Well, it looks like this is one of those weeks — or months — when The Wikipedia Review has tucked its head up its Tarpit and just can't seem to pull it out again. And it's a crying shame, because there is so much more to do and learn and think about on the Web than the Soap Operatics of Wikipedia. That is, of course, if you fell down that Rabid Hole of Wikipedialand in the first place while chasing some elusive butterfly of wonderment, and didn't just seize on it as a faute de mieux security blankit for your own prior state of ignorance.

At any rate, I thought it might do us all some good if I made a list of the more enticing alternatives that I've run across lately.

Jon

Okay, let me share this article:

When Wikipedia Won't Cut It:
25 Online Sources For Reliable, Researched Facts

(Can't remember where I found this--
maybe on WR somewhere. Ah!)

Thanks, those information sources are worth bookmarking for future reference.

But I was really thinking about the kinds of resources that could do a better job of facilitating many people's natural inclination to engage with a Community Of Inquiry (COI) — which is what that acronym betokened to me decades before I ran into its other meaning — and none of those sources look like they deliver the Come One Come All (COCA) fix that people appear to be craving these days.

In my wanderings, I have been encountering a number of other projects here and there on the Web that do look more promising than Wikipedia and even Citizendium have sadly become.

So I was trying to get a few spare moments to highlight a sample of those.

Jon

I'm guessing you all know about sites like Wikipedia Review, PlanetMath, PlanetPhysics, and a select host of others where it is possible to develop content in a collaborative fashion according to protocols that are far more sensible than Wikipedia and all the Wikias put together. Why some people just keep hangin round their Old High School so long after they've outgrown That Old Gang Of Theirs — or should've outgrown it, to tell by their insufferable groanin pains — maybe "The Boss" has a song about that, but I dunno.

Anyway, let's put that aside for now — I'm thinking I might do a special on it — but some other time.

Jon

A simple example for music is the Prog Archives, which attempts to put information together about every prog rock release - ground Wikipedia also covers. A typical specialist site for the terminally fixated. Their governance model is quite simple, site founders rule, there is then a hierarchy of approved reviewers, though anyone can add a review, indeed is encouraged to do so.

The interesting element is the ratings system, where a simple click to rate earns a pitiful score weighting, a rating with a 200 word review earns a higher score weighting and then an approved reviewer gains a big score on the rating. It is a bit like the scoring system at Wikipedia, only instead of pretending it is all equal and fair, they say up front that admins score 10 times minions; who score 10 times IP addresses and low edit counts. In Prog Archives it is a mechanism that resists abuse.

I've been poking around the collection of resources for Hypermedia Discourse, Knowledge Mapping, and Open Learning that are offered by the Open University, many of them undergoing active development by its Knowledge Media Institute. The wealth of spaces and tools is a bit overwhelming at the moment, so I'll just post links to some of the more interesting openings that I've found so far.

• OpenLearn : Home Page
• OpenLearn : LearningSpace
• OpenLearn : LabSpace
• Compendium : Knowledge Mapping
• Open SenseMaking Communities
• Cohere >>> Make the Connection
• Open Research Online
• Open Research Online Blog

E-Joy!

Jon

Thanks Jon, though I should really have found these for myself: I got my degree from the OU.

better things to do than wp? My thought for the day was whenever I saw a misleading fact on wp in the relevant subject area of diet/exercise etc, instead of editing it I will counter the mistaken belief in the book I'm writing on the subject

A plug for Wikipedia Review. I've been expanding the material on medieval philosophers far beyond anything available in Wikipedia. The beauty of the system is the ability to construct semantic searches and tables. Thus we have a list of medieval philosophers here:

http://wikipediareview.com/List_of_medieval_philosophers

but this is not maintained the idiotic way it is in Wikipedia, where someone manually maintains the list. That whole page is just this script here

<ASK Mainlabel="Philosophers who flourished 1000-1400" Header="show" Link="all" sort="Flourished" order="ascending">
[[Category:Philosophers]]
[[Flourished:=>1000]] [[Flourished:=<1450]]
[[Birth Date:=*|Born]]
[[Flourished:=*|Fl.]]
[[Death Date:=*|Died]]
[[Birth Country Name:=*]]
[[Bcmp Pages:=*]]
</ASK>

which constructs the table that you see, based on information available in the articles themselves. Nor is there any need for those idiotic lists of Norwegian medieval philosophers or medieval philosophers whose name begins with 'A'. All you have to do is so construct a query, similar to the above, which searches for articles matching those criteria. This is still not possible on-wiki.

Note also the attempt to classify articles by notability - this is the attribute 'BCMP pages' which counts the prominence of the philosopher according to the number of pages they are allocated in a standard reference work. This would be useful in the case of a 'philosopher' like Ayn Rand, who receives a vast amount of attention in Wikipedia, because the hordes of fanatics and idiotics who edit that article. Notability attributes cut across all that nonsense.

OpenStudy

Article in The Chronicle of Higher Education

MIT Courseware Pilot Project

OpenStudy Home Page

Blog

It's fairly easy to register and to start a new study group.

It seems to me this is more of an "Answers" type of site, only with a slightly greater emphasis on user accountability and at least the potential for some consistent structure, which is good. IMO its success will depend on whether or not people will use it in the way it's intended (i.e., asking questions that might require a scholarly approach to answering them, and people actually taking such an approach to the answers, as opposed to "Why do u all hate Britney so much?", "GTFO," etc.)... and of course, how the site is going to be moderated.

They probably didn't intend for the site to be used for things like exposure of Wikimedia's ethics problems, no matter how much it can be made to look like scholarly review, but I doubt they'd delete it just for that... Anyway, it looks like somebody's going to have to take on the "student" role and start asking some decent questions to get the ball rolling, and preferably not of the "Is Wikipedia reliable?" variety. I should check out some of the more active "courses" to see how they got things off the ground (assuming they actually did).

Oh, and whoever wrote the summary for the group forgot the "Principal is your pal" rule...

I created a few, too —

1. Differential Logic
2. Inquiry
3. Inquiry Driven Systems
4. Integrative Education
5. Logical Graphs
6. Semiotics

Jon

Damn, somehow I've never heard of this institution. According to Wikipedia:

This is very interesting and assuming it's true it's about US$6,518 at the high end. How much more is it for international students? Are their degrees regarded as worth a damn in the U.S.? Do they even accept Americans? I do know I've already paid more than that out-of-wages and am less than half done.

Degrees from British institutions are equivalent, so aside from snob-factor an OU degree is theoretically equal to the same degree from Oxford or Cambridge. The costs vary, they're listed here.

It's like Charley Peirce said — It all depends on what people desire to learn.

Jon

How so? The idea that the Principal is your pal is a palpable lie, anyway.

"Principal" means "main" or "chief". The school principal is called that because of being the principal teacher.

Better things to do with your time online...??????

Maybe...... Read

the news...

blogs...

forums...

*chan boards.....

youtube videos... B`

spend some time flagging videos posted by bullies harming their classmates...

convince people online that obesity can be fought with methods different from bariatric surgery...

analyze the psyche of the internet citizen...

play the PACMAN game.....

play poorly made Flash games...