is what makes it difficult to change.

Given my definition above of background information, it doesn't make much sense to consider background information that one does not have; information only becomes background information based on the manner in which one "has" it, and newly acquired information may or may not become background information.

What is wanted, toward the end of controlling people's beliefs, is to control the information they get in instances in which they decide that their background information on a particular matter is lacking, and they undertake to acquire more information on the matter, perhaps to incorporate it into their background information.

So, someone might decide that he really doesn't have enough background information to make sense of the debate in the US about universal health care. He goes out to learn more. Depending upon where he goes, he might encounter the memes that more than 2% of US GDP is spent on health care paper work; that 16% of the US population has no health insurance; that government-run programs are always less efficient than the free market; etc. He could very easily acquire background information that convinces him of two opposite beliefs: that universal health care would improve life in the US; or that it would make it worse. And then, so armed, he will decide that Presidential candidates advocating universal health care are either honest, responsible politicians for doing so, or that they are villains of some sort. But really, there is no inherent difference between the type of information that becomes background information and that which does not.

Surely I'm droning on too long at this point.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I think that there is an important distinction between background information that a person has, and that the person is happy to keep as it is, and background information that is stored in an information resource, that a person who is not content with his or her current information might be seeking to acquire.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

How is the latter background information, though? Yes, a given information resource might (and many do) offer itself as the one-stop-shop, where a set of 89 memes are offered, pre-tested for use as background information. But there isn't any quality to the 89 memes separately that makes them background information as opposed to just garden-variety information.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I have no idea what you just said.

You are engaging in a whole lot of a priori argument, using hypothetical and highly unrealistic made-up examples, and relying on Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda inferences of the form «It coulda been, therefore it is».

But most folks here are way past the stage of a priori wishful thinking. We have tons and tonnes of real life experience with the kinds of things that just keep happening in Wikipedia. We are seeking explanations for the kinds of things that actually happen there, and we know that the reasons given by Wikipediot True Believers simply do not explain what really goes on there. So we have moved on to other theories.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

I hadn't thought we'd even gotten that far.

Anyway, perhaps it would be best to pass in the night.

Posted by: Moulton

Perhaps this is a good juncture to rephrase the objective of this conversation, and summarize how far we've gotten toward answering the key questions on the table here.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

For The Master Of The Games On His Birthday

Do we feign understanding of what underlies,
And so become victim to the figmentations
That the mind posts up to the lintels of sense?

Or do we but array the Data Of The Senses
Along the lines that they themselves suggest?

Then again, on third thought, what's the diff?

— Jon Awbrey, 16 December 2007

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 16th December 2007, 10:40pm) *

Perhaps this is a good juncture to rephrase the objective of this conversation, and summarize how far we've gotten toward answering the key questions on the table here.


The two birdfeeders on the maple tree in our backyard are specially designed for dispensing thistleseed to the goldfinches of summer who stay to tough out the cold, more grey than gold in their winter plumage. And the snowbirds (http://images.google.com/images?q=Junco&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title) and the occasional deer glean the bimodal distribution of seed that falls to the ground. But heavy snow this weekend covered the patch of ground beneath the feeders, as it did of course everywhere else. So when it finally stopped snowing yesterday I scattered a few extra handfuls of thistleseed on the area just next to their usual place — that was as far as I could manage to throw it from my cozy but lazy station at the kitchen door.

It's been a whole day now and the snowbirds still haven't found the bounty that lies just adjacent to their usual scratching grounds, now so sparse of seed they had to wait for last night's passing deer to paw a bit of the snow away.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Pictures! Post pictures, please.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 17th December 2007, 10:43am) *

Pictures! Post pictures, please.


Flash, and it's gone …

A moment frozen in time …

Alas, the snow is still blowin' …

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Jonny Cache

We have been observing a social phenomenon and testing explanations of its more puzzling features. People who do a lot of this sort of thing will tell you that there are many pitfalls on the way to a working explanation of any social phenomenon, and I have mentioned a couple of these cautions in a previous post on this thread.

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 14th December 2007, 10:45am) *

If you read the previous discussion on this thread, you may notice that I am taking some pains to avoid falling into two types of error:
  • The observational error that social psychologists call Fundamental Attribution Bias (FAB), which arises from the natural human tendency to fixate on the casual effects of individual actors as the principal explanation of any phenomenon, doing that at the expense of giving due regard to background, contextual, environmental, functional, historical, and systematic factors.
  • The theoretical error that is commonly called the Genetic Fallacy, which arises from the natural human tendency to fixate on the origin or the genesis of a thing in explaining or evaluating that thing.
The combination of those two sources of error in the present case leads people to answer questions about the present purpose of Wikipedia by speculating on what the purpose of its founders might have been at the beginning of its life.

I think that is likely to prove a red herring.


Being aware of our natural inclinations to various types of error makes it easier for us to reframe our attention, to shift our paradigm, to escape the drowning ships of theory that might otherwise doom our hopes of arriving at an adequate explanation of any social phenomenon.

McLuhan's maxim is another one of those attention reframing devices. It serves to nudge our focus away from the message and onto the medium. It may not sound like much, but that slight shift of attention is often enough to unstick a moribund process of inquiry and get it moving forward again.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

A lot of what we are watching looks like Machiavellian Power Games, where players vie for status and power, with dynamics something like Survivor where each episode ends with someone being pitched overboard -- the scapegoat du jour.

It reminds me a lot like King of the Mountain, where players try to topple other players until they make it to the top (until they topple, too).

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 17th December 2007, 11:48pm) *

A lot of what we are watching looks like Machiavellian Power Games, where players vie for status and power, with dynamics something like Survivor where each episode ends with someone being pitched overboard — the scapegoat du jour.

It reminds me a lot like King of the Mountain, where players try to topple other players until they make it to the top (until they topple, too).


Those are good descriptions of the phenomenon. But an explanation calls for something more than mere description. We know why the producers of all the various and sundry survivor shows, from the Wikest Link to Borg Brother, do what they do — it's cheap entertainment in every sense of the word cheap. That factor probably accounts for some of the fandumb of WikiΦantasy Egoland, but I think that there has got to be a lot more to it on the side of the producers of the show.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Well, there's this model, adapted from a general model of competition and conflict developed by Rene Girard...

http://ultra.musenet.org:8020/media/WikiDrama.html

That version focuses on the competition to control content, but we could tweak it to shift the focus to the competition for status and power.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:11am) *

Well, there's this model, adapted from a general model of competition and conflict developed by Rene Girard …

http://ultra.musenet.org:8020/media/WikiDrama.html

That version focuses on the competition to control content, but we could tweak it to shift the focus to the competition for status and power.


You continue to focus on the players, the amateur actors.

What about the producers of the show?

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:14am) *
What about the producers of the show?

They're too clueless to appreciate the dynamics of system modeling, which is why the unintended consequences of their Frankenstein baby is characterized by Girard's Model of Mimetic Lunacy.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 1:29am) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:14am) *

What about the producers of the show?


They're too clueless to appreciate the dynamics of system modeling, which is why the unintended consequences of their Frankenstein baby is characterized by Girard's Model of Mimetic Lunacy.


I'm betting that Jimbo knows more models than you do.

It's all he needs to know to tell what the boobs will buy.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

The folks at Google are not boobs, and they didn't buy Wikipedia, even though they could have picked it up for chump change.

The problem is, they would have had to change out all the chumps who operate it.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 8:37am) *

The folks are Google are not boobs, and they didn't buy Wikipedia, even though they could have picked it up for chump change.

The problem is, they would have had to change out all the chumps who operate it.


There are days when I think that SlimVirgin must have stolen your identity.

Or maybe you were her all along.

Now go have a cup of coffee or three and quit pretending to be such a blithering ediot.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Please refactor that.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:00am) *

Please refactor that.


Sorry, it's a prime invective.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Harrumph.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE

You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away



Moulton,

Here is what I find annoying, and it's something that you seem to do as a matter of character. You come up to the verge of some important epiphany, and then jam your gyres in reverse and back away as quickly as possible, with a dust of cloud and a wimpy «Ho Hum Slither Away». As it happens, I have known a number of people who recurrently run through this very routine — «This Vehicle May Back Up When It Comes Time To Draw A Conclusion Or Heaven Forbid Act» is a Sign of the Climes in the Tropic of Academe — and so I long ago dubbed it the «http://www.songfta.com/songs/ghe-ssa.html» phenomenon.

For instance —

QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 17th December 2007, 11:48pm) *

A lot of what we are watching looks like Machiavellian Power Games, where players vie for status and power, with dynamics something like Survivor where each episode ends with someone being pitched overboard — the scapegoat du jour.

It reminds me a lot like King of the Mountain, where players try to topple other players until they make it to the top (until they topple, too).


Here you draw the very apt analogy between Wikipedia and the recent TV de-genre of Survivor shows, but then you do everything but apply the analogy to draw the obvious inference about Wikipedia, that it is a Production, that it therefore has Producers, Directors, Deputy Directors, and maybe even a Script.

Unless you think that Kid Nation really is just a bunch of kids cast off in the wilderness on their own, with no direction the home audience is solicited the obsequels of which to keep on keeping on tuning into?

Now what is so frightening about the idea that this Production might have Producers?

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Saltimbanco

Producers? For the whole thing? No.

Not because it's so frightening an idea, but because if there were centralized control built into the very foundation of Wikipedia, it would turn out a more polished product. It's easy to reject an Intelligent Design hypothesis when the design isn't any too intelligent.

The process of control at Wikipedia is one that will predictably lead to one particular, mutually re-inforcing group of people to control the thing. But that doesn't seem to be what you are hinting at.

Posted by: Moulton

I think it's a false conclusion.

The producers of Survivor clearly intended the suspense drama they produced. At the end of every episode, the players were obliged to kick someone off the island whether they wanted to or not.

But the producers of Wikipedia clearly intended something other than what they have in fact unwittingly produced.

After three decades in Washington, Wyoming's Senator Alan Simpson noted that with all the Congressional legislation he had helped craft over the years, there was one law he discovered in the sense of scientific discovery of natural laws. He said he discovered the Law of Unintended Consequences, wherein Congress wrote legislation intending some desirable anticipated outcome, but time and again the actual outcome sadly departed from what the legislators had anticipated.

My view is that the actual outcome of the Wikipedia Project includes lamentably unexpected and undesirable events which have brought the project into considerable disrepute.

That's why I invoked the Frankenstein metaphor, since I don't believe Jimbo and his personally appointed sycophants actually intended to produce the monster that they have given birth to.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:49am) *

Producers? For the whole thing? No.

Not because it's so frightening an idea, but because if there were centralized control built into the very foundation of Wikipedia, it would turn out a more polished product. It's easy to reject an Intelligent Design hypothesis when the design isn't any too intelligent.

The process of control at Wikipedia is one that will predictably lead to one particular, mutually re-inforcing group of people to control the thing. But that doesn't seem to be what you are hinting at.


What purpose do the producers of a TV show have?

Is it to turn out a highly polished educational or otherwise enlightening product?

No, they tried that in the 50's, and they mostly gave it up.

Their purpose must be sought elsewhere.

I see a lot of people still buying the populist myth that Wikipedia is some kind of grass-roots phenomenon. I can see that a line like that derives a lot of its obvious attraction from the appeal that it makes to popular narcissism. I can see how people might have believed that 2 or 3 years ago, but there is no real justification for it now, the eternal popularity of narcissism aside.

People who go on dreaming that Wikipedia is a grass-roots phenomenon are simply ignoring the "transparent" groundskeeping team that controls all the mowers.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_intelligent_design to http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/DEFAULT.6.html and http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/2007/10/mechansim-design-vs-intelligent-design.html. The latter two are successful design projects, because the outcome was what the designers intended. The Wikipedia Project is not an instance of intelligent system design because the outcome is a chaotic game full of Wikidrama in which the dominant players are those who are most successful at http://aggieblue.blogspot.com/2007/10/blogs-and-multi-player-online-role.html to advance their individual personal hidden agendas.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:11am) *

Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_intelligent_design to http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/DEFAULT.6.html and http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/2007/10/mechansim-design-vs-intelligent-design.html. The latter two are successful design projects, because the outcome was what the designers intended. The Wikipedia Project is not an instance of intelligent system design because the outcome is a chaotic game full of Wikidrama in which the dominant players are those who are most successful at http://aggieblue.blogspot.com/2007/10/blogs-and-multi-player-online-role.html to advance their individual personal hidden agendas.


We've discussed this many times before.

You assume that the Purpose of Wikipedia is just what its advertizers say it is.

It is time to examine that premiss.

Long past time.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Well, we're back to original intended purposes, advertised purpose, evolved and continuing purpose, emergent and unintended purpose, and unauthorized subverted purpose.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:23am) *

Well, we're back to original intended purposes, advertised purpose, evolved and continuing purpose, emergent purpose, and unauthorized subverted purpose.


And the standard heuristic for abducing the telos of a potentially endirected system is to observe it in action and note the states to which it most persistently tends.

I think that we've all been watching the system do what it does — with various degrees of due diligence and for sundry lengths of time — but there is an evident difficulty that many observers seem to have in reframing their views of the data in ways that would make it make sense.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

What I see the system doing is tending, over time, to increasing levels of contention, disharmony, ephemeral wikidrama, gaming the system, chaotic reversals of state, confused and inchoate policy disputes, progressive decline of overall levels of trust, increasing levels of disaffection, criticism, and alienation of critics, and a resultant groundswell of external competition.

As I see it, Wikipedia is exhibiting the characteristics of a http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/search?q=polionic.

Moreover, the energies of the system are increasingly being expended in support of the system's internal immune response, rather than in support of an external system goal.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:46am) *

What I see the system doing is tending, over time, to increasing levels of contention, disharmony, ephemeral wikidrama, gaming the system, chaotic reversals of state, confused and inchoate policy disputes, progressive decline of overall levels of trust, increasing levels of disaffection, criticism, and alienation of critics, and a resultant groundswell of external competition.

As I see it, Wikipedia is exhibiting the characteristics of a http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/search?q=polionic.

Moreover, the energies of the system are increasingly being expended in support of the system's internal immune response, rather than in support of an external system goal.


You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.

As for what you are calling polionic systems, there used to be a lot of lit on double-bind theory from all the usual supects back in the 60's and 70's.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:58am) *
You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.

Care to spell out your estimate of the "objectives of those who have their mits on the plug" (as well as the names of those mit-wearers)?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:03pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:58am) *
You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.


Care to spell out your estimate of the "objectives of those who have their mits on the plug" (as well as the names of those mit-wearers)?


I stated a general principle.

The fact that a plug-based system is still plugged-in constitutes prima facie evidence that those with their mits on the plug are currently satisficed with what they see the system doing.

As to more specific hypotheses, well, this site is full of 'em.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

I dunno who the mit-wearers are, nor do I know what the hidden agendas of the presumptive mit-wearers are.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:19pm) *

I dunno who the mit-wearers are, nor do I know what the hidden agendas of the presumptive mit-wearers are.


Our Dunno Elegies Are The Envoi To Enchoiry.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:34pm) *

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.


We have toxic waste dumps in my region, too. But we apparently can't produce enough locally so we import a lot from Canada.

Sound Familiar?

I think I need un heimlich maneuver …

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

The point being that pulling the plug doesn't drain the bathtub, never mind scrubbing away the ring.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

Julius Caesar, 3.2.76–77.


QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:45pm) *

The point being that pulling the plug doesn't drain the bathtub, never mind scrubbing away the ring.


And what does that telus about the mind of the brain-washer?

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Old brains shed their mortal coils.

Children only learn of the past through well-told stories.

Where are the bards who will craft the durable stories our bumbling generation?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:15pm) *

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 12:03pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:58am) *

You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.


Care to spell out your estimate of the "objectives of those who have their mits on the plug" (as well as the names of those mit-wearers)?


I stated a general principle.

The fact that a plug-based system is still plugged-in constitutes prima facie evidence that those with their mits on the plug are currently satisficed with what they see the system doing.

As to more specific hypotheses, well, this site is full of 'em.


I have already put forward many hypotheses about the real objectives of those who control the ongoing development of the Wikipedia media platform.

The next page collects links to a number of relevant posts and topics.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Dynamic Page —

Effective Goals and Enacted Values in the Wikipedia System

How Wikipedia Really Works

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Thu 6th December 2007, 12:24pm) *

By way of review, let us recall the analytic dimensions and the synthetic paradigms that a cursory survey brought to mind as an Initial Frame Of Reference (IFOR) for trying to outline the character of the Wikipedia Internet Game (WIG) —

Examples of Games
  • Alternate Reality Game (ARG)
  • Internet Confidence Game (ICG)
  • Training-Indoctrination Game (TIG)
  • Viral Pyramid Marketing Game (VPMG)
Properties of Games
  • Most games have players.
  • Most games have moves.
  • Most games have rules.
  • Most games have an object or a purpose.
Each of these dimensions can be subdivided, possibly according to its own nature and possibly in relation to the remaining dimensions. For example —
  • There are constant rules and there are variable rules.
  • There are unwritten rules and there are written rules.
  • There are move-governing rules and there are payoff-determining rules.
If you think about the distinction between unwritten rules and written rules, you can see that the essential difference between them does not inhere in the rules themselves but really has to do with their differential relationship to the players, to wit, the extent to which various players are informed of the rules. This matter of information in games is capable of wide ramification, of course.

Jon Awbrey


Guide to Wikipedia for Reporters and Researchers

Posted by: The Joy

I think I understand what Jonny is talking about.

A true reality show would just have cameras that no one would know about and people would just go about their lives with no interference from the producers. But there are no such true reality shows.

I understand that the Cabal are basically a bunch of pirates with a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" alliance coupled with every Cabal member knowing that every Cabal member carries some dark secret that can be blackmailed.

But I have a hard time understanding why any Cabal would be happy with running a dystopic reality show like Wikipedia.

Perhaps by means of private communications (IRC, AIM, e-mail, etc.) Cabalists can poke certain players into committing a certain action that results in drama. Those that push for what the Cabalist wants are saved and those who did not were "trolling." Cabalists create the reward and immunity challenges, pick their vassals, and punish those they consider peasants.

And in a dystopia, people look for leadership. That's how the Cabal benefits. They say "Never fear! We shall protect you from evil and discord in exchange for your loyalty!" That's what Robespierre and Marat did in the French Revolution and what Palpatine did during the Clone Wars.

I think though that sometimes the chaos does not yield what the Cabal desires. It can even go so far out of control, the producers (Cabalists) cannot control the actors. I remember DennyColt (search for him with the forum's search function, ye newcomers!) and his tirades. It was speculated that he was some Cabalist's meatpuppet who went out of control of his handler.

It must be great to be a Cabal Warlord on Wikipedia. But there's always a conspiracy, always a mutineer in one's midst, and always the fear that one's "controlled drama or chaos" can go out of control.

You can't even trust you're fellow producers, it seems.

Posted by: Moulton

That's my point. The drama takes on a life of its own, because unlike Survivor the Wikipedia Soap Opera is not a small cast of characters carefully chosen by the Producers.

So you end up with a character-driven drama with many dozens of characters. There is no way the outcome of that is gonna be controllable.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

I think Jonny, apart from not having named in detail his hypothesis about what exactly "the producers" want to accomplish ("Springtime for Hitler" revival?), has not addressed the null hypothesis: that human nature and normal background biases have created the mess that is Wikipedia's regime, all without any conspiracy at the formation of the project. Was "The Lord of the Flies" completely unbelievable? If not, then why is there a need to figure out what sinister force is behind the Wikipedia fiasco?

Posted by: Moulton

I tend to go along with the Lord of the Flies model for what transpired on Wikipedia.

Had the organizers done their homework better, with more due diligence, I daresay they might have adopted a more functional regulatory model, such as one based on a realistic social contract.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Moulton, Saltimbanco,
Put Down The Remote !!!
Pull Your Heads Out Of The Tube !!!

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Please refactor.

Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:34am) *

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.



Is the entire history in there, or just the top layer of Wikipedia?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 5:28pm) *

Please refactor.


One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Trust is a fragile thing. Once broken, it's very hard to rebuild.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 6:00pm) *

One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.


Tell your story, Jonny. I'm generally willing to believe the worst of the Wikipedia lot (as an old friend and co-worker once said when I blandly asked her if she was familiar with another, somewhat infamous co-worker, "Whatever it is, he did it."), but there are an awful lot of awful counter-indicators to what you seem to be suggesting. I've stated my null hypothesis; tell me your test hypothesis and give me a chance to shoot holes through it. If it withstands the barrage, then I'll believe you have something. If you're insisting that your Sooper-Sekret Mailing List of Uber-Admins has already vetted your hypothesis, I'm not biting.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 8:04pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 6:00pm) *

One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.


Tell your story, Jonny. I'm generally willing to believe the worst of the Wikipedia lot (as an old friend and co-worker once said when I blandly asked her if she was familiar with another, somewhat infamous co-worker, "Whatever it is, he did it."), but there are an awful lot of awful counter-indicators to what you seem to be suggesting. I've stated my null hypothesis; tell me your test hypothesis and give me a chance to shoot holes through it. If it withstands the barrage, then I'll believe you have something. If you're insisting that your Sooper-Sekret Mailing List of Uber-Admins has already vetted your hypothesis, I'm not biting.


In a line of theory about the http://www.wikipediareview.com/Inquiry that Aristotle kickstarted and Peirce geared up to contemporary speeds, the generation of an explanatory hypothesis is said to be the result of "abductive inference", or "abduction" for short (Greek απαγωγη).

An explanatory story is useful to the extent that it reduces the amount of bewilderment, puzzlement, or uncertainty that we experience in the encounter with a surprising phenomenon.

Now, it's been a bit of a strain on my acting abilities trying to play the parts of all Seven Siteless Sages, but I do think that the record will show that I have generated a number of useful hypotheses, each of which would serve to explain some aspect of the Wikipachyderm's physiognomy.

The hypothesis that Wikipedia is a con game goes a long way toward explaining many features of the generic Wikipedia game that have historically been rather hard to explain on any other hypothesis.

I would not say that it accounts for all of the variance from the path of null-hype-ness, but I do think that it accounts for a lot.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Wikipedia may well be a confidence game.

But if someone unfamiliar with the story asked me to explain what the con game is, or how it works, I would be hard pressed to provide a coherent answer.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:19pm) *

Wikipedia may well be a confidence game.

But if someone unfamiliar with the story asked me to explain what the con game is, or how it works, I would be hard pressed to provide a coherent answer.


The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Are the "marks" the volunteer editors who aspire to ascend the ladder of power and status at Wikipedia?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:43pm) *

Are the "marks" the volunteer editors who aspire to ascend the ladder of power and status at Wikipedia?


Sure, otherwise known as the "target demographic".

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

Then the occasional academic, who visits Wikipedia to tidy up an article or two related to one's academic specialty, would probably not fit that profile, and hence would not be part of the "target demographic" as you put it.

Is that a fair continuation of your hypothesis?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:48pm) *

Then the occasional academic, who visits Wikipedia to tidy up an article or two related to one's academic specialty, would probably not fit that profile, and hence would not be part of the "target demographic" as you put it.

Is that a fair continuation of your hypothesis?


I'm not sure.

There are people whose underlying wish is something like "Doing Good" or "Being A Good Samaritan". Further analysis may detect an element of narcissism in that, especially if it's more important to "Seem Like A Good Guy Without Hardly Trying" than it is to do the work of actually being one, but let's not be too cynical just yet.

At any rate, people with any degree of training in just about any field will usually start asking questions about what the devil is going on when they start see some devil in the goings on — and people who start to ask too many questions will naturally be shown the door.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:40pm) *

The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.


No, Jonny. That's not a con. That's normal business practice.

Wikipedia is about getting volunteers to contribute content. Full stop. No smoke, no mirrors.

That Jimbo Wales and whoever else hopes to profit through their reputation or otherwise through Wikipedia does not dissuade people from thinking that their volunteer contributions will garner them some sort of reward is not a con. Your car insurance salesman is also not likely to tell you that you you'd do better to buy a cheaper policy.

Posted by: Moulton

In order for it to be a confidence game, there has to be some sort of planned act of betrayal.

One can certainly feel betrayed when one's (perhaps naive) expectations are not met, but for an encounter to be a con game, there has to be an express promise that those making the promise have no intention of ever delivering on.

I think it's fair to say that for a lot of people, Wikipedia has turned out to be a disappointment. That's true of a lot of new ventures, with or without unwarranted hype at the welcome mat.

To say it's a con game implies that the barkers at the gate know full well that they are fixing to fleece whoever comes through the front gates.

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:19pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:40pm) *

The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.


No, Jonny. That's not a con. That's normal business practice.

Wikipedia is about getting volunteers to contribute content. Full stop. No smoke, no mirrors.

That Jimbo Wales and whoever else hopes to profit through their reputation or otherwise through Wikipedia does not dissuade people from thinking that their volunteer contributions will garner them some sort of reward is not a con. Your car insurance salesman is also not likely to tell you that you you'd do better to buy a cheaper policy.


I have found that most often I get what I pay for.

The carrot at WP has always been "power" and admin. status and getting the bit, etc.

The problems started when it became known that the average person of power at Wikipedia has only about 14 years of life on earth.

I ask myself, would I hire a 14 year old to operate on my shoulder? Would I trust the 14 year old to do my living trust or be the trustee of my estate? Does a college student have any real wisdom?

Most people that have the time to spend at Wikipedia "for free" are either students, under-employed, or unemployed.

Go "Knol" ! ohmy.gif


Posted by: Moulton

Do you have a reliable source for the statistic that the mean age of WP admins is 14 years?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:19pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:40pm) *

The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.


No, Jonny. That's not a con. That's normal business practice.

Wikipedia is about getting volunteers to contribute content. Full stop. No smoke, no mirrors.

That Jimbo Wales and whoever else hopes to profit through their reputation or otherwise through Wikipedia does not dissuade people from thinking that their volunteer contributions will garner them some sort of reward is not a con. Your car insurance salesman is also not likely to tell you that you you'd do better to buy a cheaper policy.


Now you're just being silly.

Not to mention insulting to anyone who considers personal integrity to be inseparable from "normal business practice".

The distinction between fraud or grift and legitimate business is comprehended by common sense and even by the law.

Of course, advertizers try to exploit the collateral desires of their target market to sell everything from automobiles to beer to cigarettes to deodorant.

But all civilized societies draw the line at unfair practices, however shifting those lines may be over time. And common sense recognizes the features of the confidence game that put it outside the pale of "normal business practice" — the acquisition of goods under false pretences, the breach of promise that consummates the confidence game, and the outrageous disproportion in the real values of the goods exchanged.

No, there is nothing "normal" about that, thank goodness.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

If there is an over-riding con at Wikipedia, I would say it would have to be in that volunteer editors, I think, might reasonably believe that their opinions, when they disagree with others, will be respected, and that there will be a process for resolving content disputes that has some grounding in objectivity, as in for example the powers-that-be caring that the process has become highly prejudicial and biased. This is clearly not the case with Wikipedia.

Posted by: Moulton

What is the express promise that is intentionally breached with malice aforethought?

Posted by: WhispersOfWisdom

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:42pm) *

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:19pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 9:40pm) *

The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.


No, Jonny. That's not a con. That's normal business practice.

Wikipedia is about getting volunteers to contribute content. Full stop. No smoke, no mirrors.

That Jimbo Wales and whoever else hopes to profit through their reputation or otherwise through Wikipedia does not dissuade people from thinking that their volunteer contributions will garner them some sort of reward is not a con. Your car insurance salesman is also not likely to tell you that you you'd do better to buy a cheaper policy.


Now you're just being silly.

Not to mention insulting to anyone who considers personal integrity to be inseparable from "normal business practice".

The distinction between fraud or grift and legitimate business is comprehended by common sense and even by the law.

Of course, advertizers try to exploit the collateral desires of their target market to sell everything from automobiles to beer to cigarettes to deodorant.

But all civilized societies draw the line at unfair practices, however shifting those lines may be over time. And common sense recognizes the features of the confidence game that put it outside the pale of "normal business practice" — the acquisition of goods under false pretences, the breach of promise that consummates the confidence game, and the outrageous disproportion in the real values of the goods exchanged.

No, there is nothing "normal" about that, thank goodness.

Jon Awbrey


Yes, indeed. Your reasoning is sound and wise. It also explains why the project is beginning to disintegrate at it's core. The University of Minnesota study was quite accurate in the assessment that without the creators and the contributors of key articles, the "flies" would take over.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:45pm) *

If there is an over-riding con at Wikipedia, I would say it would have to be in that volunteer editors, I think, might reasonably believe that their opinions, when they disagree with others, will be respected, and that there will be a process for resolving content disputes that has some grounding in objectivity, as in for example the powers be caring that the process has become highly prejudicial and biased. This is clearly not the case with Wikipedia.


The normal expectation of a player entering a game where statements are set forth as "rules" is that other players will play by those rules and that some authority recognized by all concerned will umpire those rules.

I have stated this expectation in terms of games and players and rules but analogous forms apply to any norms of conduct in any normed activity.

This is clearly not the case with Wikipedia.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:42pm) *

Now you're just being silly.

Not to mention insulting to anyone who considers personal integrity to be inseparable from "normal business practice".

The distinction between fraud or grift and legitimate business is comprehended by common sense and even by the law.

Of course, advertizers try to exploit the collateral desires of their target market to sell everything from automobiles to beer to cigarettes to deodorant.

But all civilized societies draw the line at unfair practices, however shifting those lines may be over time. And common sense recognizes the features of the confidence game that put it outside the pale of "normal business practice" — the acquisition of goods under false pretences, the breach of promise that consummates the confidence game, and the outrageous disproportion in the real values of the goods exchanged.

No, there is nothing "normal" about that, thank goodness.


Jonny, you're an academic, yes? You've never really worked in the normal business world. I have, and I have in fact sacrificed a couple potential careers over matters where I thought my employer or its representatives had crossed an ethical boundary.

But letting, and even lightly encouraging, people to believe that they are getting more out of their participation in something than common sense and a little bit of thought would clearly indicate does not generally cross such a boundary. I am myself someone who will always tell someone if they would probably do better stepping away from something that benefits me, and I think that's a better way to live and, in the long run better for me as well. I would say that people who do not do this are not as good as they might be, but I would not say that they are not as good as everyone else has the right to expect them to be.

If there is an outright lie - if Jimbo Wales claimed that someone got tenured based on stuff they'd done in Wikipedia - that's a different matter. But to just nod and grin as someone explains how he expects his Wikipedia contributions will get him tenure, while kind of creepy, is not a con.

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:56pm) *
QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:45pm) *
If there is an over-riding con at Wikipedia, I would say it would have to be in that volunteer editors, I think, might reasonably believe that their opinions, when they disagree with others, will be respected, and that there will be a process for resolving content disputes that has some grounding in objectivity, as in for example the powers be caring that the process has become highly prejudicial and biased. This is clearly not the case with Wikipedia.
The normal expectation of a player entering a game where statements are set forth as "rules" is that other players will play by those rules and that some authority recognized by all concerned will umpire those rules.

I have stated this expectation in terms of games and players and rules but analogous forms apply to any norms of conduct in any normed activity.

This is clearly not the case with Wikipedia.

I agree that these are reasonable expectations, and they are undeniably breached at Wikipedia.

What remains to be shown is that those who are routinely breaching those expectations are doing so knowingly, intentionally, and with malice aforethought.

Posted by: Proabivouac

It seems to me probable that the intended result may have been quite different.

Many or most academic enterprises have substantial elements of volunteerism. You don't get paid directly for publishing, for example; it just adds (so you hope) to your reputation. Nor do you expect to get paid when someone uses your work, just cited.

Were the project more reputable, more people would be proud of their contributions, including on their resumes, applications to doctoral programs, etc.

The other problem is the way the project attacks its own volunteer contributors. This is partly due to the tendencies of the web to produce flame wars, but is greatly exacerbated as an unexamined consequence of the fact that dispute resolution procedures are (formally) content-neutral: the only way to break content deadlocks is to tear one another down. Every meaningful process, from the noticeboards, to RfC's to Arbitration, pits volunteers against one another's reputations by design.

So you have a whole culture where people gather and horde diffs of people of breaking various rules as leverage against them. Opponents greet misconduct, then, not with disappointment, but with glee. 3RR, incivility, etc. are just opportunities to be exploited according to this psychology which is the very essence of edit "warring" and incivility.

What is the chance, then, that contributing to Wikipedia will improve one's reputation, instead of sullying it? The unsatisfying answer to this question drives the trend towards anonymity/pseudonymity, which, as anonymous contributors are more likely to attack others, increases the flame war element in a feedback mechanism.

If we could solve these two problems, it might not be such a rip-off after all. It's not unrealistic to imagine a world only slightly different from our own, where contributing to Wikipedia is something most volunteers could point to with pride. It's a shame that this goal, so obvious from an external standpoint, is absent from the radar screens of the leadership.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:58pm) *

Jonny, you're an academic, yes? You've never really worked in the normal business world. I have, and I have in fact sacrificed a couple potential careers over matters where I thought my employer or its representatives had crossed an ethical boundary.

But letting, and even lightly encouraging, people to believe that they are getting more out of their participation in something than common sense and a little bit of thought would clearly indicate does not generally cross such a boundary. I am myself someone who will always tell someone if they would probably do better stepping away from something that benefits me, and I think that's a better way to live and, in the long run better for me as well. I would say that people who do not do this are not as good as they might be, but I would not say that they are not as good as everyone else ought to expect them to be.

If there is an outright lie — if Jimbo Wales claimed that someone got tenured based on stuff they'd done in Wikipedia — that's a different matter. But to just nod and grin as someone explains how he expects his Wikipedia contributions will get him tenure, while kind of creepy, is not a con.


I am fighting down the urge to launch a Wodin Boast here. The fact is that I've worked in more different venues than you are likely to guess.

Lucky for everyone it's past my bedtime.

But something to think about for tomorrow is this —

Yes, I have seen academic papers that describe Civilization and its Discontents in terms analogous to One Big Confidence Game. And I suppose there is some sense in that. But common sense has to say what is fair and what is not. It is not fair to use the natural human susceptibility to various types of addiction in order to enslave people. It is not fair to exploit child labor. It is not fair to acquire tax-free educational status while miseducating the uneducated about the kinds of conduct that are expected of responsible citizens in real world societies.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:01pm) *

What remains to be shown is that those who are routinely breaching those expectations are doing so knowingly, intentionally, and with malice aforethought.


Let me add to my comments that while some of Wikipedia's powers - certainly SlimVirgin and Jayjg, among others - are guilty in my mind of malfeasance in that they knowingly and willingly violate the reasonable expectations and abuse the trust of normal editors and readers, from my own personal experience I can only accuse Jimbo Wales of gross negligence in that he allows this to happen. Sins of commission versus sins of omission.

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:13pm) *
It seems to me probable that the intended result may have been quite different.

Many or most academic enterprises have substantial elements of volunteerism. You don't get paid directly for publishing, for example; it just adds (so you hope) to your reputation. Nor do you expect to get paid when someone uses your work, just cited.

Were the project more reputable, more people would be proud of their contributions, including on their resumes, applications to doctoral programs, etc.

The other problem is the way the project attacks its own volunteer contributors. This is partly due to the tendencies of the web to produce flame wars, but is greatly exacerbated as an unexamined consequence of the fact that dispute resolution procedures are (formally) content-neutral: the only way to break content deadlocks is to tear one another down. Every meaningful process, from the noticeboards, to RfC's to Arbitration, pits volunteers against one another's reputations by design.

So you have a whole culture where people gather and horde diffs of people of breaking various rules as leverage against them. Opponents greet misconduct, then, not with disappointment, but with glee. 3RR, incivility, etc. are just opportunities to be exploited according to this psychology which is the very essence of edit "warring" and incivility.

What is the chance, then, that contributing to Wikipedia will improve one's reputation, instead of sullying it? The unsatisfying answer to this question drives the trend towards anonymity/pseudonymity, which, as anonymous contributors are more likely to attack others, increases the flame war element in a feedback mechanism.

If we could solve these two problems, it might not be such a rip-off after all. It's not unrealistic to imagine a world only slightly different from our own, where contributing to Wikipedia is something most volunteers could point to with pride. It's a shame that this goal, so obvious from an external standpoint, is absent from the radar screens of the leadership.

This is a thoughtful and well-written analysis, full of insight.

It makes a lot of sense to me.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:14pm) *

I am fighting down the urge to launch a Wodin Boast here. The fact is that I've worked in more different venues than you are likely to guess.


If you expect Macy's to tell Gimbel's, I would expect either that you find yourself a place in an ivory tower or that you change working venues about three times a year.

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:14pm) *
But common sense has to say what is fair and what is not.


No. Societal norms have to say that.

Posted by: Moulton

I'd probably turn to a Theory of Equity and Justice or something like that.

But then I'm just a hopeless academic.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:39pm) *

I'd probably turn to a Theory of Justice or something like that.

But then I'm just a hopeless academic.


Rawls is extremely helpful here.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:40pm) *
QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:39pm) *
I'd probably turn to a Theory of Equity and Justice or something like that.

But then I'm just a hopeless academic.

Rawls is extremely helpful here.

Yes, that's where my colleague who teaches Ethics in Journalism starts -- with Rawls' Veil of Ignorance.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

I don't think Rawls gets you very far with regard to Wikipedia. The big question with Wikipedia is, who enforces the rules? Rawls might direct you to a fair set of rules, but if Linda Mack is the one enforcing them, you're screwed.

And then if you try to throw the Veil of Ignorance on whether or not you are among those making the rules or not, you don't get a very satisfactory answer. If I knew that Linda Mack might be the one enforcing the rules, I'd be strongly inclined to have very limited means of enforcement.

What you should sort of want is rules for deciding who should enforce the rules that are pre-disposed toward selecting "good" people. The problem with that is that almost everyone considers himself good, so even through the Veil of Ignorance people will want to have rules that will promote people like themselves to authority.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 10:29pm) *

In order for it to be a confidence game, there has to be some sort of planned act of betrayal.

One can certainly feel betrayed when one's (perhaps naive) expectations are not met, but for an encounter to be a con game, there has to be an express promise that those making the promise have no intention of ever delivering on.

I think it's fair to say that for a lot of people, Wikipedia has turned out to be a disappointment. That's true of a lot of new ventures, with or without unwarranted hype at the welcome mat.

To say it's a con game implies that the barkers at the gate know full well that they are fixing to fleece whoever comes through the front gates.


I have seen different explanations for the use of the word "confidence" in the term "confidence game".

The confidence game proper begins when the conman takes the mark into his confidence. Confidence — "faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way" (Webster's) — may depend on the native and even naive expectation of the mark that the conman will "keep the faith" in return for the mark's "good faith" investments, priming of the pot, and other forms of stake-holding in the enterprise afoot.

What the con artist confides, expressly or impressly, is typically a secret, er, confidential path to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that is, the actualization of the mark's unbounded expectation.

For all sorts of reasons that I'm sure are obvious, the game works best that relies on the unbidden tendency of people to trust in others who have trusted in them — as their confiding the big secret seems to prove — but there may come a point when shows of "good faith" on the part of the mark are not just taken as freely given but expressly demanded in no uncertain terms.

But I don't suppose you know of any games like that …

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

One of the ways to avoid shattered expectations is to organize around an express Social Contract. That's not a very popular approach, although it's been used in some notable Linux open source projects. Google also has a Social Contract with its employees.

Wikipedia has expressly rebuffed the idea of a Social Contract model.

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 19th December 2007, 8:54am) *

But I don't suppose you know of any games like that …


????

Jon, what did you expect to get out of your participation in Wikipedia? From what I can see, you tried to write high-quality, rigorous articles on matters within your expertise, which is great, except that you contributed them to the encyclopedia that ANYONE CAN EDIT. How can it be a surprise to you that people who once read a Reader's Digest article on Charles Peirce would crap all over everything you did? You went pearl diving in a cesspool - what exactly is the confidence that was betrayed?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 11:36am) *

One of the ways to avoid shattered expectations is to organize around an express Social Contract. That's not a very popular approach, although it's been used in some notable Linux open source projects. Google also has a Social Contract with its employees.

Wikipedia has expressly rebuffed the idea of a Social Contract model.


I do not know how you took them, but I read Wikipedia's mass of policy and guideline pages as an implicit social contract. I held up my end of the bargain — those who arrogated to themselves the name of "community" did not.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 19th December 2007, 1:06pm) *
QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 11:36am) *
One of the ways to avoid shattered expectations is to organize around an express Social Contract. That's not a very popular approach, although it's been used in some notable Linux open source projects. Google also has a Social Contract with its employees.

Wikipedia has expressly rebuffed the idea of a Social Contract model.
I do not know how you took them, but I read Wikipedia's mass of policy and guideline pages as an implicit social contract. I held up my end of the bargain — those who arrogated to themselves the name of "community" did not.

Jon Awbrey

I take a Rules and Sanctions Model as no better than Stage 4 on the Kohlberg-Gilligan Ladder. I take a Social Contract Model as Stage 5.

Wikipedia doesn't even rise to Stage 4, because there is no due process.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:43pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:40pm) *

QUOTE(Moulton @ Tue 18th December 2007, 11:39pm) *

I'd probably turn to a Theory of Equity and Justice or something like that.

But then I'm just a hopeless academic.


Rawls is extremely helpful here.


Yes, that's where my colleague who teaches Ethics in Journalism starts — with Rawls' Veil of Ignorance.


Back when I was reading more ærie-færie theory about the relation between democracy and inquiry, instead of wasting my joules on all possible ways they get out of joint in hard-knocks practice, there was a line of thought that I traced back in time from Rawls to Polanyi to Peirce to Riemann to Kant.

Those Were The Days, My Friend …

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

One can trace Rawls' Veil of Ignorance all the way back to Hillel.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 1:23pm) *

I take a Rules and Sanctions Model as no better than Stage 4 on the Kohlberg-Gilligan Ladder. I take a Social Contract Model as Stage 5.

Wikipedia doesn't even rise to Stage 4, because there is no due process.


Maybe some people literally have a pen shoved in their tiny fists when they exit the womb, but most social contracts I ever signed onto were rather implicit and incrementally ratified.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

I dunno how to put my signature to a document that has never been put in writing.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Wed 19th December 2007, 12:22pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 19th December 2007, 8:54am) *

But I don't suppose you know of any games like that …


????

Jon, what did you expect to get out of your participation in Wikipedia? From what I can see, you tried to write high-quality, rigorous articles on matters within your expertise, which is great, except that you contributed them to the encyclopedia that ANYONE CAN EDIT. How can it be a surprise to you that people who once read a Reader's Digest article on Charles Peirce would crap all over everything you did? You went pearl diving in a cesspool — what exactly is the confidence that was betrayed?


I expected editors to follow the guidelines, from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars on to the rest of the WikiPantheon. I expected the Espoused Leaders to be the most exemplary models of those principles, not the most craven WP:IDNNSR (I Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules) bunch in the crew.

Had they done that, it would have afforded a path for those who had the knowledge and who were capable of demonstrating that knowledge to get that knowledge under the ∑.

That is what they would do if they really cared about the advertized goals.

But nooooooo …

It being now clear that they do not do that, that they have no intention of doing that, modus tollens dictates the conclusion that that they do not really care about the advertized goals.

QED.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 2:31pm) *

I dunno how to put my signature to a document that has never been put in writing.


You do understand that the concept of a social contract was a metaphorical construct, right?

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Not where I come from.

Where I come from, a Social Contract is a set of written promises that the signatories pledge to adhere to.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 3:31pm) *

Not where I come from.

Where I come from, a Social Contract is a set of written promises that the signatories pledge to adhere to.


Excusez-moi, je suis de la France.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Saltimbanco

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 19th December 2007, 2:44pm) *

I expected editors to follow the guidelines, from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars on to the rest of the WikiPantheon. I expected the Espoused Leaders to be the most exemplary models of those principles, not the most craven WP:IDNNSR (I Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules) bunch in the crew.

Had they done that, it would have afforded a path for those who had the knowledge and who were capable of demonstrating that knowledge to get that knowledge under the ∑.


Jon, from where did you think a qualified volunteer referee would come to mediate between your contributions and those of Billy the Exceptionally Bright Fourteen Year Old? Isn't it only under the most extremely contrived situations that truth reliably prevails over falsehood? Why would you ever have expected that the encyclopedia that any dumb-ass can edit would provide that?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Saltimbanco @ Wed 19th December 2007, 4:11pm) *

Jon, from where did you think a qualified volunteer referee would come to mediate between your contributions and those of Billy the Exceptionally Bright Fourteen Year Old? Isn't it only under the most extremely contrived situations that truth reliably prevails over falsehood? Why would you ever have expected that the encyclopedia that any dumb-ass can edit would provide that?


I cannot imagine what you think a Socio-Technical Architecture (STA) is, if not an extremely contrived situation.

My expectations that the STA of Wikipedia would have certain properties were not contrived by me, however, they were contrived by dint of the pretences and representations that anyone who looks can still find being pretended and represented on that website.

Do some of us now know that Wikipedia's pretences are false pretences, that Wikipedia's representations are misrepresentations?

Yes, indeed, we do.

The fact remains that the general public does not yet know what some of us now know, and our mission, if we choose to accept it, is simply to inform them of what we know.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Moulton

Wikipedia is an adolescent and quirky wine. I think you will be amused by its presumption.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 19th December 2007, 5:10pm) *

Wikipedia is an adolescent and quirky wine. I think you will be amused by its presumption.


It's all SlimyVinegar to me.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Stimulus —

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/what-mcluhan-could-not-foresee/2008/01/15.

Response —

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ 15 Jan 2008)

Friends, Roamin's, Global Villagers,

Memory serves but a fuzzy anamnesis of Marshall McLuhan's message about media, but the more distinct edges of my aging impression tell me that he saw further on his foggiest day than most of our contemporaries see on their clearest.

I think that 2008 is a decade too late to be reading yet another Gospel of the Coming Singularity and one more Prophecy of How the Medium is the Messiah of the new Millennium.

It should be clear from what we've seen so far that "the trail of the human serpent is over all", as I dimly remember William James saying. To wit, or not, that the Rule of PRATS — People Remain Always The Same — will ever rule our lives more than this wik's gizmo ever will.

Slavation, not salvation, is all that Technology brings to those who fail to know themselves first.

But enough for this Box — I will expand my e-comious laminations on the McLuhan thread already in progress at http://wikipediareview.com/.

P.S. http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=398 helped me write this. Just so you know who to blame.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

perennial perturbounce

jon boing.gif