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Here we go again.

Wikipedia is problematic beyond problematic. Want to know why? Here's a transcript of a Jason Scott presentation that goes over a lot of it.

The short version is: Wikipedia as it exists today is an insular, closed circle-jerk operation. Even good contributions and spelling corrections are apt to be "reverted" by a legion of people who are using semi-automated tools to up their "edit count", because the prime metric for becoming an "admin" is a stupid-high edit count that an actual writer could never reach in 10 years, and they don't give a crap how you got there.

Once you get to be an "admin", basically anything goes. That's when you start entertaining offers to be the protecting force for groups of people who create politics, that's when you start being verbally obtuse if not outright abusive towards any new editors, and that's where the whole system falls apart. Want to try to repair an article, add links? Ok, but now you have to speak 18 categories of acronyms, you have to be online 24/7 to instantly respond to "questions" that can be posed in a dozen or more possible places ranging from your talk page, other editors talk pages, article talkpage, "related" article talkpages, various "admin" forums, two or three email forums, and on and on. You have to master an entire subset of "how to write a citation" code rather than sticking a link at the end of the line, because otherwise some ass-hat will revert you and claim you're spamming.

It's a mess. It's a mess because Wikipedia is not, and never will be, an accurate encyclopedia. Wikipedia is just the latest in the MUD/MMORPG line of games where a bunch of assholes grind time, gain "XP" (aka "edit count"), and once they get powerful enough and get the "admin" hat, spend most of their day griefing incoming players and claiming it's "thinning the herd", "fun", or "protecting the encyclopedia."

Abuse on wikipedia is systemic and ridiculous. The number of people who have been through it are numerous. The number of reliable, credentialed academics who've been abused, voluminous. The number of times they have covered up their abuses, the number of sheer scandals. (note that they've deleted all of the Essjay material, to cover up and try to hide what he pulled; a long-running scam to abuse and mistreat and demean Catholics).

Wikipedia administrators regularly abuse their power - in any way possible. The caste system of wikipedia is set up this way; gather thousands of mindless edits (and they keep pushing the boundary upwards, for fear that someone might get in and try to fix the system from within). Decry anyone who rightly points out that the system is broken and needs fixing as a "troll."

Abuse and attack; ban and call them a "troll" later; lie about the results of "CheckUser", lie about what a user said and what a metric really means, attack attack and do your best to smear anyone who says anything at all.

This is the method by which wikipedia administrators exist; this is the methodology by which the caste system is enforced. It used to be, way back when, that users were encouraged to seek out another administrator if one was giving them grief for redress: now the policy is against "wheel warring", and no administrator is allowed to undo the action of another for fear of being accused of such, and administrative policies have been changed to enforce this.

In the Wikipedia system, the administrators are the pigs of animal farm - "more equal than others."

Jason Scott put it very well indeed.
So did Jerry Holkins: "a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

However, the core of it is worse than that. Wikipedia is not merely controlled by "consensus": it is actively controlled by cliques whose goal is to bias the hell out of articles and keep them in their biased mode. They operate by getting their friends, members of their clique, elevated to admin status and then patrolling these articles, ostensibly for "trolls" but really for anyone who might try to un-bias them. They abuse these newcomers, make false accusations against them, hurl insults and then have their friend ban the newcomer for fighting back. They abuse the prohibitions on "multiple reversions" like a game; instead of a real consensus, all you have to have is one more guy than the opposing viewpoint and you completely control the damn article - and since you have a sympathetic admin on your side, you can have them block the new user for "edit warring", which comes in real handy when you have your buddy bring them to the drumhead trial system called "Arbcom" and say "see he should be banned he's got X blocks already."

Wikipedia is beyond broken - at its best, it is a worthless pile of crap with some whipped cream sprayed on top to try to make it look presentable. At its worst it is a classic case of letting the inmates run the asylum, of the Lord of the Flies syndrome; the worst abusers of the system are those who are "highly-ranked" and "respected" administrators, who operate by fiat, who can and regularly do abuse anyone else without mercy.

The caste system is mercilessly enforced by the admins - without it, they would not have nearly so much power. The whole point of being an administrator of wikipedia is not to make the encyclopedia better but rather to protect your friends, protect your clique, rise in

The point he was trying to make, and made, directly, is that while Wikipedia is neat, it's not the last stop for any information by a long shot. It's closer to a bulletin board than a real encyclopedia. He did it as a jest, but it wouldn't be past beleif to imagine other -real life- opinion show A-Holes from directing their drooling masses at these resources to change the facts on command.

Hell it's probably already happened.

If anything he's demonstrated a potential vulnerability in our collective record. We all knew it was there waiting to be exploited en-masse, and he just pointed it out. There are also more notable people on the subject who agree with him.

[1] And Jesus, fellas, what a smug headline.

The Wikipedia people then vote. Does the majority win? No! Many times,
Wikipedia works off of a consensus policy. Consensus essentially means
when the administrator shows up, he makes a decision, based on the voices
of what people have said. This is how houses are destroyed, using eminent
domain. You have everybody say "this is a bad idea", and then the guy
sitting in the seat goes "hmmm, but man, they're giving us some cash," and
that's the end of that house.

In Wikipedia you will have 75-to-45 votes, in which the 45 win simply
because of the quality or because of the number of neutrals. You have
this enormous amount of weight that can be pushed around by an
administrator. It is also possible to vote for the adding and deletion of
administrators, and (in what I consider to be insane) there is something
called the "Miscellany For Delete," and what this means is you can
actually reach consensus on what other people on Wikipedia are allowed to
do. All of this shouldn't be surprising in the case if there was a
politic vacuum -- the fact that people allowed to kind of reach a
consensus on everything started saying "well, I can do this". So the
notability debate becomes an issue.

I spent some time consulting with my staff over where the source of your issues came from, regarding notacon's quality. After checking the location of the Holiday Inn and consulting my star chart, I think we've been able to triage your issues.

It's not usually known, but when you have a number of cosmic arrangements, specifically the pyramid shape of the nearby Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame and the metal plate in Nick Farr's head, something that is commonly referred to as a "dimensional rift" occurs. Unlike the cinematic portrayals of this rift (which are WAY off base, by the way), there is usually not a burst of orchestra music and vibrating white light. Instead, doors and hallways seem pretty much the same, although if your mind is open you can see it immediately. Closed minds, structured as they are to find the bad in everything and to look at the world as a big loving silver platter waiting for them to grab with thier chubby, slick fingers, will walk around unawares for a good amount of time.

Were you to not have gone through this portal, I suspect you would have seen Notacon as it was: a combination of talks, social gathering, and events stretching far into the night. For my own part, I recall a particularly good poker game played with a number of intelligent people, conversation topics flailing about like a trauma victim and the pot slowly rising between us. Of course, the real currency in that game were the ideas, but I digress.

In the actual reality of notacon, I happily attended a number of excellent talks, including my own. This is good, because my lack of attendance would have surely brought the talk down to the level that you experienced in NotNotacon, the portal dimension we figure you were in. The next time you think you might be there, check the labels of Snapple Iced Tea: they're blue instead of a brown-yellow mix.

My own talk, which is up for enjoyment both here and here, covered an excellent example of the merging of at and technology in what is commonly known as the ANSI art scene. I like to think we were engaging, multi-media, and intense. Of course, in the NotNotacon dimension, I believe our talk was replaced with a riveting account of ordering a sandwich. C'est la vie, as we say in the metaphysical sciences.

What concerns me, of course, is that, like your unawareness of the dimensional portal you found yourself in, you've been unable to give examples of conventions that NotNotacon can aspire to. Surely, giving helpful information instead of a litany of wild-eyed negatives will improve the world at large, if for no other reason than to gain the vital "Junior J. Junior III" market often described in articles in "Hacker Convention Monthly".

My staff at textfiles.com and I send our condolences that you spent your 5-hour jaunt in the alternate dimension and hope that your open-mind exercises will prevent this sad occurrence from happening in the future.

Now THAT is retro!

I used to host with a fine place, but disagreements over costs and bandwidth usage charges inspired me (along with the purchase of my home) to host in my own basement. I have 3-4 customers, and we'll keep it at that. Bandwidth is a T-1. And I think the place looks pretty sharp. This is also where textfiles.com and bbsdocumentary.com are hosted, so it works for me.

Rubi-con is much fun. Last year, firecrackers were shot at a presenter, stairwells were douced with fire extenguishers, a jacuzzi was soaped, and the rubi-con web site defaced with a 10 minute star wars style flash animation.

On the more normal side, there were tons of good speakers, lots of alcohol, and excellent looking geek chicks.

Oh, if the site buckles under slashdot, Jason Scott put up a mirror here - http://www.cow.net/rubicon/decaffeinated/index.htm l

Welcome Slashdot readers! We are currently under WAY HEAVY LOAD, which should not be a surprise :-)
The regular website is disabled until we can cope with the load.

Until then, you can get more information about MindCandy from Maz Sound.
For ordering, check Fusecon's MindCandy ordering page.
If you'd like to see the trailers, a mirror of selected MindCandy content has been provided by Jason Scott.
(You may know Jason as the curator of textfiles.com and the BBS documentary project, so check them out.)

Welcome Slashdot readers! We are currently under WAY HEAVY LOAD, which should not be a surprise :-)
The regular website is disabled until we can cope with the load.

Until then, you can get more information about MindCandy from Maz Sound.
For ordering, check Fusecon's MindCandy ordering page.
If you'd like to see the trailers, a mirror of selected MindCandy content has been provided by Jason Scott.

Not surprisingly, the mirror site has been /.ed too.
I think /. should setup a mirror before posting such websites that go down by few hits...

I went on Saturday (got wrapped up in stuff and couldn't go back on Sunday). I took lots of pictures; they're here:

http://www.cow.net/album/VCF

I had a great time, guys! You bet I'll be there next year!

I took Rusty's LGP source code and hacked it up (and hacked is definitely the dominant verb) so that it could work with any collection of *.c files. I named this hack "codewheel", although I promise I won't be passing the thing off like I wrote it or anything.

Basically, it works just like LGP except that it 1. Works with a single directory instead of many, 2. Doesn't put in Tux, the key, the title, or anything, and 3. Includes a slight more documentation than the original, though not that much more.

Everyone wanted it, it's now something you can check out and download and play with. Anybody who programs for a living will sneer and snicker at my efforts, but that's life, right? At least I put my efforts up for others. Enjoy.

- Jason Scott
Amateur Code Guy

I can vouch for this place; I heard about them a pretty long time ago (over a year and something ago) and I immediately send out money to buy one of every cartridge they had.

The result can be seen in this older photograph of my entertainment center. All those grey boxes in the lower left are brand-new, still in box Atari and Jaguar cartridges.

He's actually sold out of a few of them, but on the whole, this is a great, great thing. If it was 1983, I'd look like the richest kid on the block (instead of the most geekily nostalgic).