Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany

tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"

Comments

Could be good but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good. It always works out well when the government mucks about in science.

Re:Could be good but..

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem will be when the US government funds a secret energy task force to write entries about oil being the energy source for the foreseeable future. I predict a revert war between the US and Germany.

Re:Could be good but..

[beckerist]

...and, will they allow anyone to edit these articles? That's the spirit of a Wiki, right? It's all fine to hire a bunch of smarter monkeys to write for you, but when your "editor" is the rest of us (relatively by comparison) retarded monkeys, I don't see how paying for the initial content makes a difference.

Re:Could be good but..

[Anonymous Coward]

btw...as the parent I was asking those questions rhetorically.

--beckerist

WikiMail?

[Overzeetop]

Maybe they're just trying to set up a new way to get a univeral email serive so that when Google pulls out there will be a free email service for Germans.

(Would that be flamebait or troll? Lucky I just posted in another thread or this would have been a FP - and that would have made it a hard choice for the mods!)

Re:WikiMail?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Would that be flamebait or troll? Lucky I just posted in another thread or this would have been a FP - and that would have made it a hard choice for the mods!)

(Score:-1, Offtopic) Neither, obviously...

So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[antifoidulus]

Oy, have Germans EVER met a tax they didn't like?

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the US only blows their money on killing brown people in Iraq for the heck of it.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[UbuntuDupe]

Well, there was that tax on Zyklon-B...

*ducks*

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the US only blows their money on killing brown people in Iraq for the heck of it.

Are you really so fucking retarded as to go there in an article about Germany? You know ... Germany ... the country that started both World Wars in addition to wiping out 6 million jews? I don't agree with the US policy in Iraq, but it's ridiculous to even try and compare body counts. Abu Grab and Guantanamo Bay don't have a thing on Auschwitz.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[WilliamSChips]

Germany started World War II under the leadership of a party that is banned in Germany today, and Germany did not start WWI--to tell the truth, the gears of war were prepped up long before even Gavrilo Princip shot the Austrian archduke. Comparing modern Germany to Nazi Germany is much, much worse than comparing modern Germany to the modern US.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[cwgmpls]

Having government agencies disseminate facts to the public through Wikipedia is certainly more cost effective than having them set up and maintain siloed sites like www.nutrition.com, www.consumer.gov, and www.usda.gov to do the same thing, the way the U.S. government does.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[jollyreaper]

Germany started World War II under the leadership of a party that is banned in Germany today, and Germany did not start WWI--to tell the truth, the gears of war were prepped up long before even Gavrilo Princip shot the Austrian archduke. Comparing modern Germany to Nazi Germany is much, much worse than comparing modern Germany to the modern US. Great, so you just had to leave the opening for comparing the modern US to Nazi Germany. They're nothing alike. For one thing, the German uniforms were far snappier. That digital cammo stuff the US Army uses looks like ass. Second, Hitler actually served his country in time of war. Third, our war footage is in color now. So there!

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[owlnation]

Comparing modern Germany to Nazi Germany is much, much worse than comparing modern Germany to the modern US.

No, sorry. One of the problems with modern Germany is that there are many now who are somewhat distanced from history and are complacent in exactly the same way that decent Germans were in the 1930s.

The neo-Nazi party, the NPD - and others - are not banned. In parts of Germany they have elected members and considerable power and influence. They differ only slightly from the Nazi party - and that is only because aspects of what they believe in are censored by German Law (The censorship laws are actually part of the problem - they drive neo-Nazi's underground and mask their true numbers). In my experience, as one who is not German but has lived in Berlin for many years, the rise of the neo-Nazis is much greater than the average German in the street realises. There is a significant and growing problem with extreme right wing behavior modern Germany. The Nazi's seem to be smarter this time round. They are making legal changes much more slowly this time, but it is happening.

Seemingly small things, like the decision to mark the site of Hitler's bunker, or the decision to remove the Palast Der Republik in favour of a rebuilt Schloss, are all giving the extreme right more power and influence.

Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.

Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that. However, that is simply a function of the fundamental problem with Wikipedia -- cabals rule all. In this, Germany is no different to Microsoft, to Scientology, to the Ayn Rand lovers in the WikiFoundation itself, or indeed to any and all with an agenda and resources.

The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is its delusions of authority, and its designs on the same. If people stopped taking it seriously it would be one hell of a lot more useful and authoritative.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Anonymous Coward]

As a German, let me say that the right-wing thread is vastly exaggerated. If anything, non-nationalistic socialism is too strong, and almost dangerous. The programme is roughly the same, only that the Socialists aren't THAT openly against immigrants (but Lafontaine has said something in that direction, too).

The radical right wing is strong mostly in Eastern Germany and/or in areas with high unemployment. It's just a symptom of Germany's problems, not the root cause. Cure the disease and the National Socialists (and Socialists probably, too) will go away.

The problem, and not in Germany but worldwide, is the general rise of neo-fascism, of taking more and more civil liberties away in the name of safety and "terrism".

I personally find it disturbing that people keep voting for the same big parties, just like in the Weimar Republic, while nothing changes, the problems get worse, and both parties basically perform only bad "reform" measures, that hurt instead of help. But we all get the government we deserve.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Sircus]

...the decision to remove the Palast Der Republik in favour of a rebuilt Schloss [is] giving the extreme right more power

I'm more or less familiar with the arguments about this decision and I think the decision's both wrong and wasteful, but how do you figure it empowers the extreme right?

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Anonymous Coward]

As a german, I feel annoyed and embarrassed about my fellow countrymen who have to assure each and everyone that as a german, they can teach each and everyone how things really are. Pathetic.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[Anonymous Coward]

What Germans Think Of The NPD (in German, but it should be fairly comprehensible to English-speakers). 82% don't even see the NPD as a valid democratic party.

Specifically to the Wikipedia thing though - yes, there is a real danger, nay likelihood, of neo-Nazis hijacking that.

Neo-nazi types have always had the ability to edit Wikipedia and yet articles about things like the Holocaust remain intact...so I fail to see what this has to do with TFA (not sure if you were making that connection, apologies if I misunderstood you).

Modern Germans need to wake up to this before it is too late -- again.

While I agree that all countries should be vigilant about the direction they're heading, I feel that a resurrection of the Third Reich is probably the last thing the German people need to worry about. The dire conditions (widespead poverty, economic devistation, the loss of a war, the percieved ineffectiveness of the government et al) that allowed Hitler to whip people into a frenzy simply aren't there, not to mention the fact that many German gamers will happily blast away at Nazis in WWII games. I stayed with a German family in Munich for a while and they *insisted* that I visit Dachau to "learn from history's mistakes."

As for the inaccuracy of Wikipedia on "hot button" issues, I would say that wasn't a problem unique to Wikipedia, but to the topics themselves. After all, no matter what you say about global warming, abortion, politics, etc there's always going to be a large number of people insisting you're wrong, biased, using flawed reasoning, etc. Anyone asking wikipedia to arbitrate the truth for them is asking too much. For math, computer science, linguistics, etc I can trust Wikipedia to generally give me correct forumlas and explainations. But for the hot button issues, there's NEVER one stop shopping. You need to read around and decide for yourself.

Uh...

[Wellington Grey]

For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia.

Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?

-Grey

Re:Uh...

[doublefrost]

There's a difference. If microsoft funded people to write about microsoft products on wikipedia, it would be to help microsoft. Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the people of Germany.

Re:Uh...

[UbuntuDupe]

No, we'd call it astro-turfing.

I wonder what these German editors will be like...

"Ja, und jedermann soll sofort eine Kompaktleuchtstofflampe kaufen, oder ... jedermann wird sterben usw."

Re:Uh...

[Wellington Grey]

There's a difference. If microsoft funded people to write about microsoft products on wikipedia, it would be to help microsoft. Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the government of Germany.

There, I fixed it. Now you are correct.

-Grey

Re:Uh...

[DragonWriter]

There's a difference. If microsoft funded people to write about microsoft products on wikipedia, it would be to help microsoft. Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the people of Germany.

How is that different? Microsoft pays people to write things that Microsoft's management judges serve the interests of Microsoft's stockholders, the German government pays people to write things that the German government bureaucrats judge to serve the interest of the German government's constituents.

Re:Uh...

[saibot834]

Yes, however the German government doesn't plan to contribute through hiring people to improve Wikipedia, but to write about what they care about, renewable resources. From what I have heard, the government does not donate money to help pay the servers, they just use Wikipedia to spread their information.

It is better than what Microsoft did, because they improve Wikipedia (at least that's what I expect, being neutral and respect WP:NPOV)
It is not the best they could have done, because it doesn't help to pay the costs. There are enough contributors; what Wikipedia needs from organizations / governments / companies is money for the servers.

Re:Uh...

[Darundal]

Out of curiosity, can anyone explain to me how the German government paying people to edit and to write wikipedia pages about a certain topic (in this case, renewable resources) does not constitute propaganda?

Re:Uh...

[mi]

It is better than what Microsoft did, because they improve Wikipedia (at least that's what I expect, being neutral and respect WP:NPOV)

NPOV is an unreachable ideal. These German-trained contributor's POV will coincide with Germany's and will, no doubt, leach into their contributions.

Re:Uh...

[uradu]

Yeah, they will probably totally buy into and disseminate propaganda such as "Global Warming" and other such nonsense that clearly only exists to further the German government's grip on power. Those bastards!

Re:Uh...

[Shatrat]

Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the people of Germany.
Somehow I think it's going to be more like this:
"Germany is funding people to write about things which cast federal german programs and agendas in a favorable light."
There is no way this won't turn political.

Re:Uh...

[Aqua_boy17]

I dunno, but I'm going there right now and looking up 'DOS Boot' before they get to it.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

The vuns who control Vikipedia haf been zuppressing the German editors long enuff. Ve need liebensraum. Soon ve vill expand beyond renewable resources into musicology and medieval architecture. Then you will see. Ve vill take over the article on Poland, then Norway and France. Mit suitable asian allies, we should be able to rewrite all of Vikipedia within 3 years.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the mistake of thinking that the German government is an end-in-itself. While that may be true elsewhere, in (post-war) Germany, the government is exclusively concerned with what is of benefit to the people of Germany.

Re:Uh...

[kavau]

The German government is actually not as corrupt as some other western nations' governments. So I have a good feeling about this.

Re:Uh...

[Capsaicin]

Out of curiosity, can anyone explain to me how the German government paying people to edit and to write wikipedia pages about a certain topic (in this case, renewable resources) does not constitute propaganda?

Unless you were working on a different definition, we'll define 'propaganda' as "The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view." (OED). It should be clear that the payment by the government to write stuff is not necessarily propaganda ... it very much depends on what they write. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the information they produce will be accurate (in that it reflects the best technical view of experts in the field), or where the subject matter allows for controversy, that it will be balanced. Furthermore it is possible that the contributions will not promote any particular political cause. For instance how is the statement "On Earth acceleration due to gravity is ca. 9.8m/s2" propaganda when written by a government funded writer (but apparently not when written by anyone else)?

In other words you'll have to see what is produced before you can judge it. The mere fact of government funding doesn't make communication propganda.

Re:Uh...

[Breakfast Pants]

Oh wow, Germany figured out how to create the perfect holy grail of Government? Bullshit AC, bullshit.

Re:Uh...

[Vintermann]

It's kind of sad that you have to point this out, but you're absolutely correct, of course.

Re:Uh...

[upside]

In the same way that training and employing teachers and scientists in state run schools and universities is not propaganda.

Ofcourse their idea is to "influence" people by raising awareness about renewable energy, but I'm having a hard time thinking how this would be a somehow insidious activity, a connotation of the word "propaganda". Sheesh, this is the most transparent possible medium, and they are being open about the sponsorship. Their work is open for the public to scrutinize and any effort at manipulation would surely blow up in their face.

Let's put it this way, how is the state influencing the people when it chooses _not_ to support expanding our knowledge of alternative fuels? Not intervening is also a policy, and a political choice. Who benefits? Who suffers?

I find it a lot more insidious when a government is engaged in a legitimate and beneficial activity, somebody tries to cast the whole effort into a dubious light by connoting that there is something underhanded about it, or that ulterior motives are involved. "The evil green German state is trying to manipulate us, let us quickly turn back to Fox News to cleanse our minds of their distortions. Everything will be so clear."

Re:Uh...

[shutdown -p now]

It would, of course, but it's not necessarily bad. For example, "smoking kills" is propaganda; and so is a detailed article on detrimental effects of smoking on health. But it is still factual and verifiable. As long as the latter two are satisfied (and the community will ensure that), there's nothing wrong with it.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

rtfa, idiot:

The Wikipedia Deutschland organization will be assisting the program on behalf of Wikipedia. Such collaboration is unprecedented for the open encyclopedia. While no money will be contributed to the expensive operation of Wikipedia's servers, the organization will at least be receiving financial support for the further development of Wikipedia content.

that's additionally to the training of renowned experts on the topics.

Re:Uh...

[Husgaard]

No bullshit.

The germans actually have found a way of organizing their society so that the people do not have to fear their government, but where the government has to fear the people.

This is called democracy.

Not democracy like they claimed to have in USSR, where you could either vote for the one party, or abstain from voting.

Not democracy like they claim to have in the US of A, where you have the choice between two parties that have almost the same politics, or you can abstain from voting or throw your vote away on some party that has no chance of getting elected.

No, a real democracy where there are multible parties, where new parties actually have a chance of getting into parliament and/or government. A democracy where the people know they can change things with their vote, and where the people are prepared to vote to throw out a government that is not working in their best interest.

Re:Uh...

[Breakfast Pants]

I was responding to the absolute nature of his claim:
"the government is exclusively concerned with what is of benefit to the people of Germany."

That's bullshit; no one has achieved that. Are you claiming that Germany is the best democracy in the world, and not only that, they have no further to go?

Re:Uh...

[Husgaard]

It is a highly subjective opinion if a democracy is the "best democracy", so if I had claimed that we would be discussing what makes a democracy good from now and until the end of time.

Instead I claim that Germany has a working democracy. A working democracy is IMHO a democracy where the voters are interested in what their elected representatives actually do; a democracy where the voters are prepared to change their vote if their elected representatives don't do what the voters think is in the best interest of them and their society; and a democracy where new parties actually have a chance to get to participate in elections and gain power if voters think they can do better than the existing parties.

In such a democracy the government has to fear the voters. The government knows that if they do not work in the best interest of the people they represent they will be outed at the next election.

A democracy like this is what I like to call a working democracy. There are lots of countries around the world that claim to have democracies because elections are held from time to time. But some of these "democracies" are not actually working, in most cases because the existing political parties have found a way to keep new political parties from getting elected.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit; no one has achieved that.

That's a positive claim, meaning that you have now accepted the onus of proof (whereas previously it rested with the original AC). Moreover your claim covers all nations throughout all of human history! I'd like to see you prove that claim.

Just don't

[Timesprout]

mention the war!

Re:Just don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Re:Just don't

[uradu]

Which one?! I'm confused!

Re:Just don't

[Lurker McLurker]

I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it

Re:Just don't

[Kingrames]

We were invited!

Tea was served!

Re:Just don't

[CowardX10]

They thought they'd be greeted as liberators.

Re:Just don't

[oliverthered]

They were in Austria.

China is next

[Anonymous Coward]

Just you wait

Backlash

[kerohazel]

While this project does have good intentions, I can't help but wonder if it might do more harm than good for the green movement. I don't know how things are in Germany, but here in the States, global warming is considered by many to be disputable. As is Wikipedia. Right now one of the strongest things the global warming awareness campaign has going for it is the huge number of scientific articles which support the findings. That's pretty hard to argue against. But if they start pushing information onto anyone-can-edit-Wikipedia, some of the authority is lost.

I can hear them now:
"These pinko liberals would have us believe that the Earth is warming up, because of human activity! And what sources do they have to support this? Wikipedia! Oh, that's right, the website that ANYONE can edit! How convenient!"

Re:Backlash

[Anonymous Coward]

want the answer to why you have bad karma? Read your post. Moron.

Re:Backlash

[pretygrrl]

someone went waaaay trigger happy w. the Flamebait button today. i agree w. parent - wikipedia is not an authoritative source, by definition. Its the "quantum state" of knowledge, i.e. subject to change depending on time of day.
there is only one problem w. that - its not how knowledge actually works.
looks like german government at least is taking a stand on the issue - unlike many other governments. to see it get lost in the noise of wiki seems like a huge waste.
they would be better off w. some sort of .gov site, not waste funds on articles that may just get overwritten.

Re:Backlash

[tronbradia]

In Canada (where i tend to live), the Conservative government struggles to fight the popularity and outspokenness of the Green lobby (partly because it consists of all 3 opposition parties), and I'd say they're the most global warming skeptical 1st-world country besides the US. I'm in Germany and you might as well speak sanskrit here as deny global warming. Remember this is the Christian Democratic party leader Angela Merkel that's trying to coax Bush into accepting emissions reductions; the Europeans are already competing amongst themselves for who can reduce the most. So. ahem. the US is the only bubble on earth where people don't take this seriously.

Re:Backlash

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Remember that Wikipedia is an encylopedia, it can contain no original research and therefore any good articles (ie. the kind that you would expect from a government-trained team of experts) will be full of citations, meaning that anyone questioning the accuracy or authenticity of any points in those articles need only look at the referenced material.

With that in mind, and given that Wikipedia is often being the first place people look online for information these days it seems like a very good way of tying in all the information available online onto a single web page. Wikipedia allows the research and data regarding these topics to be relayed in a way that shows the whole story instead of just bits and peices of individual research as you're likely to find it elsewhere.

Re:Backlash

[vertinox]

But if they start pushing information onto anyone-can-edit-Wikipedia, some of the authority is lost.

Huh? If a UFO/JFK conspiracy mag publishes Einsteins papers on theory of relativity, then Einstein's papers and theories haven't lost their authority. Now, I might question the fact that someone said that Einstein's paper in this magazine said that E equals magic fairy dust and that Einstein hung out with little green men from mars, but that wouldn't degrade the authority of his original work

Authority works in one direction only. Not the other way around.

Re:Backlash

[uradu]

That's EXACTLY what this funding is about, to get scientists that are reputable in their field (in this case environmental sciences) to edit Wikipedia articles in order to inject some level of authority that so many claim is lacking. There is a fundamental philosophical difference between most western governments and the US (at least as exemplified by the current administration): while most governments prefer to spend public funds on public projects that benefit the greater good, and also prefer to cooperate with other nations in doing so both to spread the costs and pool the knowledge, our current administration prefers to take a more isolationist approach that benefits at best the "American People", is often colored by special interests through private funding, and favors a pseudo-scientific platform that tries to inject plausible uncertainty into unpopular but otherwise pretty well established scientific subject areas.

Re:Backlash

[mdozturk]

Europeans are already competing amongst themselves for who can reduce the most.

I read the whole carbon credit thing failed because the European governments gave out too many credits. Perhaps you should have said "Europeans are acting as if they are competing amongst themselves for who can reduce the most".

Re:Backlash

[asc99c]

Carbon credits have hardly failed. Governments gave out too many for there to be much of a market for trading them - there are too many around to be worth much for sale, so as a result there is not enough reward for making major efficiency gains. But emissions across Europe are falling - the UK, France and Germany are all on course for a 10% drop, while the US has managed a 15% increase.

Train experts?

[monkeyboythom]

The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia

Are there Wiki professionals out there that go around and train people on how to use a wiki? Outstanding! I knew my resume had a blank space that needed filling.

As for the US-based wiki, we may not be professionals but dammit we're a union. Now where did I put that union card anyway...

Accountability

[athloi]

This will fundamentally change the wiki model, which grew rapidly because it did not require its writers to be accountable to existing standards. That made it popular, but also error-prone. Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly. Maybe there's something to learn here about the wisdom of accountability and peer-review standards that, while imperfect, evolved over time for a reason. It's a very generous move by the Germans, and one I hope others follow.

Re:Accountability

[kebes]

You paint a stark picture of "anonymous random contributors" versus "academia and government"--but I think that is a false dichotomy. Wikipedia has always benefiting from the contributions of random individuals, as well as from expert academics. Whether or not those academics were told by their host institutes to contribute is actually immaterial (unless you think the academic holds different expertise/opinions in the two cases...).

To have governments actively allocate funding for people to contribute to Wikipedia in no way prevents or invalidates the tireless work of the rest of the community. Both groups should be contributing, and both groups should be checking each other's facts. There is no need (nor any ability) for governments to "take over wikipedia from within".

What we are seeing is a consolidation of efforts, and I hope other governments follow this lead. Government workers (who are inherently being paid from public funds) should not waste effort generating duplicate material. Rather than creating their own factoid-websites, they can do more good by extending and improving the vast material on Wikipedia (which, of course, is freely available to all).

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia does not require its authors to follow existing standards. Until the German government notices that people are altering its work and orders that its contributions not be altered.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

huh. My guess is all the baby mongers who lord over pages at Wikipedia will happily revert all the text from "experts" and label them vandals.

Re:Accountability

[Titoxd]

Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly. Wikipedia admin speaking here: No, it doesn't violate the fundamental ideas of Wikipedia, and that is a very common misconception. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit: Your congressman or the guy who is tapping your phone at the NSA are included in "anyone" as well. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but it is also the encyclopedia in which anyone can challenge your edits, per the Verifiability policy. It is also the encyclopedia in which anyone can revert your edits if you do not cite them adequately, and it is also the encyclopedia that can refuse your privilege to edit if you blatantly refuse to state the source of your edits (as Wikipedia administrators have no idea whether what you are doing is sneaky vandalism).

Wikipedia, particularly the English Wikipedia, has been very source-oriented for a while now. You can see this in newer articles, for example, the article on the Virginia Tech massacre. Older articles need to catch up, but are getting there. There is also a built-in peer-reviewing system, the Featured article process, and an emerging quality assessment scale.

Obligatory Rand quote

[inviolet]

Germany funding Wikipedia? Oh great.

The obligatory Ayn Rand quote that I feel is applicable here:

Have you ever wondered about the mentality of those who advocate government financing of intellectual and artistic pursuits, in the name of intellectual independence and creative freedom?

Their goal, they claim, is to liberate men's mind from material concerns or economic pressures. The necessity to earn a living in a free marketplace, they claim, is demeaning and corrupting. In their language, the word "commercial" is a pejorative term, an antonym of "intellectual." Only the security of government support, they claim, can release the full power of the intellect.

The contradictions in this viewpoint are so obvious that it seems impossible for anyone to miss seeing them. Nothing is less secure than a position of dependence on the arbitrary power of politicians dispensing favors. The fate of thinkers, scientists and artists whose livelihood depends on the government - any government in any age, at the courts of absolute monarchs or in modern dictatorships or in mixed economies - is too well known to leave anyone in "idealistic" doubt. So are the fear, the intrigues, the rigid censorship, and the abject bootlicking in which and with which the recipients of governmental favors have to live moment by precarious moment. How can today's intellectuals fail to know it?

...from "To Dream The Non-Commercial Dream", The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II No. 7, January 1, 1973.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[doombringerltx]

That quote, like everything Ayn Rand, is too damn long

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[inviolet]

That quote, like everything Ayn Rand, is too damn long

I realize you are being flippant, but you may have hit on a fundamental problem currently lurking in society: most technological and political issues (and especially techno-political issues like copyright) are simply too complex to even describe in less than a page. To say nothing of sound-bites, headlines, and .signature screeds.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you, like every other liberal, are to fucking stupid to understand what he's talking about.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Anonymous Coward]

This might come as a shock, but Rand was a woman. I've seen her pictures, so I really can understand your confusion.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[doombringerltx]

Well the sad thing is about Ayn Rand is that her ideas aren't that complex and sure as hell didn't justify John Galt's 500 page marathon rant. That book went from "Who is John Galt?" to "When the hell will John Galt shut up?" pretty quick.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[jollyreaper]

Germany funding Wikipedia? Oh great.

The obligatory Ayn Rand quote that I feel is applicable here: One of these words does not belong with the rest.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[KDR_11k]

Yeah, like the "free market" will be unbiased. If you leave it to those people all you get is a brochure of product ads and loads of spam, even if it means the death of Wikipedia.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[qbzzt]

This issue is ideal for a soundbite. "Government stipends for thinkers? Sounds good for thinkers who are the politicians' lap dogs, producing their propaganda for them".

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[inviolet]

Good answer. :)

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Mr. Bad Example]

> That book went from "Who is John Galt?" to "When the hell will John Galt shut up?" pretty quick.

I once attempted to read Atlas Shrugged at a local Barnes and Noble with the assistance of a B-vitamin injection and an intrepid Sherpa guide with a BA in English literature.

We got as far as the fiftieth page of the John Galt monologue, and then I had to abandon the effort after poor Lobsang went mad and hurled himself into the espresso maker at the Starbucks next door.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[TerranFury]

Ayn Rand wrote:

Have you ever wondered about the mentality of those who advocate government financing of intellectual and artistic pursuits, in the name of intellectual independence and creative freedom?

Actually, I'm quite sane Ms. Rand; thanks.

I wrote (#19300097):

There are some things that monopolies, like governments, can better provide than many smaller competing companies; infrastructure and technology research are two of the most important ones. The simple reason for this is that monopolies can be relatively sure that they will be around in many years' time to reap the benefits of their investments, whereas in a hypercompetitive market, risk is higher and the "rational" investor will focus on smaller, shorter-term investments; this maximizes his expected return.

You see: if government doesn't fund research, who will? Gone are the days of Bell Labs.

Also, Ms. Rand, you forget: The absence of civic government does not imply the existence of individual freedom. Quite the contrary: Civic government is a necessary check on corporate government.

You mention...

Ayn Rand wrote:

the fear, the intrigues, the rigid censorship, and the abject bootlicking in which and with which the recipients of governmental favors have to live moment by precarious moment. Are you so naive, Ms. Rand, to think that politics is unique to organizations run by the State?

Anarcho-capitalist "libertarianism" is no recipe for freedom.

Ayn Rand wrote:

How can today's intellectuals fail to know it? ...which -- funny thing, this -- is also my question, exactly.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple reason for this is that monopolies can be relatively sure that they will be around in many years' time to reap the benefits of their investments, whereas in a hypercompetitive market, risk is higher and the "rational" investor will focus on smaller, shorter-term investments; this maximizes his expected return.

Rand's point is that this is simply is trading economic risk for political risk. Only in the idealized world of "perfect government" is this an improvement.

Are you so naive, Ms. Rand, to think that politics is unique to organizations run by the State?

The market is a natural check on this. If a corporation becomes too bogged down in internal politics, its inefficiency will attract competitors or cause it to go bankrupt altogether. The government on the other hand can tax or print money and persist long after a company would have gone under. You admitted this yourself by saying governments don't have to worry about ROI, but seem to believe that it will only use this power for good.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[arashi no garou]

Obligatory Rand quote? I expected something more like "blood and bloody ashes!" or "I am the Lord of the Morning!"


...what?

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Anonymous Coward]

The market is a natural check on this. If a corporation becomes too bogged down in internal politics, its inefficiency will attract competitors or cause it to go bankrupt altogether. The government on the other hand can tax or print money and persist long after a company would have gone under. You admitted this yourself by saying governments don't have to worry about ROI, but seem to believe that it will only use this power for good. Democracy plays that role in politics. Actually, democracy is special market with some advantages over consumers driven one: very low inertia per unit of power (USA president can lose his power easier than owner of the $1 B company) and, even more important, democracy can recognize the externalities.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[The One and Only]

very low inertia per unit of power (USA president can lose his power easier than owner of the $1 B company)

We've had one US President for 6 years now. In 6 years, how many CEO's have been fired? How many companies have failed, or have lost revenue or value while their competitors have grown?

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[TuringTest]

Comparing apples to oranges. You must compare ONE company to one government, or all companies to all governments:

In 6 years, how many prime ministers in the world have been dismissed? How many countries have changed government, or have lost power or influence while their competitors have grown?

There, corrected for you.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[The One and Only]

Even by that metric I think corporations win. Except the US government has vastly more power in and of itself than all US corporations put together (this is why corporations try to control the government)--so if you go by quantity of power, comparing one government to several companies is correct.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, your president was on check few years ago, at this point his inertia was zero, people were able to remove all his power not only because of the things he did bad, but also if they were afraid he could do something bad. If he is still in his office, it is solely because majority of Americans thought he is doing good job. Few years ago, US president was almost fired because of unusual sex life.

Market cannot do such things. It is way slower and less reliable in removing the power from the hands of people who use it on inefficient or harmful way. Owner (not CEO) of the $1 B can make extremely harmful decisions for decades until market removes all his power; sometimes that will not happen at all - because of luck: his field might grow independently of his actions, or he can benefit of the simple fact that interest rate for large capital is greater than average interest rate. And again, the most importantly, if harmful effects of the owner's decisions are in the externalities - market will not even notice that. Obvious example is Dow Chemical incident in Bhopal. It is very disturbing that owners (again, not managers!) of the company still have nearly equal power and society cannot do anything about that.

permanent articles

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of wish that it would be possible to go through a credentialing process to prove that a given author has definitely been educated on a particular subject. It would be good if such credentialed people could get a section that cannot be altered by random politicians/companies/idiots/etc. That way you could be a little more confident about a piece of info being accurate, and you can tell the differece between a well recognized academic and a 12 year old.

This could be seperate from the normal wikipedia article; there could be a link near the bottom that leads to the 'expert wiki.'

Duh.

[Kadin2048]

Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?

No, we'd call that "astroturfing."

Poor academics.....

[Snowtide]

They will likely research what they write, write well and have it sh*t on by the general wikipedia trolls, or worse, people who think they know what they are writing about.

Re:Poor academics.....

[Admiral Ag]

It's not that bad. I am an academic, and I have found a few things regarding my field in Wikipedia that I think are incorrect. But then again, I have found inaccuracies that are just as bad in Britannica, so I guess it is just what happens in non specialist encyclopaedias.

Apart from the tendency of articles to get messy, Wikipedia only suffers from organized or semi-organized groups gaming the open system. The glaring examples of this are most of the Wikipedia articles to do with Israel and Palestine. The hotly contested nature of the subject has led to some really bad behaviour on the part of editors and admins and the information in them tends to be ridiculous and POV.

If Wikipedia is to really work, then it needs to have some system for preventing collusion. It works best when individuals edit alone, and other individuals edit those edits alone. Once you have gangs trying to force a POV on an article, the open nature of the format becomes a hindrance to accuracy.

Re:Poor academics.....

[Snowtide]

I agree with you. My post was an overgeneralization of problems concentrated mostly in certain types of articles. Thanks for a well written correction. :)

I like your idea about preventing collusion but have no idea how to implement it.

To me Wikipedia is never to be trusted as an authoritative source on anything, although it can be lots of fun and a great starting place to read up on something before moving to more reliable sources. Not that other sources are always perfect, but they tend to be less prone to error than much of wikipedia.

Re:Poor academics.....

[Admiral Ag]

"I like your idea about preventing collusion but have no idea how to implement it."

Neither do I, other than introducing a paid "judiciary" of impartial non editors who periodically banned the worst offenders (if you use the site much, you probably know the people I am talkin about). But I can't see Wikipedians accepting that.

If there was a general, simple answer to the problem, the libertarians could have their society tomorrow.

In related news..

[Anonymous Meoward]

I. G. Metall has organized the new submitters and called a strike. Access to Wikipedia comes to a crashing halt.

Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does

[jollyreaper]

If you tried selling me on the concept before it launched, I would have said it was a nice idea but impossible, like the 19th century utopian societies that collapsed on themselves. While Wiki does have flaws, what it gets right far outstrips what it gets wrong. Color me thoroughly impressed. Before someone goes and says "but it doesn't stack up compared to professionally edited encyclopedias and newspapers and books," let me point out that those sources have just as many flaws. New York Times and Iraqi WMD's anyone? I believe Chariots of the Gods was also a published book, same as Mein Kampf. And didn't I remember hearing about the Million Little Pieces guy totally fooling Oprah with his fictional autobiography? Readers are encouraged to use their own intelligence when assessing the validity of claims made in printed material. Official sources can get it just as wrong as Wiki but they lack the discussion pages for people to hash out the truth.

The best suggestion I've seen is that Wikipedia can go the way of Linux distributions. For those who are willing to do their own fact-checking, they can get the straight dope from Wiki, warts and edit wars and all. For academic distributions, editing boards can decide what to accept from the live articles. It naturally won't be all of Wikipedia, just what pertains to the topics that the editing team think are appropriate for the distro. MIT may pull in a ton of science articles and leave out the articles about countries, TV shows, music, etc. Harvard Business School may concentrate on business history, applicable case law, and other subjects encompassed in the curriculum but find the material MIT covers to be factually correct but outside the interest of the course. These distros can then filter edits through a peer review process to make sure they agree with what's entered. The reputation of the editing board is on the line in these distributions and factual inaccuracies here would incur as much shame as if the error occurred in a peer-reviewed journal.

To extend the comparison to open source, one could consider the academic distros to be the stable fork, straight wiki would be the beta version. The respect and prestige accorded to the various editing boards will be a matter of public opinion. Because the board members are not just anonymous yahoos on the net but people with careers and reputations, the overall quality of work should be higher. And, seeing as all of this knowledge is "open source," original research appearing in an academic distro can always be ported into the real wiki.

I do not think any of this is starry-eyed optimism or unrealistic hippie idealism, I think it is quite realistic and the hard parts have already been demonstrated for the skeptics.

Re:Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does

[going_the_2Rpi_way]

While Wiki does have flaws, what it gets right far outstrips what it gets wrong.

Which is arguably the most dangerous aspect of it. If it was blatantly false, it would not be used by so many as an authoritative source. Not everyone takes everything they read their as true, but too many do.

Imagine the call to war in Iraq 10years after wikipedia, with a consistent set of 'facts' about Iraq added. Colin Powell would never have needed to give his little UN speech.

Re:Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does

[jollyreaper]

Which is arguably the most dangerous aspect of it. If it was blatantly false, it would not be used by so many as an authoritative source. Not everyone takes everything they read their as true, but too many do.

Imagine the call to war in Iraq 10years after wikipedia, with a consistent set of 'facts' about Iraq added. Colin Powell would never have needed to give his little UN speech. Good point. Three things that should prevent this sort of thing from happening:

1. Edits are logged by user or IP so you can see who is making them.
2. If the community corrects the information and it keeps getting changed, the topic is locked.
3. All factual assertions are supposed to be backed up with links to other sites with hard evidence.

People can be some devious investigative bastards. Republican astroturfing attempts have been sniffed out thanks to smart people finding the holes in the efforts and documenting them.

The guideline I've seen suggested here on Slashdot that works nicely: If you need basic factual information, you can start with Wikipedia. Unless you are doing serious research, that's likely good enough; if not, you can expand your search from there, just like you started with the encyclopedia with your school papers but had to resort to more specific books to round out your research. If the topic is contentious, you can look at Wiki to find out what both sides are saying in the edit wars. You will usually see links in the discussion to other sites that might help round out your understanding.

Take a look at the Scientology page. You get the neutral point of view description of what it is including the crazy shit that they never bring up in the initial audits. They even mention Xenu in the main article. Now check out the reference links.

Scientology web links

        * Church of Scientology official home page
        * Church of Scientology International - News Site
        * Scientology Handbook (Training Manual for Scientology Volunteer Ministers
        * What is Scientology? A description of Scientology and its activities and answers to FAQs (by the Church of Scientology)
        * Official Church site about L. Ron Hubbard
        * Theology & Practice of Scientology
        * The way to happiness Scientology-related non-denominational moral code group
        * CCHR Scientology's anti-psychiatry front group
        * Criminon Scientology's criminal rehabilitation front group
        * Narconon Scientology's drug rehabilitation front group
        * No to drugs-yes to life Scientology's anti-drug campaign front group
        * Youth for human rights Scientology's human rights front group
        * Religious scholars What Religious Scholars Say About The Scientology Religion
        * Scientology Volunteer Ministers

Critical links

        * The Secrets of Scientology
        * Scientology Lies
        * Rick Ross Scientology Information
        * Scientology at The Rotten Library
        * www.lermanet.com/frontgroups Scientology front groups exposed
        * Operation Clambake on Scientology Xenu.net
        * Scientology--Through the Door Survey interviews of over 100 former Scientologists.
        * Scientology--is this a Religion? Stephen A Kent, 1979.

Look at how intact this article is despite the assault you know had to be going on here. It's a victory.

Re:Wiki is crazy, shouldn't work but does

[PatrickThomson]

If you tried selling me on the concept before it launched, I would have said it was a nice idea but impossible

Therein lies the source of wikipedia naysayers unshakeable conviction - logically, it can't work, and to see it working is an insult to their intelligence. So they vandalise a page to prove a point, and for 3 seconds the article on "butterscotch" or whatever it was that I answered their question with says "PatrickThomson is a faggot". Ok, I'll confess this was a specific incident, and I haven't bumped into anyone openly hostile to wikipedia in a few years, now that it's been popular for a while. But still.

Citizendium

[LionKimbro]

I'm excited to hear this, but -- wouldn't the Citizendium be more appropriate, given that the experts could actually be recognized as experts, and the work could go towards a recognized polished page?

Re:Citizendium

[Alphager]

nope. This is about publicity; the aim is to educate as much citizens as possible. As long as Users_of_wikipedia > users_of_citizendum use wikipedia.

Re:Citizendium

[Anonymous Coward]

why not nupedia??

absolutely terrible development

[circletimessquare]

wikipedia is of course full of smears, propaganda, lies, errors, partisanship, etc. but at least it's a democratic model of such, so you can expect it from all sides: a random cacophony of background noise. your average person's healthy critically minded bullshit meter can weed the useful from the unuseful

but by linking the government, any government, to wikipedia, now your cacophony has a louder strain of establishment rhetoric and bureaucratic agenda. instead of your bullshit meter going off here and there, now your bullshit meter is on orange alert all the time: those with an agenda aren't random riff raff, now they have dug themselves deeper into the lifeblood of the entire site

there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. but a site unhinged from corporate ownership or governmental oversight or funding accountability is pretty much as close as you are going to get. involving any outside entity with an agenda, no matter how innocuous the agenda nor how limited the scope of the involvement nor what the model of involvement is, it taints everything about how you must perceive the site if you have a healthy bullshit meter

a shame, just a bloody awful development because i love wikipedia, but now i love it a little less ;-(

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear, wikipedia (like any volunteer effort) was founded on the principle of voluntary association: nobody is forced to contribute, nobody is forced to read or accept it, and nobody is forced to fund it. If government becomes involved, then at least one crucial aspect of that free choice -- the free choice which created wikipedia in the first place -- is destroyed through the coercive power of government. The taxpayer is now forced to fund the program, free will be damned.

So what would lead a person to believe this is a good idea? Either that person will benefit -- meaning they are part of the power elite who control goverment -- or that person has been convinced they will benefit. Perhaps these people would be wise to refer to history, where the ruling class of every government that has ever existed has exploited the coercive power of government for their own benefit. Nah, that could never happen, could it?

Nevertheless, if this goes through, wikipedia will no longer be a volunteer effort in Germany, and the consequences will soon become clear.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[circletimessquare]

mod parent up

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand this bit of the thread. They're not being funded by the government -- a part of the German government is just paying people to write detailed articles on technical topics which those people know well in order to get the information out there to a broader audience. It's no different than the old days of government-sponsored film strips, only you're not forced to look at it, it costs less, and no one's going to be surprised if it's dry. I think this is at least better than what most government officials, or any celebrity for that matter, currently does which is hire out people to continually edit their entry to show them in the best possible light.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[thePsychologist]

Those pages edited by these paid experts will be subject to general review just like any other page. Besides, governments already have write access to Wikipedia, only with this, it's public, and therefore makes us more aware of it anyway.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[quantaman]

There is a risk but I think this is something that can be done very well, and from the article it looks like they intend to do that.

there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. This saying always bugs me. Can you be completely 100% neutral and unbiased? Of course not. But if you're trying it's not that hard to get pretty damn close. The fact is we see so little of it because we don't want to, people want their opinions reinforced, they want some "flavour" with their information so the media gives us what we want. But I've always considered that quote to be an excuse for people to slant info however they want and not even try to be unbiased.

there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. but a site unhinged from corporate ownership or governmental oversight or funding accountability is pretty much as close as you are going to get. involving any outside entity with an agenda, no matter how innocuous the agenda nor how limited the scope of the involvement nor what the model of involvement is, it taints everything about how you must perceive the site if you have a healthy bullshit meter The risk with wikipedia is there's a bit of a power vacuum, volunteers are effective but there are a lot of organizations with the capital and the lack of morals to hire a non-trivial number of people to deliberately, and ruthlessly, try to skew information in their favour and I'm not sure volunteers can compete with that. Sooner or later some organized group is going to start doing this and some other organized group will be required to fight back. Now you have the risk of agendas at any level but I think if a government establishes an independent organization, gives them a mandate that says "supply good impartial information" then you'll get good impartial information.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Anonymous Coward]

wikipedia is of course full of smears, propaganda, lies, errors, partisanship, etc. but at least it's a democratic model of such, so you can expect it from all sides: No, you're wrong there. Wikipedia articles on politics, religion and history suffer from a systemic bias, not a random bias. The bias favors whichever ideological claque of editors that wins the most edit wars in these articles by 3RR gaming and numerous intimidation tactics against opposing (and often more neutral) editors, ranging from manufactured accusations, association fallacies, bullying, racism, manufacturing consent by misrepresenting the escalating conflict at the administrators noticeboard or the so-called "dispute resolution" (read dispute escalation) boards, ad-hominem, and, on occasion, death threats (though that's rare now). Presently, wikipedia articles on the abovementioned topics (even many of the FA's) suffer from the bias of certain specific groups who have the time, energy and probably the expense to regularly "patrol"said articles to insert their dubious material and revert-war with those who try to balance them out. For fears of provoking a flamewar with the wikipedia fanatics here, I won't name any specific names (they know who they are...) Of course, to the more than casual observer, this becomes apparent when he simply checks out some of the "reliable sources" cited to back up such propaganda. For the most part, they either: 1)Don't exist 2)Are dubious in their reliaibility 3)Extremely partisan, often extremist 4)The cited text is a deliberate misrepresentation of the material Of course, the history and talk pages are also informative, sicnet they clearly indicate which side is winning the edit wars. Usually, wikipedia articles that show up highly on google searches are the ones with the most edit wars because the constant "updating" of articles during said edit war causes the page rank to go up. In the end, outside of the science or technology subjects, wikipedia is a fraud, and a dangerous one to boot.

there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. Quite true. The difference is that wikipedia has a rather impressive facade of "neutrality","reliable sources" and "No Original Research" that 50+% of the articles do not adhere to. But the aggressive PR campaign launched by wikipedia heavyweights whitewashes all this (but, ironically, is there for all to see, hidden beneath that clean white mediawiki article interface). It's okay to be biased. It's even okay to be extremist. It's NOT okay to advertise scholarly neutrality and objectivity while being biased and extremist. That is the first sign of a propaganda machine.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of taxes (meaning forceful extraction of wealth) don't you understand? Everything and anything government does is, at the root, supported by coercion. If you actually had a choice whether or not to pay your taxes, then it wouldn't be government, would it? It would be private enterprise, which holds no special right to employ coercion as a business model, as all governments do by definition.

But regardless, I am astonished by the amount of people who think that it is possible to have government "support" your pet agenda without falling subject to the influence of the power elite who control government.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Vintermann]

Well, we know government already has tried to manipulate wikipedia (the white house edits controversy), and you can bet that large corporations have as well. I think they are even more distorting, because they pursue one goal (profit) while government pursues dozens of conflicting goals. Simply put, governments in general probably have more to gain from accuracy.
But as long as the German government is completely transparent with this, it shouldn't worry you anyway. You can just find out who those editors are, and keep an eye on them.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Clovert Agent]

Why? If a paid contributor posts something you feel is overly biased, just change it, or flag it for deletion, or flag the poster for suspension. Wikipedia is self-correcting, and while that doesn't always work as fast or as effectively as some would like, it _does_ work.

If you don't like it, fix it. Don't bitch about it.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down

Now they really can be Nazis

[milatchi]

Now they really can be Nazis.

When calling others stupid...

[benhocking]

When calling other people stupid, it's best to use big words like "too" and "she" correctly.

WhoseStory if not History

[going_the_2Rpi_way]

You'd think in Germany they might be especially wary of 'consensus' history projects, especially within a political context. And about privacy laws too, for that matter (cf. the Google/Gmail story from Saturday).

Then again, maybe not...

Re:WhoseStory if not History

[managementboy]

hi, I am unsure what you are trying to say. Could you rephrase, please?

Her ideas are complex

[benhocking]

Her ideas are complex, and have many interesting ramifications - just like Karl Marx. Now I realize that in most ways she was the antithesis of Karl Marx, but IMNSHO she makes the same fundamental mistake as Karl Marx - she appears to place too much faith in her fellow human being. Of course, I've only read one book (Anthem) by her, so I'm definitely no expert on her thinking. I'm basing this mainly on that book (recently read), but I'm also basing it on how her "supporters" describe her philosophy (which largely agrees with what I got out of the book).

Re:Her ideas are complex

[doombringerltx]

There is no doubt that her philosophy was ground breaking, intelligent and extremely well thought out, but when you sit down and try and summarize it then it appears to be extremely simple.
1. Government intervention in the economy is bad
2. Work is man's highest calling.
3. Logic is man's greatest asset
4. Neither greed or ego are not evil
5. And finally, the most ape shit insane views on relationships that has ever been published.

While I'm at it I might as well:
6. ???
7. Profit!

But I should point out I really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and I agree with her more often than not, but she can get extremely redundant

Re:Her ideas are complex

[WilliamSChips]

From "The Unlikeliest Cult in History":

What is it about Rand's philosophy that so emotionally stimulates proponents and opponents alike? Before Atlas Shrugged was published, at a sales conference at Random House a salesman asked Rand if she could summarize the essence of her philosophy, called Objectivism, while standing on one foot. She did so as follows (1962):

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

Pretty much what you just said. Ayn Rand complicates things because her target audience likes things complicated. Her target audience likes things complicated because it gives them the excuse of saying that the detractors are just too stupid to understand.

No real change here.

[twitter]

The late, great Anne is invoked:

Have you ever wondered about the mentality of those who advocate government financing of intellectual and artistic pursuits, in the name of intellectual independence and creative freedom?

You might have a point, if this were anything more than a efficiency motivated form change. The experts are already spending their time writing the same material over and over for newspapers. Contributing source material to Wikipedia instead does nothing but save time.

Govt workers paid to promote party line isn't good

[Anonymous Coward]

Having annoying twits vandalize information they dislike is one thing, but when Big Brother is using tax money to fund it, it's quite another.

Defending Germany's POV

[mi]

Yeah, they will probably totally buy into and disseminate propaganda such as "Global Warming" and other such nonsense that clearly only exists to further the German government's grip on power.

In other words, in your POV, Germany's POV makes sense. True or not, that is irrelevant.

What is discussed here, is that Germany has found a way to "pay the piper" — to further its POV. Perhaps less sloppily, but not entirely unlike the other astro-turfers. Again, whether that is a good or a bad POV is not, actually, relevant.

Re:Defending Germany's POV

[uradu]

> Again, whether that is a good or a bad POV is not, actually, relevant.

That is a nice way to muddy the waters of our very existence. Taking your approach leads down the road of questioning even the most basic and well established theories and facts about life, the universe and everything. Nothing in their funding stipulates the advancement of a certain POV, they are essentially funding scientists at large (within Germany anyway) to contribute whatever their professional views are to Wikipedia, which can eventually lead to a sort of peer reviewing process in a public forum. Nothing prevents dissenters from disputing any material presented on a Wikipedia page, the hope is that over time these battles of authority will result in a more authoritative Wikipedia, and will perhaps also let them refine an authority-based editing system. The only ones that should be afraid of a rational discourse in a public forum should be those without a rational basis.

Re:Defending Germany's POV

[mdielmann]

What exactly gave you the impression that the POV of someone who is paid is less valid than the POV of someone who isn't? Note also that scientists already publish as part of their jobs, just not in such an accessible forum. They also seem to be quite concerned about their reputations in their fields of expertise, almost as if their sources of funding were tied to the quality of their work and their publishing history.
The only problem I see with this idea is that not enough people who fund scientists are promoting it.

Re:Defending Germany's POV

[mi]

What exactly gave you the impression that the POV of someone who is paid is less valid than the POV of someone who isn't?

The payee's POV is likely to, at least, consider the POV of the payer. As simple as that. For example, whenever various studies are discussed on this and other forums, the source of funding is often mentioned as a significant source of bias.

Being paid does not completely destroy one's credibility, of course. But it does diminish it, even though a number of other factors (such as the desire to keep credibility, and the good old-fashioned honesty) usually compensate.

Re:Defending Germany's POV

[mdielmann]

Paid-for studies are one thing, but virtually every scientist has to compete for outside funding, whether that be for jobs at a major corporation, or grants, or access to special facilities. Yet we rarely question scientists research, unless it says "our products are incredibly good" or "our competitors products are bad". Yes, there are the exceptions of global warming, etc., where there is a vocal minority who disagree. Peer review compensates for this, and I think you'll see a fair number of reviews from the public if anything subtle or egregious gets submitted to wikipedia.

A slight cloud on the horizon

[DiamondGeezer]

"Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"

The last person to try recruiting people to edit Wikipedia for money got banned, and his reputation besmirched by the screaming idiots who administer Wikipedia. Fortunately he doesn't care now

There's only one problem with editing Wikipedia as an expert - you'll be buried by the hordes of ignoramuses who know better than you because they've got Google and there's more of them than there is of you.

If you're of a classical bent, you'd call it a Sisyphian struggle - but if you're on Slashdot you'd call it "shovelling shit against the tide".

Should governments decide what Wikipedia says?

[MSTCrow5429]

As a contributor to Wikipedia, the idea that a foreign government is targeting Wikipedia to "improve" articles to reflect its point of view and policies (make no mistake, despite whatever they're calling it, that's what this is) makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I'm not even certain this is legal under current Wikipedia rules and practices.

The U.S. following in

[BitterKraut]

Rumor has it George W. is going to fund a rewrite of the entry on evolution.

I, for one...

[Mr Jazzizle]

...think this is a very good way to spend money. If money is put into school system, it might be to build new gyms, give teachers a 20 cent raise, maybe a few more computers; if money is put into writing articles for wikipedia, money goes straight to making information available to the public. Very truly making it a 'free encyclopedia' and a reliable compendium of knowledge. I think it could also be beneficial to mark wikipedia articles written by certified professionals on the subject, or something similar.

Microsoft *is* paying people to edit Wikipedia.

[Per Abrahamsen]

It is not hypothetical. Here is a testimony of one such person.

As long as the people are paid to improve the quality per Wikipedia standards, rather than to promote a particular POV, I consider such "hired editors" for a contribution.

Very European, very Prussian

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Wikipedia on the European/Prussian model, where State-funded expert "authorities" dictate what is to be believed. The masses are not to be trusted.

I'm a great fan of Wikipedia, but I find this rather scary. What next? Perhaps only letting those approved by government-paid experts contribute articles to Wikipedia like the State-run BBC decides what constitutes news in the UK.

Never, never forget that the BBC kept Winston Churchill off British radio during the long and disasterous run-up to World War II. They allowed only the appeasement point of view on the air, giving Hitler the 'breathing space' he needed to make the war a long and bloody one.

Comparing Germany today to 1930

[JSchoeck]

As a green and definitly anti-right-wing German I can tell you that Germany today is not the slightest bit comparable to the 1930s. Of course there are radical right-wing people (as in every country - see American History X or read an international newspaper, there are several reports of nazi assaults all throughout Europe each year normally; not by Germans, but all kinds of people), but they are so few and so isolated that there's no danger.

Every time I go to a public showing of the nazis (yes, the courts have to allow it unless there's a very good reason not to; right of public assembly is sacred after all) there are at least 10-50 times as many people demonstrating against them as there are nazis. That feels good. No actually it's terrible that there's even just ONE nazi standing there, shouting seriously stupid things. It breaks my heart that yound and old people are among them. The old one will die out naturally, but the young ones are just desperate, which really is a shame. At least the government has quite some money put into projects to show kids what happened in the 3rd Reich and to root out the cause of frustration. Not enough in my opinion, but they don't stop with it at least.

Germany has not forgotten. Not at all. Come over here and you will see. Ask Jews who live here now, even they will tell you that. We have many, many museums, pieces of art, historic sites and whatnot treating the 3rd Reich critically, none of which try to glorify anything that happened back then - it's the brutal truth.

As to Wikipedia: No, there's no danger of Nazis hijacking it. Firstly, it's not at all in their area of interest (why would they care about environmental issues?) and secondly there are about 83 million Germans who are no Nazis (out of 83.x million) who will report/fix any hijacked site.

And it's great that our government does this - others should do the same. Knowledge for the people for free in an accessible form. Great!

How long till the holocaust gets whitewashed

[Anonymous Coward]

like all other wikipedpia articles

Windräder müssen rollen für den Sie

[Anonymous Coward]

How can German-language Wikipedia sustain its claim to impartiality if contributors are paid by a State institution whose goal it is to "conduct research ... with an eye to launching products on the market"? (German products surely)

I hope all Wikipedians and anonymous IP holders to whom NPOV still means anything will relentlessly vandalize the "improved" articles.

Wikipedia useless for non-orthodox thinking.

[Fantastic Lad]

So what? Wikipedia is already run by the dark side on every issue which actually matters that I've ever looked up on it.

Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. How sad for a bunch who supposedly take pride in using their brains that they should have been so easily tricked.

Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there.

This is fine if I need to look up how jet engines work or what the capital of Sweden is, but if you want to look up anything which hedges into areas which are controlled, then you might as well forget it. You'll just get loads of false wisdom spat at you with cult-like vehemence.

The genius of the New Big Brother is that Thought is self-policed these days. Who needs Orwell?

Congratulations, humanity. That paper bag trap is going to baffle you for a long time yet.

-FL

Re:Wikipedia useless for non-orthodox thinking.

[Baumi]

Wikipedia seems to be run entirely by science geeks who never figured out that highschool and TV are brainwashing tactics. [...] Thus, in Wikipedia, if it doesn't fit with conventional wisdom, it isn't in there. The same goes for any kind of encyclopedia. They're not supposed to be springboards for new ideas, instead they collect those ideas deemed to be the current consensus.

Besides, as long as you don't name any specific articles and they deficiencies, it's hard to decide whether your argument has any merit or whether you're just a conspiracy theorist who's ticked off that his personal view of the world is not represented on Wikipedia.

(Please don't take that personally, I have no opinion on you one way or the other, but as long as you don't state what you're talking about, it's hard to judge it.)

Re:Wikipedia useless for non-orthodox thinking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could write an encyclopedia in the midwest US, where the "consensus" is that evolution is a myth. And that would be true. Problem is, a determined editor can weigh both sides of the argument and realize the "consensus" is wrong.

Wiki doesn't have editors to review the "consensus." The more fake accounts you have, the more of an editor you become. In fact, IP logging hurts "real" (i.e. home users), who can't telnet into their fake accounts via corporate or educational networks.

>They're not supposed to be springboards for new ideas

"Sensitive topics" are not "new." You're spouting typical Wiki propaganda here. Wiki's founding principle is documented evidence. But weighing one document's POV versus another is a test of skill, and Wiki, being open to all, has an average skill of C-.

    -sid 18xxxx

Well, no.

[Grendel Drago]

It would, but Larry Sanger is kind of a joke, and nobody cares about his sour grapes over leaving Wikipedia with a "you'll be sorry!" and seeing it flourish without him.

Wikitruth shows horse already bolted stable

[Anonymous Coward]

As Wikitruth and the Wikipedia Review forums have shown hundreds of times, Wikipedia is full of inaccuracies and edit wars on all but the most mundane topics. More insidiously, there is tremendous pressure for particular viewpoints from groups of administrators with special interests, sometimes reflecting the bias of Wales or employees.

So, the idea that there will be an organised effort by a particular group to push a particular agenda (that of a particular dept of the German government) is nothing new. The idea that it will spoil some honourable volunteer effort where all points of view "balance out" is, alas, a complaint about a horse that has grown wings and a horn and blasted through the stable roof.

Simmer down.

[Grendel Drago]

They're German. They're going to be editing the German Wikipedia, which is, unless you speak German, not the one you've been editing.

Re:Simmer down.

[MSTCrow5429]

I'm not speaking of any language specific version of Wikipedia. I'm talking about the entire project. The fact that only the German language section would be inappropriately modified only limits the scope of the problem, not the underlying concerns.

Re:Simmer down.

[cpghost]

Does it really limit the scope of the problem? Many bi- or multilingual editors translate stuff to or from "the other Wikipedia".

But is all this really a problem? What's the difference between a government-founded expert, and any other random editor? Both are on exactly the same footing here. Whenever an article is edited by an expert, it will sooner than later be reedited by an expert with opposing views (and by hordes of non-experts as well). This is already happening all over the Wikipedia, and it doesn't really harm her.

So if the German government wants to fund some experts to contribute to Wikipedia, so what? If other experts think those German experts' contributions were biased, they would very quickly point it out and get involved in discussions (good for science!), or edit-wars (more work for admins). I see no problem here. Everyone is free to contribute, and the system works because no single opinion remains unchallenged for too long; esp. not opinions that are politically-laden.

I don't like this idea.

[Grendel Drago]

One of the nice things is that nobody gets paid to do Wikipedia, no matter how highly respected they are, or how much work they've put in. How does someone who has the official imprimatur of the Foundation compare with them in terms of prestige or authority? With a retired person who spends eight hours a day fixing typos and essentially being one of the little gnomes that makes everything run smoothly?

The Essjay incident should have put the kibosh on credentialism; users should be evaluated by the work that they put in and nothing else. I fear that this sort of sponsored participation will lead the paid contributors to think that they're more authoritative than the folks who just do it for the love of the project.

Re:I don't like this idea.

[Teancum]

As pointed out in other posts with this story, there are indeed many individuals already getting paid to write Wikipedia content....just not paid by the Wikimedia Foundation. They may be paid as P.R. reps to update the articles about their own companies or the products of their company, or perhaps looking over the biographies of their corporate officers. It may be government workers who look over how their country/city/state is written about (while they are "on the clock" in their office). It could be any number of different ways that people could be involved with developing the content. And astro-turfing on Wikipedia is a problem that has been fought before in terms of writing or removing content that casts companies or products in a negative light.

The Essjay incident was unfortunate, as his "credentials" were something added at a time when Wikipedia was much more informal, and when nobody cared about such blather. It is too bad that his "reputation" was enhanced by falsely claiming such credentials and using them in a few arguments when writing articles, but whenever I've seen such credentials pulled out it is usually to bias articles to a particular POV anyway... even if they may be legitimate claims. This incident has nothing at all to do with getting paid to write Wikipedia entries but over how a resume with false entries can affect your employment career down the line even after you have "proven" yourself to a future employer for other reasons.

In this case a 3rd party, the German government, is going to have people write content in Wikipedia that would normally be written anyway in published sources. It is tax dollars that is already being spent on behalf of German citizens, and building the cultural heritage of something that they show with national pride: The German language edition of Wikipedia. They are also asking for some help in learning about Wikipedia and Wiki editing styles from what amounts to be the local chapter of Wikimedia users who have been very active in spreading word about the project through various means. Compared to English speakers, the amount of content written in the German language for Wikimedia projects is far larger than the number of speakers of that language would indicate, and has penetrated far deeper into the German society than it has in England or the USA... in spite of the fact that Wikipedia was in English first and is by far the largest edition. I'm frankly impressed with Wikimedia Deutschland and nearly everything they have done, and it is too bad that we don't see more cooperation like this from the UK government or the US government.

Just what we need..

[Andypoo]

More train articles on Wikipedia.

(I completely misread the point of the article from the linked text).

They don't pay for writing

[tmk]

Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money.

Only two people are paid. They coordinate the efforts of the experts and organize Wikipedia trainings.

Let the State give us the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so now the govt. is in charge of giving us the facts. That has no chance of any conflicts of interests getting in the way of getting to the truth.

Please mod parent up!

[fedxone-v86]

I know the parent is off-topic but so are all those uninformed comparisons to Germany's past.

Maybe you should remind yourself from time to time that there was more to the war than just who won it and who lost it.
Germany's past is not a fscking joke. It should be a lesson to everyone.

I don't think that's good

[nanosquid]

Paying people to edit articles on Wikipedia raises questions of bias and propaganda. What's next? Is the German government going to pay people to have its view on taxes, education, religion, etc. edited into Wikipedia?

If the German government wants to support Wikipedia, they should donate hardware and bandwidth.

Re:I don't think that's good

[Titoxd]

Not really. They don't get to pick which version of an article sticks, and are usually reverted. We've had government agencies edit before, but usually role accounts don't fare so well.

wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany Funds wikipedia and calls Scientology a cult all in the same day? Wow, time to pack up & head for the smart ppl land.

University students could contribute a lot

[kauttapiste]

I'd really like to see more of university student's contribution in wikipedia(s). There's a lot of work being done all over the world by millions of students every year. Tapping into that source would really help wikipedia to grow. With professors and lecturers checking their work anyway, they'd be already peer reviewed by the experts. I wouldn't have minded if some of my work would have been shared to the community - instead of just being buried within my backups. Even lower level schoolwork could be beneficial. Reports on this famous person or that small town could really be useful to someone.

Re:University students could contribute a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha!

Don't get me wrong, I love wikipedia. I read it hours a day and its gotten me through some weird mental tangents and abstract questions. But....

As a university student I laugh at wikipedia. Almost every class I have had this semester has ended with me defacing or introducing hilarious wrongisms into it. (during the lecture, wifi, If I get banned, renew a new DHCP lease)

Id say 80% of the crap that me and my friends have 'contributed' to wikipedia is still there. When it gets through edit wars (people actually REVERTING to our changes), you know that knowledge has just been created. The countless sites that spider wikipedia (answers.com, etc) replicate the bullshit re-enforce it all. Mods that fact check your lies usually just do a search on the keyword and if they find enough hits, its fact.

Awesome!

For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[mrogers]

I assume the articles in German will be written. But to the invention of web language digester Babelfish giving thanks, entire Worldsurface from this gift benefit can. Among others I wish our new machine translated feudal barons to welcome!

Re:For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[dr_hassel]

The governments of English-language countries can make money available for people, which translate the German Wikipedia into English. Or why the German government should spend money to translate the sides into a non-office language? Should it let write then not rather directly on Chinese - that understand substantially more people?

Re:For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[mrogers]

Babelfish tells me the correct answer is "Es wurde bedeutet, um ein Witz zu sein." ;-)

Re:For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[dr_hassel]

Sie wissen doch, daß Deutsche nie Witze machen ;-)

Re:For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[mrogers]

Ich weiss doch, aber ich bin englisch, so bin ich zu höflich es zu sagen. ;-p

"free knowledge" from the government

[aggiefalcon01]

And it's great that our government does this - others should do the same. Knowledge for the people for free in an accessible form. Great!

And therein lies the rub. Where exactly is the line in "free knowledge, from the government" and "government-sponsored propaganda"?