QUOTE
The holy grail . . . or things that are not to be moved
So far I have encountered very few things that are perceived as static, unmovable and forever. That Mary was a virgin, that JC resuscitated after three days, that the Prophet rode to heaven on a white horse from the al-Aqsa mosque and that the Buddha sat under a tree until inspired comes to mind.
In these past six days I have discovered that there are several more articles of faith that are just as fervorously guarded as the articles of faith of various religions. Wikipedia is anonymous, all Wikipedians are the same (notice I did not say equal) and Wikipedia is good as is. There is nothing that has to be changed.
There seems to be a reflex of ignoring the reality to the point that I can only compare it to that reunion of theologists around 600 A.D. where they spent seven years discussing the sex of the angels (no consensus) or around 800 A.D. when they discussed if women had a soul (no consensus tending to no).
It is not the first time that Wikipedia is the principal player in a mayor scandal. This Essjay controversy (that we would like to blame on a journalist) by itself would not have caused such big waves if there had not been the Fuzzy Zoeller scandal, the Seigenthaler scandal, the Sun- Sentinel scandal and, and and.
What was the reaction of the community every time? We don‘t have to change anything . . . everything is OK . . . Look at our page views increasing . . . our Alexa ranking is doing great.
And while even the most well intended critics can only shake their heads at the attempts of the foundation to regain some trust that unequivocally is voted down by users there is a loss that everybody prefers to ignore THE LOSS IN CONFIDENCE. Hey it does not really matter, we lock ourselves up in our parallel universe and all is OK. We are making an encyclopedia.
The question is why? What good is an encyclopedia that is trusted slightly less than Idi Amin? No, please don‘t start on this but we have 30% more page views. Every time there is a scandal it goes up and right after it down again. My take is more that everybody who suspects being marginally notable goes and checks if there is some puerile assertion about him/her in their respective articles and the ambulance chasers to see if they can get some work out of this.
Now the question is if we want to do Wikipedia as a closed entity in itself being its own purpose or do we want to make an encyclopedia in the spirit of the first encyclopedists , a work to educate the masses.
If we say, we want to be an encyclopedia we have to start by generating trust and by drawing consequences out of this scandal.
It would not even have to be a radical step. Just a simple: who lies gets blocked, or: who causes damage by lying about his qualifications gets blocked for life would suffice. But it seems that there is fierce resistance at even these self-evident proposals. Not only that, there are clear indications that even when evident nobody bothers to correct any of these unsustainable situations.
If Wikipedia comes to be a purpose in itself I suggest we should be honest about it, stop asking people to donate for our fun and pay dues like on second life and we can happily go on discussing the sex of the angels. If not we have to take all measures necessary to regain trust even if they seem to be diametrically opposed to our views of ideal community.
I know that it is time for my helmet again, but clobbering me won‘t solve the problems. Bringing about a solution to solve the loss of trust problem will . . . and that is up to the community.
AlfPhotoman 22:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
So far I have encountered very few things that are perceived as static, unmovable and forever. That Mary was a virgin, that JC resuscitated after three days, that the Prophet rode to heaven on a white horse from the al-Aqsa mosque and that the Buddha sat under a tree until inspired comes to mind.
In these past six days I have discovered that there are several more articles of faith that are just as fervorously guarded as the articles of faith of various religions. Wikipedia is anonymous, all Wikipedians are the same (notice I did not say equal) and Wikipedia is good as is. There is nothing that has to be changed.
There seems to be a reflex of ignoring the reality to the point that I can only compare it to that reunion of theologists around 600 A.D. where they spent seven years discussing the sex of the angels (no consensus) or around 800 A.D. when they discussed if women had a soul (no consensus tending to no).
It is not the first time that Wikipedia is the principal player in a mayor scandal. This Essjay controversy (that we would like to blame on a journalist) by itself would not have caused such big waves if there had not been the Fuzzy Zoeller scandal, the Seigenthaler scandal, the Sun- Sentinel scandal and, and and.
What was the reaction of the community every time? We don‘t have to change anything . . . everything is OK . . . Look at our page views increasing . . . our Alexa ranking is doing great.
And while even the most well intended critics can only shake their heads at the attempts of the foundation to regain some trust that unequivocally is voted down by users there is a loss that everybody prefers to ignore THE LOSS IN CONFIDENCE. Hey it does not really matter, we lock ourselves up in our parallel universe and all is OK. We are making an encyclopedia.
The question is why? What good is an encyclopedia that is trusted slightly less than Idi Amin? No, please don‘t start on this but we have 30% more page views. Every time there is a scandal it goes up and right after it down again. My take is more that everybody who suspects being marginally notable goes and checks if there is some puerile assertion about him/her in their respective articles and the ambulance chasers to see if they can get some work out of this.
Now the question is if we want to do Wikipedia as a closed entity in itself being its own purpose or do we want to make an encyclopedia in the spirit of the first encyclopedists , a work to educate the masses.
If we say, we want to be an encyclopedia we have to start by generating trust and by drawing consequences out of this scandal.
It would not even have to be a radical step. Just a simple: who lies gets blocked, or: who causes damage by lying about his qualifications gets blocked for life would suffice. But it seems that there is fierce resistance at even these self-evident proposals. Not only that, there are clear indications that even when evident nobody bothers to correct any of these unsustainable situations.
If Wikipedia comes to be a purpose in itself I suggest we should be honest about it, stop asking people to donate for our fun and pay dues like on second life and we can happily go on discussing the sex of the angels. If not we have to take all measures necessary to regain trust even if they seem to be diametrically opposed to our views of ideal community.
I know that it is time for my helmet again, but clobbering me won‘t solve the problems. Bringing about a solution to solve the loss of trust problem will . . . and that is up to the community.
AlfPhotoman 22:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and I found this diff, where Jimbo calls Moreschi a "troll", particularly amusing.....
