JzG's biggest mistake, Disparaging Cade Metz Options

[Kato]

The biggest mistake JzG has made on Wikipedia, the one that people should really be looking at closely, was his reaction to The Register stories in December.

This is described at the foot of this Wikipedia Review blog posting here. JzG's wild overreaction had him attacking people all over Wikipedia and the internet, and included the now infamous "Piece of shit Register story" attack. His attacks were accompanied by several disparaging references to Cade Metz, the journalist who was covering the stories, and obviously reading every word.

This totally unprofessional and self destructive flurry sealed Wikipedia's fate in the eyes of the media in one foul swoop. All the editors, all the articles, Jimbo Wales, the WMF, Wikia, everything was up for grabs as a result of that stupid, thoughtless attack.

Metz immediately shot off another article to the million or so readers of that magazine. And then peeled a Wikipedia Review thread about Jossi Fresco straight off our forums to hit them again in the New Year.

The media realized that stories on Wikipedia corruption brought in readers. And where better to get them from than places like the Wikipedia Review? Journalists were investigating stories from here for themselves, and figuring that many of them held up under scrutiny.

By the time ValleyWag was linking to one of our threads about Rachel Marsden, after Wikipedia had so successfully shot themselves in the foot again and again since December, Wikipedia was easy pickings for the media.

Yesterday, Cade Metz wrote another piece, which accurately depicts Wikipedia's predicament. It articulates exactly what Wikipedia Reviewers have been telling Wikipedia for a long time. But they didn't listen over there. Naive folks like JzG kept attacking and attacking, until Wikipedia resembles an open corpse. Food for the vultures.

JzG publicly personified Wikipedia's inability to process external criticism. And everyone on the site, from the best editors to the worst administrators, have paid a heavy price for this appalling attitude. The price will be the cruel and relentless public discrediting of all their hard work in the coming months and years at the hands of an uncaring media.

In the future, when historians look at Wikipedia as a bizarre 2000-2010 phenomenon that eventually collapsed, they won't be putting the blame on external Websites like us. Or critics like Daniel Brandt or Jon Awbrey. They'll be putting the blame on naive people like JzG, who positioned themselves as tub-thumpers and opinion formers for a community who didn't ask them to do so, and who brought it down on themselves and everyone else involved.

[Moulton]

It's basically a failure of leadership.

There are plenty of models of successful open source projects.

Debian and Ubuntu, for example, are exemplary social contract communities with good project leadership.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Wikipedia eschewed that proven organizational model in favor of a cultish enterprise with way too much anonymity and way too little organizational vision, and negligible attention to an ethical value system.

[Amarkov]

It's basically a failure of leadership.

There are plenty of models of successful open source projects.

Debian and Ubuntu, for example, are exemplary social contract communities with good project leadership.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Wikipedia eschewed that proven organizational model in favor of a cultish enterprise with way too much anonymity and way too little organizational vision, and negligible attention to an ethical value system.

It's a failure in extrapolation. Democracy in the real world works well enough, and there's no immediately obvious reason why adding in anonymity would change that. I mean, it's obvious to us now. But seven years ago, nobody really knew what having people with anonymity would cause, since user generated content in general was a new idea. And idealistically Wikipedia is wonderful; perfect democracy!

[Milton Roe]

It's a failure in extrapolation. Democracy in the real world works well enough, and there's no immediately obvious reason why adding in anonymity would change that. I mean, it's obvious to us now. But seven years ago, nobody really knew what having people with anonymity would cause, since user generated content in general was a new idea. And idealistically Wikipedia is wonderful; perfect democracy!

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif) I'm afraid that may well be an oxymoron. Without some transparency, you can't have a democracy, even a conventional representational one (even a fluid one), because you can't tell who's being over-represented. And hell, this is not a new lesson we learn from the internet. In 1960, the mob caused the dead in Chicago cemetaries to somehow vote Democratic. As they'd been doing for years, even though metabolically challenged. (Reminds of me of one of my favorite bits from Kentucky Fried Movie: Appeal for the Dead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48nwgoOtgbQ ).

Anyway, we already knew thisi stuff was bad and would happen, long, long before the present technology. This is just the old political spoils system, smoke-filled rooms and ballot box stuffing, with a hint of Jeffersonian appeal for the rule of the natural aristoi. Now transistorized. There's really no excuse for it, except maybe for the Jeffersonian part. Which is all that keeps WP from being laughed out of the room every time they say they're not a democracy (while all the while cowering from sockpuppetry and what it does to their internal processes).

-- Milt