You are arguing (with some Wikipedian) that experts aren't fairly supported or represented on Wikipedia. The Wikipedian replies "But look at Citizendium - that had experts and it failed". You reply that Citizendium had other problems - no Google attractor, not many actual experts, Larry etc. The Wikipedian then points out a perfectly good article that an expert had sorted out, and the expert was you

So the Sisyphus Paradox is this. The very experts who are complaining about low academic standards on Wikipedia, and the problems of editing there, are the ones who are keeping the standards as high as they are.

An example. I have often complained about Neurolinguistic programming on Wikipedia, as being junk science disproportionately represented. I mentioned this to an academic, who looked at the introduction main article about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming and said that it was in fact pretty neutral. I realised to my horror that the introduction was written by me. How can I complain about junk science on Wikipedia when I am one of the culprits who are, often successfully, keeping it out.

There was a similar problem with the article on Existence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence . I have long used this as evidence of poor standards, and foolishly mentioned this to Connolley who, apart from some minor errors, has generally cleaned it up.

Poor Connolley and poor the other writers on science and academic subjects. They are going through the labours of Sisyphus. Yet they only complain after they have successfully got the boulder up the hill. If only they had waited until the gods of the Wiki had pushed it back again.

Yet another zen Cohen.

Some of the best Christian riffs (and jazz riffs too, for that matter) are Jews doing pastiche. You've got to admire the power of the basic processor that can do that kind of emulation. Unless of course you're a Spanish inquisitor examining conversos....

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes!

Never been a sinner, I've never sinned
I've got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with the spirit in the sky...

I remember an interview where someone asked LC about his fascination with JC, and he said something very witty and apocacryptic, but I can't remember what it was.

I thought this was fun …

Jon

Thanks for that. I knew none of the backstory.

A song like Suzanne is so competent as poetry that it makes you feel sorry and cheated for the generation that is listening to inchoate screaming with no melody or harmony, and thinking that it's music. This stuff is as timeless as Shubert songs or the Beatles. I'm simply glad that the river of time inevitably washes away the tailings and at last leaves the gold at the bottom of the pan.

And that will happen to the content of WP, too.

The easy answer is: don't help them. If you find an egregiously broken article or an insane wiki-argument over one, let it sit, or post it on one of the private areas of WR (and you know where, you already have access).

I suspect that our discussion of bad articles here is attracting juice-guzzlers like Silver seren and Blofeld, who then go and fix them. That is why I'm not going to post about this stuff in public areas of WR anymore.

I realize that it's a Sisyphean labour in its own right trying to push the calculus of a genuine thought over the neural hillocks of some people's pates, but there's really no paradox at all about the beehiviour of the parties in question. Every con game or cult or Reaganoid Republican Ruse depends on tapping some particle of faith or nugget of fantasy that the marks of the moment most desperately want to believe, and feeding it back to them in an ever-amplifying howl of reverbernation until they have no senses left.

Nothing new here … move along … those who can still hear …

Jon

You mean hold the stone behind your back and make poor Sissy-puss guess which hand it's in. You're a cruel, cruel man.

I'm gonna take an exception to that, inchoate screaming with no melody or harmony can be quite aesthetic if done right.



and it's not like it's a EITHER/OR kind of thing. I can appreciate and enjoy Cohen's music for what it is, and I can appreciate and enjoy inchoate screaming with no melody or harmony for what it is. Or take this:



or this:



Just cuz you like spicy Mexican food doesn't mean you can't also appreciate meatloaf and potatoes. It depends on what is appropriate for the mood you're in.

Oh, it was getting fun to watch silver scurrying about to go fix up these articles. Posting about these things privately now means we'll never get to know what could have happened to the fried-brain sandwich article.

I don't hesitate to correct obvious errors, although I spend less and less time doing so. It won't reverse the general entropy.

Most tasks on Planet Earth seem to be Sisyphian. It just changes the object on which to focus, which isn't a big rock anymore, but maybe school, work, something that has some kind of task or objective to complete, no matter its worth or value, much or little that it is, and in the end, we are at the beginning of another hill. From hunters and gatherers, the lifestyle of Homo Sapiens, to computers, paper writers, secondary and tertiary sector jobs, the lifestyle of Homo Videns.

Yes, it is probably better to leave Wikipedia lone, but it does not really matter if you try to fix articles. If someone finds it interesting to fix a bad article, I see no harm in it. It will not do a thing to lift the general low quality of Wikipedia. Neither it will either delay the demise of Wikipedia, nor speed its end. WP has failed already, but no one seems to notice. It is like what Abba Eban said about a well known Israeli organization: Its continued existence is of considerable interest because it proves there is life after death.

The idea that a group of highly qualified editors turning their backs on WP will bring it to a standstill makes me a little uncomfortable because it sounds close to the elitist, and invalid, point repeated by Ayn Rand, ad nauseum, in Atlas Shrugged. Feh.

You're kidding me, right? The only possible use of this kind of desperate confused wailing would be to score the part of a zombie film where the zombies have caught one of the protagonists and are biting through his skull while he is alive.




And my only comment on THAT sack of shit (yes, it's the name of the "piece"), sounds even to me like something Ayn Rand would say about modern art. And believe me, if some bit of art makes me want to say something that sounds like Ayn Rand, it has to be horridly bad shit, indeed. On a canvass, it would probably involve smears of it.

Thanks, Uncle Milty. When old people condemn punk as noise, that's a good sign that they're doing it right.

That's pretty good. Somewhere, the one-armed man is applauding. Can you hear him?

Only Dr. Richard Kimble can hear him.

I'm tempted to edit "Don't tase me, bro!" into that clip several times and stick it on YTMND.

I was under the impression that the widespread use of penicillin-derived antibiotics had all but eradicated Sisyphus....

Rimshot

That's a very helpful link. I wonder if we could somehow add it to this site's software.