WP : A "Machine" for Validating Mass Consensus?, Is this what it's all about? Options

[the fieryangel]

I made this point on the David Shankbone thread over at the editor's section and I'm extracting it because I believe that it merits discussion on its own :

What is WP doing? WP is glorifying all of those layers of junk that people learn and just accept--all of those layers that I have to spend months slowly, patiently, peeling away to try to get to what's real. We don't need any more of that and we certainly don't need a machine that generates this stuff.

The more I think of this, the more I think that this image is valid: WP is a soul-less machine which exists to generate content which validates the experience of the people that created it. It's function is to prove that "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!"

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[Milton Roe]

The more I think of this, the more I think that this image is valid: WP is a soul-less machine which exists to generate content which validates the experience of the people that created it. It's function is to prove that "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!"

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Yes, it's a machine for generating the best wisdom of (fairly small) crowds. Had it been used to create feedstock for expert reviews like Sanger first proposed, it would have worked well. "Sort of a "pre-enrichment" process to get some of the boring crap done. But then Jimbo and Sanger had a fight, and parted ways. Each taking a crucial bit, without which the whole idea did not work well for either. Jimbo had a brand new pair of rollerskates and Sanger had a key. And they never did get together again to try them out to see...

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sat 5th April 2008, 6:33pm

[the fieryangel]

The more I think of this, the more I think that this image is valid: WP is a soul-less machine which exists to generate content which validates the experience of the people that created it. It's function is to prove that "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!"

Reactions? Comments?

Yes, it's a machine for generating the best wisdom of (fairly small) crowds. Had it been used to create feedstock for expert reviews like Sanger first proposed, it would have worked well. "Sort of a "pre-enrichment" process to get some of the boring crap done. But then Jimbo and Sanger had a fight, and parted ways. Each taking a crucial bit, without which the whole idea did not work well for either. Jimbo had a brand new pair of rollerskates and Sanger had a key. And they never did get together again to try them out to see...

Yes, I think that the model was never intended to become so big...and I also think that at the beginning, the plan was very different. With the addition of many more people than were originally intended, the machine starts to work in unexpected ways. Right now, it seems to me that the machine is no longer taking commands from anyone, in spite of what they would like us to believe....I mean, what are "community bans" anyway???

The entire "machine" image seems to ring very true here, and explains the soul-less quality that many have connected to their WP experience (Armed Blowfish being one example).

Of course, "Metropolis" also comes to mind, as does "1984"....

[Gold heart]

Of course, "Metropolis" also comes to mind, as does "1984"....

Yups, or to put mildly, "the monkeys are running the zoo"!

Who's gonna clean up all those banana skins? Not the monkeys, they don't do that sort of thing!

This post has been edited by Gold heart: Sat 5th April 2008, 7:28pm

[Milton Roe]

The entire "machine" image seems to ring very true here, and explains the soul-less quality that many have connected to their WP experience (Armed Blowfish being one example).

Of course, "Metropolis" also comes to mind, as does "1984"....

And all the Faustian pact-with devil/technology stories, of which sorcerer's apprentice is one version (Goethe saw this coming long before the computer and atom bomb, and the atom bomb and computer designers spent a lot of time reading Faust).

My own favorite version is the Krell Machine of Forbidden Planet, where the secret devil that is the Id of every soul on the planet is set loose by the Machine. Computers are word-controlled machines, as are human brains, and that means spells have effects. Thus, magic. It's magic even if it's your typing and words, and still not directly your thoughts.

The problem with all of this, is the one everybody noted in the late 1940's, soon after nuclear weapons were invented (and even before thermonukes arrived). We now have a lot of extra power, but still monkey ids. And it's really baboon politics on WP (Barnstars = grooming, etc), only amplified now by the Machine. And by humanity's biggest invention, which is intellectual rationalization of animal acts performed for essentially animal reasons. Sigh.

[Somey]

WP is a soul-less machine which exists to generate content which validates the experience of the people that created it.

Personally, I'd use "acquire" and "compiled" rather than "generate" and "created," but the part about validation is certainly accurate.

And I might go further by suggesting that it provides that sort of validation by pretending to be, if not actually being, an "internet powerhouse." It sells people on the idea that the project, and their role in it, will take on such a high level of long-term importance in terms of informing and educating "the masses" that it's worth the enormous amount of time and effort that people put into it - whether it's to ensure that the information is accurate, or to ensure that one's personal beliefs and biases are given the undue weight that one feels they deserve. That's not something they're likely to have conceived of back when the site was first launched.

[Yehudi]

And all the Faustian pact-with devil/technology stories, of which sorcerer's apprentice is one version (Goethe saw this coming long before the computer and atom bomb, and the atom bomb and computer designers spent a lot of time reading Faust).

Er ... wasn't the Dr. Faustus concept used by Christopher Marlowe a bit before Goethe? Though as half the atom bomb designers were Jewish refugees from Nazism they might have preferred German literature.

[Milton Roe]

And all the Faustian pact-with devil/technology stories, of which sorcerer's apprentice is one version (Goethe saw this coming long before the computer and atom bomb, and the atom bomb and computer designers spent a lot of time reading Faust).

Er ... wasn't the Dr. Faustus concept used by Christopher Marlowe a bit before Goethe? Though as half the atom bomb designers were Jewish refugees from Nazism they might have preferred German literature.

Exactly. There's a pretty good history of the Faust myth on Wikipedia . Indeed the German speaking scientists preferred Goethe. But quantum mechanics was invented by Germans, so everybody had to go to Gottingen to learn it in the late 20's and early 30's, and they all came back speaking German, even Americans like Pauling and Oppenheimer (Pauling of course didn't work on the bomb). And other Europeans working on atomic theory also had no choice but to learn German, although comically (Bohr once gave a lecture in German and one scientist in the audience speculated that der, die, and das were used interchangably, and the other said, "No, there's a distinct preference for the "das.")

BTW, I'm not surprised QM was first invented by Germans. The language itself is a bit indeterminate. German speakers in particular hold a lot of nouns and relationships in a sentence in their minds, in a sort of "superposition" (neither one thing or the other) till they hit the verb at the end, which then retrospectively clarifies it all. Just the same thing happens in quantum mechanics.

[Jon Awbrey]

I made this point on the David Shankbone thread over at the editor's section and I'm extracting it because I believe that it merits discussion on its own :

What is WP doing? WP is glorifying all of those layers of junk that people learn and just accept — all of those layers that I have to spend months slowly, patiently, peeling away to try to get to what's real. We don't need any more of that and we certainly don't need a machine that generates this stuff.

The more I think of this, the more I think that this image is valid: WP is a soul-less machine which exists to generate content which validates the experience of the people that created it. It's function is to prove that "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!"

Reactions? Comments?

I sort of get what you are saying above, but I think that we would be very ill-advised to use the words "validate" and "consensus" to describe it. And nothing but confusion can come from trying to use the non-senses of WP:Validate and WP:Consensus.

To say it more precisely, Wikipedia has less and less to do with The Sum Of Human Knowledge and more and more to do with The Lower Bounds Of Popular Misconception.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sun 6th April 2008, 4:46pm

[Moulton]

To say it more precisely, Wikipedia has incereasingly less to do with The Sum Of Human Knowledge and increasingly more to do with The Lower Bounds Of Popular Misconception.

Aptly put, Jonny. I agree 110%.

And if we're wrong about that, then here we are concurring on our own (unpopular) misconception.