J'Accuse...!, Cachey, No? Options

[Jonny Cache]

Every now and then I get the feeling that some folks -- some of whom may have just joined the program already in progress -- are honestly puzzled by what a number of us might have against Wikipedia. By way of answering the question Where's the Beef? I intend to collect here, in a compact form suitable for easy reference -- you might even say a Compendium -- some of the more salient complaints.

Bill of Particulars:

1. I accuse Wikipedia of spawning a half-generation of pathologically diss-socialized internet skinheads.
   1. 
   2. 
2. I accuse Wikipedia of perverting the meanings of our most cherished and crucial concepts, to the point where they cease to have any practical meaning at all, not within the Wikipedia context and not among those who fall under its influence. For example:
   1. Accuracy
   2. Authority
   3. Balance
   4. Biography
   5. Civility
   6. Collaboration
   7. Community
   8. Consensus
   9. Encyclopedia
   10. Equity
   11. Impartiality
   12. Knowledge
   13. Meaning
   14. Neutrality
   15. Notability
   16. Openness
   17. Originality
   18. Policy
   19. Populism
   20. Privacy
   21. Quality
   22. Reliability
   23. Responsibility
   24. Significance
   25. Transparency
   26. Verfiability
   27. ...
3. ...

Further below, I will elaborate as necessary on the charges to be enumerated here.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Tue 30th January 2007, 7:42pm

[Jonny Cache]

1. I accuse Wikipedia of spawning a half-generation of pathologically diss-socialized internet skinheads.

Some people just innately criticize their existential-social matrix from the time that they are conceived in its womb. They cannot consider established ways of doing things without considering alternatives to them. Something in their stars impells them to think that conceiving otherness is the very meaning of the word consideration. That is why we are constantly trying out each new pathway that appears off the pike of establishment ways, and that is why we are constantly being suckered into the usual proportion of dead ends to nowhere. What the heck, we are used to that, and it's simply a matter of tracking back to the last good road and hitting the trail again.

C'est la vie. Nothing is lost but time and energy. But being mortal, none of us wants to waste more chunks of our life on dead end directions than we absolutely have to. So a moment of post mortem examination is not a bad idea if we want to make new mistakes instead of always getting bogged down in the same old ruts.

And all of that adds up to one of the reasons that I find my experience of Wikipedia to be so distressing that it literally -- and why do we say literally when we really mean figuratively? -- makes my blood boil. Because Wikipedia is not just radically miseducating a hive full of impressionable people about the kinds of knowledge and skills that are necessary to function in civilized society, but it is blowing a chance that we might have had to eke out a few genuine improvements to the established ways of doing things.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Sat 20th January 2007, 5:42pm