¤ How Wikipedia Really Works ¤, Everything U Wanted 2 Know But Got Banned 4 Asking Options

I see from an eblurb on the Wikienlist that 4 Wikipediots have a ¼coming book predictably titled "How Wikipedia Works". The contents of course are so predicable as to be utterly devoid of information value, except for the predictable falsehoods that might be said to have a negative information value, so it is bound to be a considerable contribution to the Entropy Death (ED) of the Universe.

In prospect of that con∑ation devoutly to be 4stalled — we wish! — I propose that we scoop these 4 Hearsemen of the Hypocalypse with our own True2Life account.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 5th December 2007, 12:58pm

From a comment on Jimbo's talk page...

New people arrive, having bought into the PR, edit for a while, and then either align with the ruling Cabal or get disgusted and leave. Anyone who dissents is accused of trolling, disruption, or not being here to write an encyclopedia. People get banned all the time, their talk pages are locked, with no discussion permitted within the community, and appeals only to Arbcom.

To which I would only add that it currently takes about 3 months to get a Request for Arbitration filed after being blocked. I was blocked on September 11th (ominous date, eh?) and I finally managed to get a Request for Arbitration posted on December 3rd after many failed attempts.

In prospect of that con∑ation devoutly to be 4stalled — we wish! — I propose that we scoop these 4 Hearsemen of the Hypocalypse with our own True2Life account.

All you need is at least half a dozen individuals (using real names) to contribute a chapter to a book, plus an introduction, citations, and publish on www.lulu.com. You'll just need an editor to handle "house style" (the format of citations will be tricky since many will be URLs linking to Wiki diffs), but I reckon it would be a winner.

As we contemplate a prospective outline for our Wikipedian Book Of The Dead — a Bard's Baedeker of Satisficingly Safe Passages through the Bardo of Wikiputia's Bazaarro World — the first thing that we must get across to the bewildered coureurs de bois is that Wikipedia is first and foremost a Game.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 5th December 2007, 1:36pm

Wikipedia purports to be a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a little bit like playing Chess, Checkers, or Go. However, every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, the most experienced Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. Rather than participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, they adopt the personal goal of winning the current match with the adversarial editor at hand. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing and exploiting the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the world's media to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Superficially, Wikipedia may look like a high-tech encyclopedia. But in many ways it functions as a Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game (MMPORG), not unlike Dungeons and Dragons. Guilds, cliques, and cabals battle it out on a daily basis. Like Chess, one tries to marginalize opposing pieces, or remove them entirely from the playing board. To survive on Wikipedia, it helps to be mean-spirited, evasive, and allied to a powerful guild that protects its own brethren.

Wikipedia purports to be a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a little bit like playing Chess, Checkers, or Go. However, every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, the most experienced Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. Rather than participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, they adopt the personal goal of winning the current match with the adversarial editor at hand. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing and exploiting the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the world's media to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Superficially, Wikipedia may look like a high-tech encyclopedia. But in many ways it functions as a Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game (MMPORG), not unlike Dungeons and Dragons. Guilds, cliques, and cabals battle it out on a daily basis. Like Chess, one tries to marginalize opposing pieces, or remove them entirely from the playing board. To survive on Wikipedia, it helps to be mean-spirited, evasive, and allied to a powerful guild that protects its own brethren.

No, the Standard Wiki-Party Line is precisely that Wikipedia is NOT a rule-driven system. I know this from the time when I knew the party line by heart and was often found catechizing it for the de-in-struction of other hapless brainwashees.

If you want to be cute — and I know you do — you could say that Wikipedia is not a Rule Based System (RBS) but a Rule Debasing System (RDS).

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 5th December 2007, 1:52pm

It's probably more helpful to classify it as a dysfunctional system, prone to error, liminal social drama, and dithyrambic tragedy.

Once we have submitted for the approval of the Wiki-Patient Reader the idea that Wikipedia may be a Game, the next question of the E-Quiring Mind will naturally be «What Kind Of A Game?»

And here our task becomes rather more intricate.

Part of the problem is that we cannot rely on the Hermenaut's prior experience with other games during his or her IRL-time in quite the strait4word way that we normally would. Beyond e-voking the Fumbly Dissemblance suggested by the bare idea of a Game, much of what the Hermenaut knows about other games IRL will quite contrarily operate as a distraction, an impedimentum, a miscue, and even an obstruction to sorting out what's e-φoot in Wikipodia.

So that chapter will take a care-filled bit of analysis and exposition.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 5th December 2007, 2:32pm

As you know, John von Neumann launched Game Theory, along with Oscar Morgenstern. John Forbes Nash supplied one of the central theorems for Zero-Sum Games.

When you relax the definition of game to allow more arbitrary objectives than rigidly defined equal-and-opposite goals, you get more fluid games with more complex governing dynamics. Thus we morph from conventional Game Theory to Drama Theory. Instead of the Nash Equilibrium and MiniMax Theorem, you get Clancy's Theorem instead, as illustrated in the Vexagon Diagram.

Wikipedia purports to be a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a little bit like playing Chess, Checkers, or Go.

Tsk, tsk. Long-time members of Wikipedia Review recognize that participating in Wikipedia is most like playing a nice game of Fizzbin. Especially the part that comes immediately after a card falls on the floor!

Greg

Damitol™ — isn't there any standard way of downsizing those screamshots!?

Jonny

Didn't Bob Hope and Bing Crosby pre-invent that game with Patty Cake?

Wikipedia purports to be a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a little bit like playing Chess, Checkers, or Go.

No. The Wikipedia MMPORG is like either:

• OUTSIDE THE CABAL - Riding in the STAR WARS Millennium Falcon, dodging asteroids and evading space fire from attack ships of Darth Vader's goons.
• IN THE CABAL - Living in the Death Star, following the bidding of Darth Vader and his stormtroopers. Then you are ok, until he randomly decides to off you. But mostly you are safe there.

This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey: Wed 5th December 2007, 4:25pm

[*] IN THE CABAL - Living in the Death Star, following the bidding of Darth Vader and his stormtroopers. Then you are ok, until he randomly decides to off you. But mostly you are safe there.
[/list]

...until the Death Star blows up.

So who plays the role of Darth Bilious?