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

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.

We have toxic waste dumps in my region, too. But we apparently can't produce enough locally so we import a lot from Canada.

Sound Familiar?

I think I need un heimlich maneuver …

Jonny

The point being that pulling the plug doesn't drain the bathtub, never mind scrubbing away the ring.

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

Julius Caesar, 3.2.76–77.

The point being that pulling the plug doesn't drain the bathtub, never mind scrubbing away the ring.

And what does that telus about the mind of the brain-washer?

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 5:57pm

Old brains shed their mortal coils.

Children only learn of the past through well-told stories.

Where are the bards who will craft the durable stories our bumbling generation?

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.

I have already put forward many hypotheses about the real objectives of those who control the ongoing development of the Wikipedia media platform.

The next page collects links to a number of relevant posts and topics.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 7:38pm

Dynamic Page —

Effective Goals and Enacted Values in the Wikipedia System

How Wikipedia Really Works

By way of review, let us recall the analytic dimensions and the synthetic paradigms that a cursory survey brought to mind as an Initial Frame Of Reference (IFOR) for trying to outline the character of the Wikipedia Internet Game (WIG) —

Examples of Games

• Alternate Reality Game (ARG)
• Internet Confidence Game (ICG)
• Training-Indoctrination Game (TIG)
• Viral Pyramid Marketing Game (VPMG)

Properties of Games

• Most games have players.
• Most games have moves.
• Most games have rules.
• Most games have an object or a purpose.

Each of these dimensions can be subdivided, possibly according to its own nature and possibly in relation to the remaining dimensions. For example —

• There are constant rules and there are variable rules.
• There are unwritten rules and there are written rules.
• There are move-governing rules and there are payoff-determining rules.

If you think about the distinction between unwritten rules and written rules, you can see that the essential difference between them does not inhere in the rules themselves but really has to do with their differential relationship to the players, to wit, the extent to which various players are informed of the rules. This matter of information in games is capable of wide ramification, of course.

Jon Awbrey

Guide to Wikipedia for Reporters and Researchers


This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 18th December 2007, 7:00pm

I think I understand what Jonny is talking about.

A true reality show would just have cameras that no one would know about and people would just go about their lives with no interference from the producers. But there are no such true reality shows.

I understand that the Cabal are basically a bunch of pirates with a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" alliance coupled with every Cabal member knowing that every Cabal member carries some dark secret that can be blackmailed.

But I have a hard time understanding why any Cabal would be happy with running a dystopic reality show like Wikipedia.

Perhaps by means of private communications (IRC, AIM, e-mail, etc.) Cabalists can poke certain players into committing a certain action that results in drama. Those that push for what the Cabalist wants are saved and those who did not were "trolling." Cabalists create the reward and immunity challenges, pick their vassals, and punish those they consider peasants.

And in a dystopia, people look for leadership. That's how the Cabal benefits. They say "Never fear! We shall protect you from evil and discord in exchange for your loyalty!" That's what Robespierre and Marat did in the French Revolution and what Palpatine did during the Clone Wars.

I think though that sometimes the chaos does not yield what the Cabal desires. It can even go so far out of control, the producers (Cabalists) cannot control the actors. I remember DennyColt (search for him with the forum's search function, ye newcomers!) and his tirades. It was speculated that he was some Cabalist's meatpuppet who went out of control of his handler.

It must be great to be a Cabal Warlord on Wikipedia. But there's always a conspiracy, always a mutineer in one's midst, and always the fear that one's "controlled drama or chaos" can go out of control.

You can't even trust you're fellow producers, it seems.

That's my point. The drama takes on a life of its own, because unlike Survivor the Wikipedia Soap Opera is not a small cast of characters carefully chosen by the Producers.

So you end up with a character-driven drama with many dozens of characters. There is no way the outcome of that is gonna be controllable.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Tue 18th December 2007, 8:15pm

I think Jonny, apart from not having named in detail his hypothesis about what exactly "the producers" want to accomplish ("Springtime for Hitler" revival?), has not addressed the null hypothesis: that human nature and normal background biases have created the mess that is Wikipedia's regime, all without any conspiracy at the formation of the project. Was "The Lord of the Flies" completely unbelievable? If not, then why is there a need to figure out what sinister force is behind the Wikipedia fiasco?

I tend to go along with the Lord of the Flies model for what transpired on Wikipedia.

Had the organizers done their homework better, with more due diligence, I daresay they might have adopted a more functional regulatory model, such as one based on a realistic social contract.

Moulton, Saltimbanco,
Put Down The Remote !!!
Pull Your Heads Out Of The Tube !!!

Jonny

Please refactor.

The compressed dump of WP will fit on a DVD and is available for public download. There are versions with and without edit histories and talk pages. Even if someone at WMF pulled the plug on the main servers, the recent snapshots would be available in perpetuity for mirror sites, scraper sites, and archive sites.

Is the entire history in there, or just the top layer of Wikipedia?

Please refactor.

One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.

Jonny

Trust is a fragile thing. Once broken, it's very hard to rebuild.

One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.

Tell your story, Jonny. I'm generally willing to believe the worst of the Wikipedia lot (as an old friend and co-worker once said when I blandly asked her if she was familiar with another, somewhat infamous co-worker, "Whatever it is, he did it."), but there are an awful lot of awful counter-indicators to what you seem to be suggesting. I've stated my null hypothesis; tell me your test hypothesis and give me a chance to shoot holes through it. If it withstands the barrage, then I'll believe you have something. If you're insisting that your Sooper-Sekret Mailing List of Uber-Admins has already vetted your hypothesis, I'm not biting.

One thing that keeps the con game going is that the marks just keep denying that they have been conned.

Tell your story, Jonny. I'm generally willing to believe the worst of the Wikipedia lot (as an old friend and co-worker once said when I blandly asked her if she was familiar with another, somewhat infamous co-worker, "Whatever it is, he did it."), but there are an awful lot of awful counter-indicators to what you seem to be suggesting. I've stated my null hypothesis; tell me your test hypothesis and give me a chance to shoot holes through it. If it withstands the barrage, then I'll believe you have something. If you're insisting that your Sooper-Sekret Mailing List of Uber-Admins has already vetted your hypothesis, I'm not biting.

In a line of theory about the inquiry process that Aristotle kickstarted and Peirce geared up to contemporary speeds, the generation of an explanatory hypothesis is said to be the result of "abductive inference", or "abduction" for short (Greek απαγωγη).

An explanatory story is useful to the extent that it reduces the amount of bewilderment, puzzlement, or uncertainty that we experience in the encounter with a surprising phenomenon.

Now, it's been a bit of a strain on my acting abilities trying to play the parts of all Seven Siteless Sages, but I do think that the record will show that I have generated a number of useful hypotheses, each of which would serve to explain some aspect of the Wikipachyderm's physiognomy.

The hypothesis that Wikipedia is a con game goes a long way toward explaining many features of the generic Wikipedia game that have historically been rather hard to explain on any other hypothesis.

I would not say that it accounts for all of the variance from the path of null-hype-ness, but I do think that it accounts for a lot.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 19th December 2007, 2:10am

Wikipedia may well be a confidence game.

But if someone unfamiliar with the story asked me to explain what the con game is, or how it works, I would be hard pressed to provide a coherent answer.

Wikipedia may well be a confidence game.

But if someone unfamiliar with the story asked me to explain what the con game is, or how it works, I would be hard pressed to provide a coherent answer.

The engine that drives the confidence game is an unrealistic expectation on the part of the mark, typically rooted in unconscious strata of unrenounced fantasies, for example, delusions of entitlement or infantile wishes for glory, love, power, etc. The confidence artist is an expert in reviving whatever unrealistic hopes the mark may harbor and in using their imaginary values to deprive the mark of goods that have real value.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 19th December 2007, 2:48am