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Larry Sanger on Wikipedia and World
Phoe6 writes "MIT Tech Review is running an article on Larry Sanger, an epistemologist and the co-creator of Wikipedia. It is very interesting to know his views on Wikipedia. He says, 'To build a public encyclopedia, you don't need faith in the possibility of knowledge, What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together.'"
Wikipedia article on Larry Sanger
;-)
It had to be done
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
mod article down (Score:-1, Troll)
wikipedia is a bunch of hyporcritical censoring liars. they love to censor certian types of poltical articles that don't match their agenda but they let opinion and bias sneek through if it fits their agenda
Apparently the same applies to Slashdot mods...
He says, for the whole thing to work, humans have to work together and help one another. Now, I like Wikipedia, and I think it works, but not because people are "helping" as much as they can. It works because there are lots of people with big egos that want to show off their knowledge, and moderators that aren't afraid to ban an entire subnet (any computers from the Calgary Board of Education, where I go to school, are prohibited for making changes; take two guesses why, the first one doesn't count). It still works, but the assumption that it is because people are "helpful" to each other is slightly flawed. I'm sure there are some, but as with most other facets of life, I imagine they are vastly overshadowed.
why not have a moderation system like slashdot?
Require that 5 editors approve of a content addition/change before that modification is applied.
Track the editor's moderation record. Make negative modding count both against the negative moderator as well as the moderated.
This way only by getting 5 positive mods in x number of editor views can an addition get approved.
There certainly has to be a way to handle the vandalism and pettiness. slashdot's moderation system seems to do a great job of handling just that.
I mean, as an example, cruise slashdot at +5 and you get some good meat. drop to +4 and you've got your side of fries (or potatoes), +3 to eat your vegetables +2 for fiber +1 for garnish and 0&-1 for a dark alley to purge yourself in an anorexic fit.
Just cruise the first couple posts on this thread and take a gander at what allowing anyone to post anything brings...
I know there are problems with the slashdot moderation system - but as a whole it's a good system which tends to bring the most relevant and informative posts to the top of the heap. I would venture to say the slashdot moderation system is one of the most effective user-based moderation systems in existence.
Now, since I'm not familiar (and like to read the contributions of individuals), tell me; how closely does the slasdot moderation system currently relate to the wikipedia moderation system?
as an afterthought and to browse off topic (further?) since the inception of politics.slashdot.org I have contemplated the idea of something like a debate.slashdot.org
It's quite a tricky notion to convieve - how could you setup something akin to a formal debate in the form of a web forum? I mean, it seems all the lego pieces are here, robust moderation system, informed parties abounding with great skills at backing claims.
Would you somehow create opposing teams by using a vote system? how would you determine the representative for the side of the debate?
mark my words. With slashdot and wikipedia we have only begun to see the possibilities of massive contribution of free thought.
Here's an idea. Perhaps a revert war is should be viewed as information itself. So for each article, there's a volatility index useful for identifying contraversial subjects. If you notice that an article has high volatility and are interested in examining it, you can see a history of the article over time.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Having text subject to a moderation period for hours or maybe a day or two in a discussion area (with some sort of indicator or flag) would be a LOT better than instantaneous posting, IMO.
I contributed to the entry on Internet Explorer (specifically, removing it). A while back, some editors at Wikipedia (I'm not attributing--I'm sure this time lack of attribution will make them happy) were continually deleting the section on removing Internet Explorer from Windows. The kept changing criteria... First, they wanted the passage on removing IE to say exactly who recommends it. Then, it had to meet Neutral Point of View and attribution criteria. Then, another Wikipedia editor asked what computer security experts recommend IE removal. It finally ended; they deferred and named the three experts in the field.
Per the article: Nonbias is a difficult ideal to live up to. Indeed, the most common complaint against Wikipedia is that it is unreliable; since anyone can publish or edit any article instantly, theres nothing except the diligence of other contributors to keep favoritism, misinformation, vandalism, or sheer stupidity out of the encyclopedias pages. I'd argue that so-called nonbias is not the problem.
The problem was that these dedicated editors were not deferring to the actual experts (in this case, me--the guy who has a site on removing Internet Explorer from Windows 2000, and ignoring the creators of XPLite and nLite). If the editors don't like something, all they have to do is claim that it violates the holy grail Neutral Point of View and you'll have to beat them over their heads to get your text into the Wikipedia. Moderation is a lousy way to get at the exact truth, but eventually, it comes to light (seems to here at Slashdot, anyway). No, obviously the truth isn't what everyone thinks, but it would sure help with those editorial battles. An article might have a comment that Hydrogen caused the Hindenberg disaster, and it gets modded +5. Eventually, you can bet the comments pointing out that it was the zeppelin's skin (paint) will also get modded +4 or +5. The key is with the Wiki, with moderation, potential authors wouldn't have to have month-long running debates and editorial beat-downs.
Slashdot:
- once you post it's set in stone
- everything is moderated by default
- mods have low power as individuals
- moderation is recursively cliqueish; moderator approval feeds back into modpoints
- system designed to force some semblance of signal into a high-noise community
- unavoidably encourages groupthink and modwhoring
Wikipedia
- everything is mutable
- moderator intervention is rare, the normal way problems are resolved is via discussion and edits
- moderation is a private club with significant power
- system assumes most people are "signal" and that "noise" is rare
- encourages discussion, reason, and NPOV
The current wikipedia state...Is sad. When anybody can change the entire entry without anybody noticing.. the "Douche" entry was insulting some girl with first and last name for about a week or two before it was changed.
Without a serious review system, I can see it becoming a nest of crap that no one will be able to use.
I just went through the entire history of the Wikipedia article on Douche. I learned more about douching than I ever wanted to know. (Still, the review is much easier with the new Mediawiki v1.4, implemented in beta just this week. You can go directly from any version of the article to its immediate predecessor or successor, or you can do the same in the "diffs" that display the changed sections and highlight what was changed.) When I review the article, I don't find anything like what you describe.
The article seems to be a favorite place for the kiddies to insert people's names, but this vandalism gets reverted quickly. The first one ("Oh, and Eric's a douche") lasted all of one minute back in March before it was reverted.
Here are subsequent corrections reverting such edits, with their lag times showing how long the vandalism stayed up before it was caught:
one minute
three minutes
two minutes
seven minutes
one minute
nine minutes
one minute
Now, I'll admit, they got us this week. The vandalism that added someone's name at 2:02 on December 21 wasn't reverted for thirteen hours. I guess we were all at our Winter Solstice rituals. But there is nothing remotely close to "insulting some girl with first and last name for about a week or two before it was changed."
So, if you had added such a claim to a Wikipedia article, I'd just delete the misinformation, while giving my reasons (as above) in the edit summary or on the article's talk page. If you could back up your assertion, you could restore the passage. If you and I couldn't reach agreement, we'd get other participants involved. Here on Slashdot, with its "serious review system", however, all I can do is post this response.
I used to be a massive fan of Wikipedia and a regular contributor in the fields of computer science, programming and military history.
However as Wikipedia has became more popular it has also became completely overwhelmed with pop-opinion, poor rigour and fact checking. It has become completely bogged down blatant bias and revisionist history, and simply trying to keep on top of this became exhausting.
At first I assumed this was simple ignorance, and tried to work withing the wikipedia process for resolution, but it was pointless, over time I came to understand that the trouble causers seemed to exhibit the same personality traits as usenet trolls and MOG griefer. The ignore facts, build straw men and resort to personal assaults. However the usual tactic of ignoring them doesnt work because they carry on changing the articles anyway, use revert bots to change articles on mass. Some examples.
- One contributor who tried to suggest that encapsulation was not a fundemental feature of OO.
- Another contributor kept removing the word riot from the blood Sunday article.
- Another contributor kept removing the evidence of JP Jones war crimes.
These are just some of the many problems I experienced at the hands of revert bots.
In the end I gave up and left them to their ignorance.