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

[Peter Damian]

Nesson: As soon as your book was published, I went to Amazon to buy a copy and immediately noted that there was one customer review, er, which had one star on it. And it led off "I wouldn't think of buying this book, based on my complete reading of the freely-available first chapter.

The entire work (it says later) regurgitates the tired old public relations pablum that the Wikipedia organization sputters forth on the Internet - and it goes on. Here, it seems like someone who hasn't read your book goes on to critique the whole book on the basis of what you put up on the first chapter, and in a way seems to exemplify a kind of bad faith that undercuts the thesis - at least to some extent - that this Wikipedia environment is a good faith community. How did you react to this - bullying - tactic, yet I must say, still the only review that's up on Amazon.

Reagle: so, it can be quite challenging, and I wasn't so much upset by the Amazon as by a thread on the Wikipedia Review website where they talked about me and the book, and there are porn cutups and people say they spit on me and they want people to burn in hell. So there, there, there is definitely a sort of, um, flip side to the Wikipedia culture and Wikipedia is certainly right (rife?) to be criticised for a lot of things and I think that what I portray in the book is a lot of the challenges and how the community has wrestled with it and especially criticism from people like Helfa (?) and Keen and Orlowski and Sanger and a whole number of people. But nonetheless in one presentation at some point I said 'I do not engage the mean-spirited trolls, and that has upset some of these people because they might then imply that I characterise them as being mean-spirited trolls. And some of them I do think are mean-spirited trolls, but not all of them.

But I think one of the really important things is that you can find boneheads in all types of communities, including Wikipedia. You can find anti-social people, mean people - but the difference between Wikipedia and say the Wikipedia Review community is there are norms in Wikipedia where we say we wanna do better than that. When someone posted that porn cutup, or when someone posts a defamation and when some of these other places like Encyclopedia Dramatica, which is full of that stuff - people laugh. They don't say 'I don't think that's a productive way to engage'.

So I think it does speak to some of the differences. I'm not trying to represent Wikipedia as being perfect, as being this pasture of harmony and full of angels. Not at all! But nonetheless you do have this culture and this community that's trying to do better than what Godwin's law calls us to.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

I wasn't so much upset by the Amazon as by a thread on the Wikipedia Review website where they talked about me and the book, and there are porn cutups and people say they spit on me and they want people to burn in hell.

But I think one of the really important things is that you can find boneheads in all types of communities, including Wikipedia. You can find anti-social people, mean people - but the difference between Wikipedia and say the Wikipedia Review community is there are norms in Wikipedia where we say we wanna do better than that. When someone posted that porn cutup, or when someone posts a defamation and when some of these other places like Encyclopedia Dramatica, which is full of that stuff - people laugh. They don't say 'I don't think that's a productive way to engage'.

Oh, I am so offended to be misrepresented like that. That is so utterly "unacceptable" and WP:COI. Please someone give Reagle an account so that I can indefinitely block him or even better drag him off to the ritual humiliation of a WR:RfC.

Darling, as you well know, those were not "Porn Cut Ups". Those were "Wikipedia Cut Ups". Those are images of Wikipedia contributors' penises which they had kindly upload for "educational purposes" on your beloved Encyclopedia which you obviously know little about.

That shaved one on your book cover is RitchieX. RitchieX meet Reagle. If you are interested, RitchieX will masturbate for you and then ejaculate on the Linoleum and then upload the photos for the kids to see. He already has done so. One of 1000 (all white) penises.

"Bullying" ... Mr Reagle, I don't think that's a productive way to engage with me either. You are lying to your audience. And you are lying to your audience about the larger part of the nature of the Wikipedia, pulling the wool over their eyes.

I think Reagle comes across as far more preppy than geeky in the video. In a way he typifies the Wikipedian who spouts some highminded policy ... we want to do better than that ... and then goes off to the deep end calling them names ... "boneheads ... mean spirited troll ... anti-social ... mean" ... and then distorting the facts from a protected position as an empowered adherent.

Pablum ... (trite, naive, or simplistic ideas or writings; intellectual pap) ... now there's a nice word.

Ha! He calls the 'US', 'The Community', Wikipedians "cultured". I must have joined a different Wikipedia. The idea of "special masters" being appointed by Arbcom to police users made me laugh. May be he joined a different Wikipedia from the one I did.

Woah, watch him sidestep the issue of Jimbo's $100,000 prize money as he did not feel himself "qualified" to answer it in the "first serious study" of Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: