Dejavuium, Adnauseum Options

[Jonny Cache]

'Nuff sad ...

Jonny

[Somey]

What happened? Did they go live or something?

[Jonny Cache]

Oh, it's just that Siren Sanger again. Maybe it will strike me funnier in the morning, but I knew I'd toss and turn all night if I failed to vent one tiny quantum of a whimper about it. Now, bind me to the mast and stuff wax in your ears.

Full steam ahead ... oh, wait, that's anachronism ... how about "Thar she blows !!!"

Don't be a WP:MobyDick ...

Jonny Ahab

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 17th October 2006, 2:50pm

[Jonny Cache]

No, No -- I quit the chase of Siren and Wale --
I must survive, I will survive to tell the tale ...

Jonny Ismael

[Jonny Cache]

Okay, it's been a couple of days, and I've calmed down a little bit -- not a lot, just a little -- I am after all a very excitable old boy, and what I read on the wall, er, web puts me through these manic mood swings on a daily and hourly basis. But I knocked off a few hats in the street, got me down to sea again, the usual rout, er, routine.

What got me so capsized and blubberin', if you catch my nautious drift, was methinks this log entry from Cap'n Sanger:

Wait, I'll go find it ...

Jonny

[Jonny Cache]

Eureeka (sic) ...

It was this red-letter rubric -- Do I spy a new motto?

Be Bluddy!

I reckon we'll see, now won't we? -- that made my eyes twitch toward the lifeboats, and even now envy the direly departed rats a bit.

No, not that red-letter rubric, this one:

• Larry Sanger, "WP and CZ, Interlinked", Citizendium Forums, 16 Oct 2006

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 20th October 2006, 4:15am

[Jonny Cache]

Well, I was so emazed at this that I begged the guardian of my nom de fume to query Sanger about it on the Citizendium List, hoping past hope that he'd take it all back, and say it ain't so, belay my fears that we have now abandoned the Britannica rule -- The Sum Of Human Knowledge -- and scuttled it all for this unsightly dinghy -- The Sum Of Conventional Wisdom. And so it was written, and tucked in a bottle, and trusted to the Sea of ElectriCiti

````````````Z................

• Jon Awbrey, "Compendium =?= Encyclopedia", Citizendium List, 16 Oct 2006

Alas, nothing but the wind and the waves to answer ...

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Thu 19th October 2006, 5:56pm

[Jonny Cache]

Early days, early days ...

But later than you think when it comes to some things ...

For instance, it's pretty clear already that a person simply cannot have an intelligent discussion with anybody about any significant issue affecting the structure and functioning of Citizendium at any one of Larry Sanger's moderated-to-death media sites. There are far too many undiscussables and non-negotiables that have already been cast in stone, despite what Sanger keeps saying as he pours mass quantities of qwiki-dry concrete into his vast complex of pre-fabricated forms. This is not a good thing for a project that is trying to clone a hybrid of Nupedia and Wikipedia, when the hubrid cloner thereof has yet to learn the reasons why the previous two mutants either went belly up in the bowl or turned totally teratogenic.

Jonny

[Somey]

We just have to look at this in terms of the pros and cons of the Neutral POV and No-Original-Research policies within the context of an "expert-moderated" wiki site... which seems to be something the CZ leadership isn't really doing, not yet anyway.

One would think that there should be a place for original research on a moderated site, since the moderators could conceivably verify the identity and the background (read: biases) of the researcher. The big picture would probably look a little different, though, especially to the guy in charge (Sanger): Someone who was having difficulty getting his or her work published in a peer-reviewed journal, for example, might use CZ as an "end-around," under the assumption that CZ's moderators are going to be considerably less stringent than a traditional academic publication, particularly early on, when they're still trying to be highly inclusive.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to his position, but is that really such a bad thing? I doubt it. After all, they could (and should) just set that stuff off in a separate namespace, clearly labeled as such with big bright-yellow templates on all the articles saying "this is a non-neutral original idea/theory/concept/discovery by Dr. So-and-so of the University of Wherever, and should not be taken as proven fact," or whatever. If the authors are willing to put up with such disclaimers, then every once in a while, an advanced or particularly interesting new thingy might show up on CZ that could have a positive effect on some aspect of the world in general. Or, at least, get someone to start thinking about a problem in a new way that might lead to something even better.

You never know!

Of course, a negativist would simply assume that such a feature would only be abused by cranks and crackpots, but if you've got at least some sort of expert review in place, why get so worried about it? You'd at least catch the blatant stuff, and there'd presumably be a deletion-review process for the rest of it.

[Jonny Cache]

I have a few days before the Fifth, er, Seventh of November, so let me see if I can articulate the problems that I am currently seeing with regard to the Coordinate Axes of (1) Neutral POV, (2) No Original Research, and (3) Verifiability.

At first glance the rubrics of NPOV, NOR, and VER do nothing more novel or original than provide convenient mnemonics for long-standing "Norms Of Research Methodology" (NORMs) that are already well-known in one form or another to all existing communities of inquiry. There is nothing new about the underlying NORMs, and claims of innovation in this regard would naturally be regarded with justifiable suspicion, amounting to a normative self-contradiction just for non-starters.

Larry Sanger promised us a simplified formulation of these precepts, and I am still waiting to see what the next draft will blow up, er, blow in. I would almost bet that he could not do worse than the exponentially expanding universe of policy that we observe, or mostly see breached, at Wikipedia, but then again I will have to check with Jonny the Greek for today's odds of that happening.

So far so good. The "Ground Of Validity" (GOV) of these NORMs is based on a pre-established harmony.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Thu 2nd November 2006, 5:49pm

[Jonny Cache]

If only Nupedia, or Wikipedia, or Citizendium -- or whatever Newikitedium now washes down the pike -- could find it in the fiber of its being to rest content with that familiar GOV, those pre-accepted NORMs that are already copacetic to journalists and researchers all over the world, then everything would be relatively smooth sailing, as much as can be expected from any human enterprise, from that point on.

But the fly in the ointment, or the gunpowder in the basement, is that all of these projects that we have seen so far appear to be constitutionally incapable of doing this.

So we need to ask : Why is that ???

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 3rd November 2006, 2:56pm