Wikipedia criticism, and why it fails to matter, vipulnaik Options

[Kato]

I'm the author of the original post. I apologize for getting some facts about the Wikipedia Review wrong in my original post (i.e., making the false claim that it was started by Daniel Brandt). I made the correction to the post after Jon Awbrey pointed this out in a comment.

I'd like to thank people from the Wikipedia Review for selecting to highlight the article, and offering their comments and perspective.

Vipul

Welcome Vipul.

Easy mistake to make, I suppose, as Daniel Brandt was a driving figure on this site from the early days.

Keep up the good work anyhow!

[emesee]

But a serious decrease or diversion of usage (and consequently, of editing effort) from Wikipedia can happen only in the presence of a competing resource that offers at least similar levels of ubiquity, ease of use and quick reference, and probably visibility in search engines.

bingo.

[Jon Awbrey]

But a serious decrease or diversion of usage (and consequently, of editing effort) from Wikipedia can happen only in the presence of a competing resource that offers at least similar levels of ubiquity, ease of use and quick reference, and probably visibility in search engines.

bingo.

I think most players have all their beans on that board already. But there's a cache. Building an Inherently Better Mousetrap (IBM) may be a necessary condition to caching more mice, but any student of Innovation Diffusion (ID) can tell you that it's far from being a sufficient condition.

There are lots and lots of exherent conditions to corncider …

Jon B) Good

[emesee]

There are lots and lots of exherent conditions to corncider …

such as?

[Jon Awbrey]

There are lots and lots of exherent conditions to corncider …

such as?

Well, for instance, there is what people call Unfair Competition (UC).

Jon

[emesee]

is 8 years an unfair advantage, or is that just the way things worked out?


in certain respects, might the other have an "unfair advantage" because they could start fresh with all those prior lessons learned?

[Jon Awbrey]

is 8 years an unfair advantage, or is that just the way things worked out?

in certain respects, might the other have an "unfair advantage" because they could start fresh with all those prior lessons learned?

I didn't say "unfair advantage", much less mention any specific examples.

We were talking about extrinsic factors that could have the effect of preventing an intrinsically better product from winning out in a competitive arena.

I mentioned what people call "Unfair Competition" as one such factor.

Jon

[emesee]

I could be wrong, but I think if a group of people got together, and thought there is a need for a better product, and we want to make a better product for xy and z reasons, they could.

I think if they really made a better product, eventually, the masses would eventually see that.

If you think there are specific factors that would inhibit this, it may be worthwhile to explore those.

[Jon Awbrey]

I could be wrong, but I think if a group of people got together, and thought there is a need for a better product, and we want to make a better product for xy and z reasons, they could.

I think if they really made a better product, eventually, the masses would eventually see that.

If you think there are specific factors that would inhibit this, it may be worthwhile to explore those.

Surely you must have a sense of what would lead you to call a competition unfair.

What sorts of factors would lead you to say that?

Okay, you mentioned something akin to being older or having a head start, and there are indeed contests where things like that have to be controlled in order to make things fair, but I can't think of many contests like that in business and industry.

Jon

[emesee]

Surely you must have a sense of what would lead you to call a competition unfair.

What sorts of factors would lead you to say that?

Okay, you mentioned something akin to being older or having a head start, and there are indeed contests where things like that have to be controlled in order to make things fair, but I can't think of many contests like that in business and industry.

Jon

steroids -> unfair

sabotage -> unfair

more time practicing -> an advantage, but seems fair

more people -> seems like a consequence of more time and better marketing, so an advantage but seems fair

[Jon Awbrey]

Segue … ???

Vipul,

It's your blog — and it's titled "What Is Research?" — I may be reading a lot of my lifelong interests into that, so let me know if I stray too far off target with my personal projections.

For a lot of folks who are recurrently hopeful that the right marriage of society and technology might just carry humane wisdom over the threshold of the terrible infant that its lowest common denominator labors to deliver in the pregnant present, Wikipedia is just the latest cloud on the horizon of our once bright aspirations.

So we keep asking:

— Is that all there is?
— How did it come to this?
— Dare we hope to do better?

Comment by Jon Awbrey — March 2, 2009 @ 7:06 pm

[emesee]

yah

especially considering that Matt Drudge linked to an article today critiquing wp, this web-log post does not seem to be super on the mark

[Kato]

Follow up from vipulnaik

More on Wikipedia criticism

My previous blog post on Wikipedia criticism generated quite a few comments. This was partly because it got covered in this forum post at The Wikipedia Review. There were several points that I made during the post that some of the commentators disagreed with, so I’ll try to elaborate the rationale behind those points a bit here, as well as what might be new insights.

[Jon Awbrey]

Just skimmed Vipul Naik's followup blogicle, More On Wikipedia Criticism.

Good grief, every paragraph is stuffed full of the same naive assumptions that everyone makes before they get their gnosis shoved in it. Since I cannot ethically wish that anyone would have to suffer the pain of actual, in-depth participation in Wikipedia, how does one convey the information that comes from that pain in a convincing way?

I see that I've reached the point of depressing returns in all my efforts here, and probably just need to go work on some specialty item for a while.

Jon

[Moulton]

Just skimmed Vipul Naik's followup blogicle, More On Wikipedia Criticism.

Good grief, every paragraph is stuffed full of the same naive assumptions that everyone makes before they get their gnosis shoved in it. Since I cannot ethically wish that anyone would have to suffer the pain of actual, in-depth participation in Wikipedia, how does one convey the information that comes from that pain in a convincing way?

I see that I've reached the point of depressing returns in all my efforts here, and probably just need to go work on some specialty item for a while.

Jon

One has to write a personal memoir in which one candidly discloses their affective emotional state as they weave their tale of woe.