Wiki-Induced Kognitive Insufficiency (WIKI), Enough Symptomatics! What Is The Cause? Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

"In order to learn you must desire to learn …"

"Ay, there's the rub …"

What is it, then, about Wikipedia, if not indeed about the whole wiki paradigm, that is proving to be such a massive failure in promoting the sharing of information, learning, knowledge, wisdom, all that good stuff — at least once that critical threshold is passed, in the direction of increasingly uncritical thought?

Well, I know the dynamics of our own sweet Etopia well enough to know that nothing so meditative will compete with the Main Distraction on the Midway this week … or the next … but I thought I might leave this note to self, just in case things get dull toward the Ides.

P.S. I was going to call it Wiki-Induced Learning Disorder but the acronym WILD might have made it sound like a good thing.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Mon 3rd March 2008, 2:01pm

[Moulton]

Your call for causes of an effect on the human psyche is what prompted me to pull out Girard's Model, since that's a core feature of his model.

[Jonny Cache]

Your call for causes of an effect on the human psyche is what prompted me to pull out Girard's Model, since that's a core feature of his model.

Fair enough, and maybe my brain is just blurred over today, but the model seems to be describing human universals that would manifest themselves in all climes and seasons. What I'm looking for are differential factors, marks of the social policy + software design that are amplifying the noise at the expense of the signal, so to speak.

Some of us already accept the idea that anonymity is one of those factors. My own experience with Citizendium tells me that you can fix that bug and still not touch many other fundamental flaws of the Sanger-Wales confoundation.

Pointing to the poor excuse for a social contract that Wikipedia trots out on ritual occasions is certainly another good lead. But it debouches on a very wide field of investigation where we have but turned over one or three pebbles here and there.

So I'm just not getting that epiphany yet —

Maybe I'll go watch the Simpsons movie again …

Jonny

[Milton Roe]

Some of us already accept the idea that anonymity is one of those factors. My own experience with Citizendium tells me that you can fix that bug and still not touch many other fundamental flaws of the Sanger-Wales confoundation.

Pointing to the poor excuse for a social contract that Wikipedia trots out on ritual occasions is certainly another good lead. But it debouches on a very wide field of investigation where we have but turned over one or three pebbles here and there.

So I'm just not getting that epiphany yet —
Jonny

Maybe there's nothing more to get. We all know the problems of email fora from the monumental fights on Usenet (internet newsgroups). They are indeed brought on by anonymity, the ease of hitting the "enter" key when you'd better off thinking it over for 30 minutes, and finally (and not least) the real problems that enter in, when two people face off in "public" and this causes a situation where neither can lose face by giving ground. This is how murder happens in the ghetto. It's not generally private one-on-one fights without witnesses that are deadly-- it's fights in front of groups where the weaker guy can't just walk away, and so is forced to do something drastic, like pull a deadly weapon.

The only thing Wikipedia adds to all this, that I can see, is to add the power to be Judge Dred. People slurp their way up the brown snowcone until they finally become anon admins, and from that moment on, they have power without accountability, and that corrupts all but the most saintly and old souls. Certainly it totally destroys the character of the average young-male-nerd who typically become an admin. For women with any paranoia at all, it plays into their primal fears of being raped or stalked or something, but you'll notice that their hot-button killing activities as admins, are for totally different reasons. Male admins typically tromp on others for insults, as in a bar. Women for "outing" another editor, which amounts to fears of being followed home in the dark.

Does this theory need to be more complicated?

--- Milt

[Jonny Cache]

Some of us already accept the idea that anonymity is one of those factors. My own experience with Citizendium tells me that you can fix that bug and still not touch many other fundamental flaws of the Sanger-Wales confoundation.

Pointing to the poor excuse for a social contract that Wikipedia trots out on ritual occasions is certainly another good lead. But it debouches on a very wide field of investigation where we have but turned over one or three pebbles here and there.

So I'm just not getting that epiphany yet —

Jonny

Maybe there's nothing more to get. We all know the problems of email fora from the monumental fights on Usenet (internet newsgroups). They are indeed brought on by anonymity, the ease of hitting the "enter" key when you'd better off thinking it over for 30 minutes, and finally (and not least) the real problems that enter in, when two people face off in "public" and this causes a situation where neither can lose face by giving ground. This is how murder happens in the ghetto. It's not generally private one-on-one fights without witnesses that are deadly — it's fights in front of groups where the weaker guy can't just walk away, and so is forced to do something drastic, like pull a deadly weapon.

The only thing Wikipedia adds to all this, that I can see, is to add the power to be Judge Dred. People slurp their way up the brown snowcone until they finally become anon admins, and from that moment on, they have power without accountability, and that corrupts all but the most saintly and old souls. Certainly it totally destroys the character of the average young-male-nerd who typically become an admin. For women with any paranoia at all, it plays into their primal fears of being raped or stalked or something, but you'll notice that their hot-button killing activities as admins, are for totally different reasons. Male admins typically tromp on others for insults, as in a bar. Women for "outing" another editor, which amounts to fears of being followed home in the dark.

Does this theory need to be more complicated?

— Milt

Nah, Boss, works for me …

Jonny "Da Jet" Cache