The Use Of Pseudonyms Is a Prima Facie Symptom, Of Emotional, Mental, And Moral Dysfunction (EMAMD) Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

Resolved —

The Use Of Pseudonyms Is A Prima Facie Symptom Of Emotional, Mental, And Moral Dysfunction

'Nuff Said

Jon

Notice. Pseudonymaniacs Anonymous Meets Here Wednesday Mornings, 3:00 AM.

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sat 26th April 2008, 2:24pm

[Moulton]

Forgive me if my translation from Moulton-speak is a little rusty, but I'm guessing that you don't think they'll move toward a Lockdown Phase at all, but simply allow the site(s) to qualitatively devolve and deteriorate into an increasingly useless and unreliable state, operated by what will amount to little more than interweb drama factories?

I don't think they can arrest the transformation, Somey.

I think the conversion of the Wikisiphere into a Dramasphere is an unstoppable juggernaut.

Last night on IRC, I opened a PM window with John Vandenberg (User:Jayvdb). I asked him if he cared to weigh in on some ethical issues that are no longer being addressed within the now-defunct Ethics Project. He said he did not see any ethical problems in the actions of Jimbo Wales or the Wikiversity Bureaucrats.

I asked him if he saw an absence of a community peer review of the practice of Bill of Attainder as problematic. He reiterated that he saw no ethical problems and declined to say more.

I then raised the issue that WMF-sponsored projects seemed to be evolving into drama engines. Jay suggested that I publish that thesis as a peer reviewed journal article. I asked him if he or others in Wikiversity might have an interest in doing an internal peer review of that hypothesis first. He expressed some reservations about his readiness to do that, so I sharpened the problem up for him, explaining it as follows

You have two simple hypotheses:

H0 (Null Hypothesis) Wikiversity is an authentic learning community that abides by the protocols of scholarly ethics.

Against H0 you have:

H1 (Alternate Hypothesis) Wikiversity has been co-opted into a post-modern pre-apocalyptic theater of the absurd, much like many other Internet communities of the 1990s.

My concern was that Jay was reifying H1 even as we spoke. It occurred to me that Jay was playing the role of Hear No Evil / See No Evil / Speak No Evil, whilst all this monkey business was going on. And so I invited him to falsify H1. Jay declined in no uncertain terms to engage in an exercise to falsify H1 unless the exercise were approved by a University ethics review board. I asked him if he would participate in falsifying H1 if COUHES approved a study.

Jay reviewed that and said he would be happy to participate if the study met the conditions of informed consent at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guid...fr46.htm#46.116.

I then pointed out that Cormaggio is writing his Ph.D. Thesis on Wikiversity at the University of Manchester, and (as far as I knew) he did not ask anyone's consent. I asked Jay if he felt that everyone at Wikiversity, including JWSchmidt, WAS 4.250, and myself were afforded a comparable consent opportunity in Cormaggio's studies which are leading up to his Ph.D. In particular, I was thinking of the experiment in which JWSchmidt was bound, gagged, kicked, and locked up in the janitoral hall closet for a week. Did Jimbo obtain my consent before subjecting me to Bill of Attainder and Immurement? Hardly.

Jay assured me he would talk to Cormaggio about that, not having considered beforehand that others might be viewed as participants in Cormaggio's exercises involving JWSchmidt, myself, and the many other community members who were drawn into the drama. Jay opined that it would depend greatly on the details of Cormaggio's research objectives. (See this W-R thread for a link to a just-published peer-reviewed journal article about Wikiversity in which Cormaggio participated.)

I asked Jay if I could quote him on these issues. He declined to go on the record except for one authorized quote: "I can't promise to give my consent to participate in any proposed exercise until I have been appropriately informed, but if your experiment is approved by your human ethics review board, I will give it fair consideration."

So for now, I don't have anyone at Wikiversity who has consented to participate in an exercise to falsify H1 (namely that Wikiversity — much like many other Internet communities of the 1990s — has been co-opted and transformed into a post-modern pre-apocalyptic theater of the absurd.

I told Jay that I was chagrined, discouraged, dispirited, and disappointed by his level of caution and formality, but that I accepted his desire not to participate in an exercise to falsify H1 at this time, pending approval of the exercise by COUHES. My concern is that the conversion of Wikiversity into a post-modern theater of the absurd will be an obvious fait accompli before I can organize and conduct a structured and pre-approved exercise to falsify the thesis that such an irreversible conversion is underway.

I think both Moulton and Kabalversity have Peer Review confused with Peek Aboo.

There was more to the IRC chat that I didn't include in the above, because it was on another topic. Jay mentioned WikiSource and offered to help me transcribe and upload any peer-reviewed writings that I cared to release to the public-domain.

I asked him if I could I put any of my literary character pages in the public domain, once those characters had completed their own educational journeys. Jay replied that Wikisource only accepts published material. So I asked him how "published" is defined in the Internet Age, since there are a lot of electronic publications nowadays that never use dead trees.

Jay referred me to the Wikisource policy pages, specifically WS:WWI:

Analytical and artistic works
Analytical works are publications that compile information from other sources and analyze this information. Any non-fiction work which is written about a topic after the main events have occurred generally fits in this category. These as well as any artistic works must have been published in a medium that includes peer review or editorial controls; this excludes self-publication.

So I asked Jay, "Does Peer Review in Wikiversity count as Peer Review? Clearly there are editorial controls, as portions of my writings were edited out of existence."

Jay replied, "No way. If there is any doubt about whether it would be considered self-published, we err on the side of rejecting the text."

"Isn't that a bit disrespectful of the scholarly demeanor of the scholars in Wikiversity?" I replied.

"Not at all," he responded, "it isn't a statement about the scholars; it is a statement about the venue. Wikiversity is not a recognised peer reviewed journal."

And I agree with Jay. The evidence to date is overwhelming that Wikiversity does not even attempt peer review, let alone complete one in the manner I would have naively anticipated from an authentic learning communtiy.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Thu 16th October 2008, 1:23pm

[Cedric]

Forgive me if my translation from Moulton-speak is a little rusty, but I'm guessing that you don't think they'll move toward a Lockdown Phase at all, but simply allow the site(s) to qualitatively devolve and deteriorate into an increasingly useless and unreliable state, operated by what will amount to little more than interweb drama factories?

I don't think they can arrest the transformation, Somey.

I think the conversion of the Wikisiphere into a Dramasphere is an unstoppable juggernaut.

Strange for me to say, but I find myself more in agreement with Moulton than Somey here. I would not say, however, that much of a transformation is going on, unless by "transformation" one means continuing degeneration. I do very much agree that Wikipedia is an "unstoppable juggernaut": a juggernaut heading slowly but surely down a path that leads to the edge of a cliff.

[Count DeMonet]

Strange for me to say, but I find myself more in agreement with Moulton than Somey here. I would not say, however, that much of a transformation is going on, unless by "transformation" one means continuing degeneration. I do very much agree that Wikipedia is an "unstoppable juggernaut": a juggernaut heading slowly but surely down a path that leads to the edge of a cliff.

Great image although I'd question its veracity. I think there may be a cliff somewhere off in the distance, but it might never be reached, as the juggernaut is currently careening wildly through a large conurbation, leaving the twisted corpses of pedestrians in is wake (thanks to it's cab full of drunken monkeys all randomly pulling the steering wheel too & fro*). Meanwhile the wiki-cops sit parked up in a different part of town, munching on donuts and arguing over the definition of 'spike-strips'.

* though each of 'em has a foot pressing down firmly on the gas pedal.