Reagle's book is out, and the Berkman/WMF reviews are in Options

[thekohser]

try not to vomit.

"Joseph Reagle's account of what makes Wikipedia tick debunks the vision of a shining Alexandria gliding towards free and perfect knowledge and replaces it with something far more awe-inspiring: a humane, and human, enterprise that with each fitful back-and-forth elicits the best from those it draws in. In an era of polemic and cheap shots that some attribute largely to the Internet's influence, he shows how even those of wildly varying backgrounds who disagree intensely can see themselves as embarked on a common, ennobling mission grounded in respect and reason."
�Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Kennedy School, Professor of Computer Science, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and author of The Future of the Internet � And How to Stop It

"Good Faith Collaboration sheds some much needed light on one of the most influential resources available today. Joseph Reagle accurately captures the internal collaborative climate of 'good faith' in Wikipedia, and provides an excellent history of its progenitors like Nupedia."
�Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

"Wikipedia deserves to have its story intelligently told, and Joseph Reagle has done exactly that. Good Faith Collaboration is smart, accessible, and astutely observed. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand how Wikipedia works, and why it matters."
�Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

[GlassBeadGame]

This is all so tiresome, dreary and inward looking. It seems to me that arguing that WP is not about honest collaboration is like arguing that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault isn't really about making the world safe for Democracy. Is there anything in there for us other seven billion people? Does it address the 500,000 petitioning Muslims? The Jana Winter pornography exposé? The Free Kulture British National Portrait Gallery Heist? Who cares what SlimVirgin said to SomeRandomAssKlown?

[Ottava]

This is all so tiresome, dreary and inward looking. It seems to me that arguing that WP is not about honest collaboration is like arguing that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault isn't really about making the world safe for Democracy. Is there anything in there for us other seven billion people? Does it address the 500,000 petitioning Muslims? The Jana Winter pornography exposé? The Free Kulture British National Portrait Gallery Heist? Who cares what SlimVirgin said to SomeRandomAssKlown?

Apparently some obscure "scholar" whose credentials need to be checked and challenged does.

Seriously, can someone dig into his background and see if this guy is legit? This has Essjay bs written all over it. The guy is clearly a hack, so there is very little chance he has a real degree.

[SB_Johnny]

This is all so tiresome, dreary and inward looking. It seems to me that arguing that WP is not about honest collaboration is like arguing that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault isn't really about making the world safe for Democracy. Is there anything in there for us other seven billion people? Does it address the 500,000 petitioning Muslims? The Jana Winter pornography exposé? The Free Kulture British National Portrait Gallery Heist? Who cares what SlimVirgin said to SomeRandomAssKlown?

Wasn't someone here, once upon a time, working on a book that actually takes a non-koolaid view on this? It's been a while since I've heard anything about it.

Seriously, can someone dig into his background and see if this guy is legit? This has Essjay bs written all over it. The guy is clearly a hack, so there is very little chance he has a real degree.

Because people with degrees would never be so silly as to defend a broken system, of course. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

[Larry Sanger]

He is legit. He has a recent Ph.D. from NYU.

[Peter Damian]

He is legit. He has a recent Ph.D. from NYU.

How did he obtain this? I recognise the writing style - I occasionally lecture to computer science MSc students and they are taught this odd method of citing some vacuous paper every other sentence. (Thus perpetuating the genre). But even by the standards of that discipline, this seems profoundly bad.

[edit] Also if you look at his CV http://reagle.org/joseph/2003/cv/cv.html you see it doesn't contain anything substantial. B.S. (good acronym) in computer science, training in 'conflict management', PhD in 'Media, Culture and Communication'. he is a fellow at the Berkman centre http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ which though part of Harvard seems to be one of those things that many academic institutions are putting out nowadays to be trendy and attract funding. But who actually does fund this sort of thing?

[edit] Well all these people http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/about/support it seems.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Kelly Martin]

I occasionally lecture to computer science MSc students and they are taught this odd method of citing some vacuous paper every other sentence.

It serves as a way to appear erudite, and it also serves to cut off responses when talking to people who may not have access to JSTOR or to a library with that particular journal; if you do have access you have to go and look and if you don't you can't reply without obviously ignoring the journal reference.

When used in the hard sciences and in engineering, it's typically done to avoid a lengthy discussion of a highly technical nature (e.g. when you're talking about, oh, say, algorithms for unification, it makes so much more sense to a cite to a well-known paper about some algorithm instead of writing a two paragraph summary of an algorithm that doesn't really matter that much to the immediate issue). However, this habit doesn't necessarily carry over well to the liberal arts, where truth is a negotiable quantity, and where people care more about arguments than they do about facts (although it certainly does still matter who made them). Basically the difference is that papers in the hard sciences and in engineering tend to be about things discovered, while papers in the liberal arts tend to be about things imagined.

In Joseph's case here, I think he's playing the "I'm an academic and you're not" game. But that's just my take on it.

[Ottava]

In Joseph's case here, I think he's playing the "I'm an academic and you're not" game. But that's just my take on it.

If that is the case, then he is in the not side, especially with his choice of analysis. He chose neither topics essential to an encyclopedia or people who provided material for the real part of the encyclopedia. If you are judging the success of the project, those are the only two things that matter. Everything else is decoration.