The WikiPedia Medium Is The WikiPedia Massage, What Is The Real Purpose Of The WikiProgramme? Options

[Jonny Cache]

What about the producers of the show?

They're too clueless to appreciate the dynamics of system modeling, which is why the unintended consequences of their Frankenstein baby is characterized by Girard's Model of Mimetic Lunacy.

I'm betting that Jimbo knows more models than you do.

It's all he needs to know to tell what the boobs will buy.

Jonny

[Moulton]

The folks at Google are not boobs, and they didn't buy Wikipedia, even though they could have picked it up for chump change.

The problem is, they would have had to change out all the chumps who operate it.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Tue 18th December 2007, 2:00pm

[Jonny Cache]

The folks are Google are not boobs, and they didn't buy Wikipedia, even though they could have picked it up for chump change.

The problem is, they would have had to change out all the chumps who operate it.

There are days when I think that SlimVirgin must have stolen your identity.

Or maybe you were her all along.

Now go have a cup of coffee or three and quit pretending to be such a blithering ediot.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 2:00pm

[Moulton]

Please refactor that.

[Jonny Cache]

Please refactor that.

Sorry, it's a prime invective.

Jonny

[Moulton]

Harrumph.

[Jonny Cache]

You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

Moulton,

Here is what I find annoying, and it's something that you seem to do as a matter of character. You come up to the verge of some important epiphany, and then jam your gyres in reverse and back away as quickly as possible, with a dust of cloud and a wimpy «Ho Hum Slither Away». As it happens, I have known a number of people who recurrently run through this very routine — «This Vehicle May Back Up When It Comes Time To Draw A Conclusion Or Heaven Forbid Act» is a Sign of the Climes in the Tropic of Academe — and so I long ago dubbed it the «Slip Slidin' Away» phenomenon.

For instance —

A lot of what we are watching looks like Machiavellian Power Games, where players vie for status and power, with dynamics something like Survivor where each episode ends with someone being pitched overboard — the scapegoat du jour.

It reminds me a lot like King of the Mountain, where players try to topple other players until they make it to the top (until they topple, too).

Here you draw the very apt analogy between Wikipedia and the recent TV de-genre of Survivor shows, but then you do everything but apply the analogy to draw the obvious inference about Wikipedia, that it is a Production, that it therefore has Producers, Directors, Deputy Directors, and maybe even a Script.

Unless you think that Kid Nation really is just a bunch of kids cast off in the wilderness on their own, with no direction the home audience is solicited the obsequels of which to keep on keeping on tuning into?

Now what is so frightening about the idea that this Production might have Producers?

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 3:30pm

[Saltimbanco]

Producers? For the whole thing? No.

Not because it's so frightening an idea, but because if there were centralized control built into the very foundation of Wikipedia, it would turn out a more polished product. It's easy to reject an Intelligent Design hypothesis when the design isn't any too intelligent.

The process of control at Wikipedia is one that will predictably lead to one particular, mutually re-inforcing group of people to control the thing. But that doesn't seem to be what you are hinting at.

[Moulton]

I think it's a false conclusion.

The producers of Survivor clearly intended the suspense drama they produced. At the end of every episode, the players were obliged to kick someone off the island whether they wanted to or not.

But the producers of Wikipedia clearly intended something other than what they have in fact unwittingly produced.

After three decades in Washington, Wyoming's Senator Alan Simpson noted that with all the Congressional legislation he had helped craft over the years, there was one law he discovered in the sense of scientific discovery of natural laws. He said he discovered the Law of Unintended Consequences, wherein Congress wrote legislation intending some desirable anticipated outcome, but time and again the actual outcome sadly departed from what the legislators had anticipated.

My view is that the actual outcome of the Wikipedia Project includes lamentably unexpected and undesirable events which have brought the project into considerable disrepute.

That's why I invoked the Frankenstein metaphor, since I don't believe Jimbo and his personally appointed sycophants actually intended to produce the monster that they have given birth to.

[Jonny Cache]

Producers? For the whole thing? No.

Not because it's so frightening an idea, but because if there were centralized control built into the very foundation of Wikipedia, it would turn out a more polished product. It's easy to reject an Intelligent Design hypothesis when the design isn't any too intelligent.

The process of control at Wikipedia is one that will predictably lead to one particular, mutually re-inforcing group of people to control the thing. But that doesn't seem to be what you are hinting at.

What purpose do the producers of a TV show have?

Is it to turn out a highly polished educational or otherwise enlightening product?

No, they tried that in the 50's, and they mostly gave it up.

Their purpose must be sought elsewhere.

I see a lot of people still buying the populist myth that Wikipedia is some kind of grass-roots phenomenon. I can see that a line like that derives a lot of its obvious attraction from the appeal that it makes to popular narcissism. I can see how people might have believed that 2 or 3 years ago, but there is no real justification for it now, the eternal popularity of narcissism aside.

People who go on dreaming that Wikipedia is a grass-roots phenomenon are simply ignoring the "transparent" groundskeeping team that controls all the mowers.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 4:12pm

[Moulton]

Compare Intelligent Design to System Design and Mechanism Design. The latter two are successful design projects, because the outcome was what the designers intended. The Wikipedia Project is not an instance of intelligent system design because the outcome is a chaotic game full of Wikidrama in which the dominant players are those who are most successful at gaming the system to advance their individual personal hidden agendas.

[Jonny Cache]

Compare Intelligent Design to System Design and Mechanism Design. The latter two are successful design projects, because the outcome was what the designers intended. The Wikipedia Project is not an instance of intelligent system design because the outcome is a chaotic game full of Wikidrama in which the dominant players are those who are most successful at gaming the system to advance their individual personal hidden agendas.

We've discussed this many times before.

You assume that the Purpose of Wikipedia is just what its advertizers say it is.

It is time to examine that premiss.

Long past time.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 4:24pm

[Moulton]

Well, we're back to original intended purposes, advertised purpose, evolved and continuing purpose, emergent and unintended purpose, and unauthorized subverted purpose.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Tue 18th December 2007, 4:24pm

[Jonny Cache]

Well, we're back to original intended purposes, advertised purpose, evolved and continuing purpose, emergent purpose, and unauthorized subverted purpose.

And the standard heuristic for abducing the telos of a potentially endirected system is to observe it in action and note the states to which it most persistently tends.

I think that we've all been watching the system do what it does — with various degrees of due diligence and for sundry lengths of time — but there is an evident difficulty that many observers seem to have in reframing their views of the data in ways that would make it make sense.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 4:36pm

[Moulton]

What I see the system doing is tending, over time, to increasing levels of contention, disharmony, ephemeral wikidrama, gaming the system, chaotic reversals of state, confused and inchoate policy disputes, progressive decline of overall levels of trust, increasing levels of disaffection, criticism, and alienation of critics, and a resultant groundswell of external competition.

As I see it, Wikipedia is exhibiting the characteristics of a Polionic System.

Moreover, the energies of the system are increasingly being expended in support of the system's internal immune response, rather than in support of an external system goal.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Tue 18th December 2007, 4:50pm

[Jonny Cache]

What I see the system doing is tending, over time, to increasing levels of contention, disharmony, ephemeral wikidrama, gaming the system, chaotic reversals of state, confused and inchoate policy disputes, progressive decline of overall levels of trust, increasing levels of disaffection, criticism, and alienation of critics, and a resultant groundswell of external competition.

As I see it, Wikipedia is exhibiting the characteristics of a Polionic System.

Moreover, the energies of the system are increasingly being expended in support of the system's internal immune response, rather than in support of an external system goal.

You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.

As for what you are calling polionic systems, there used to be a lot of lit on double-bind theory from all the usual supects back in the 60's and 70's.

Jon Awbrey

[Moulton]

You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.

Care to spell out your estimate of the "objectives of those who have their mits on the plug" (as well as the names of those mit-wearers)?

[Jonny Cache]

You keep calling Wikipedia dysfunctional.

Yes, it fails to optimize certain objectives that are most loudly espoused for it.

But the day that it fails to satisfice the objectives of those who have their mits on the plug, they will pull it without a day's notice.

Care to spell out your estimate of the "objectives of those who have their mits on the plug" (as well as the names of those mit-wearers)?

I stated a general principle.

The fact that a plug-based system is still plugged-in constitutes prima facie evidence that those with their mits on the plug are currently satisficed with what they see the system doing.

As to more specific hypotheses, well, this site is full of 'em.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 7:40pm

[Moulton]

I dunno who the mit-wearers are, nor do I know what the hidden agendas of the presumptive mit-wearers are.

[Jonny Cache]

I dunno who the mit-wearers are, nor do I know what the hidden agendas of the presumptive mit-wearers are.

Our Dunno Elegies Are The Envoi To Enchoiry.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 5:26pm