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Secret Mailing List Rocks Wikipedia
privatemusings writes "Wikipedians are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over throughout the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing around. The Register has this fantastic writeup — read it here first." The article says that some Wikipedians believe Jimbo Wales has lost face by supporting the in-crowd of administrators and rebuking the whistle blower who leaked the existence of the secret mailing list.
some Wikipedians believe Jimbo Wales has lost face by supporting the in-crowd of administrators and rebuking the whistle blower who leaked the existence of the secret mailing list.
Oh, I'm sorry, were we talking about 8th grade?
Hrm, I just finished posting my last comment in another thread, and now I'm thinking the quote would have been more appropriate here.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Please move along.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CorbinSimpson/TINC
Amazing how it still holds today, eh?
~ C.
A user on community.livejournal.com/ultimate_fashion is complaining that livejournal users mindyminx16 and sassykitty91 totally control the entire community over secret aim chats.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
No.. there's no secret mailing list - I checked Wikipedia and it said so. Said it was not "not notable" or something.
I've encountered asshat's like this before, they never learn and never go away until you hit THEM with the ban hammer
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
aside from:
1) the former policy of intentionally leaving parts of write-ups false to encourage new people to participate (at least I think they changed the official policy away from this)
2) few truly knowledgeable sources writing in a manner which is easily understood by a beginner
(I know there are several good examples to my contrary, but those are the exception. also, the layouts tend to correlate with the communication abilities of said writers
http://xkcd.com/351/
... what a nice real life experiment along the lines "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Zimbardo should be pleased.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
These people will of course seek to infiltrate and take over any organization perceived as having any kind of power, whether it is over ideas, money or people. That's because, after all, this is what they are after.
It makes no difference whether it is religion, politics or an Internet encyclopedia, offer an entry for the people with psychopathic tendencies and they will come. The rant quoted in the Register article is simply typical of the breed.
To get people to do moderation work unpaid, you have to offer them something. That something is described above -a small amount of power and the feeling of being in an in-group and privy to secret knowledge. Depressingly, what I conclude from this is that the only real answer is to pay people and have competition. Payment offers rewards to people who do not care about power or exclusivity. Competition means that disgruntled customers and competitors go elsewhere, i.e. they can escape from an abusive in group. What Wikipedia needs is a commercial model and competition. That way, the psychopaths and compulsive neurotics are unlikely to take over the shop (and the ones on the staff can waste their energy litigating, which seems to be the main way we keep psychopaths out of trouble in the English speaking world.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I will frequently plagiarize from Wiki to get a 2 sentence to 1 paragraph definition of a common technical term.
To have hierarchy breaks the Wiki model, as it breeds suspicion. Even in groups with the best of intentions eventually the suspicion will be warranted if one has power over another. Unlike the real world, transgressions in wikis can be undone. In such a case it is better to rely on the sensible majority policing a malicious minority on an equal footing by weight of numbers rather giving special powers that can be abused.
SECRET MAILING LIST ROCKS!!
Breakfast served all day!
this topics has been edited to be wikifriendly Your Overlord
From TFA. Here it is.
nemesis. Home of an experimental fe code.
From earlier this year, in response to the "Wikipedia Falling Apart" rumors ...
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=wikipedia_meme
Wikipedia probably entered its growth inflection point in early 2006.
The current turmoil is due to a state change towards a declining rate of growth.
One of their prominent editors, Raul654 aka Mark Pellegrini, has threatened to ban anyone who logs discussions in #wikipedia. Mark has refused to comment on this blatantly hypocritical policy or address repeated questions directed towards him on this issue.
In protect of this egregious behavior, I have opened up a #wikipedia logger page in open defiance of this policy. I have dared him to ban me but he has yet to identify the client logging.
This is the evidence that Durova, self-proclaimed "complex investigations specialist" used to justify banning one of Wikipedia's finest contributors. http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Durova's_Sekret_Evidence
Here she is on Slashdot. In what appears to be an amazing coincidence, the person she is defending here is the same person who happens to run the mailing list in question.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=256781&cid=20020479
People feel entitled to more control or power when they contribute more than their peers. With decentralized groups of people operating on the Internet, this is magnified even further. Teams of people like OSS
This is one of the reasons I created the Administrators' noticeboard: to allow people to coordinate administration in an open and transparent manner. I always expressed concerns about the Wikipedia admins IRC channel, though it turns out this has been pretty benign. I still frown on closed list: it really goes against the spirit of Wikipedia.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
And as we've seen, the in crowd are not the ones who really contribute in the first place.
So what are these people good for, again?
Free Hans!
Every collection drive (which seems to be every two months) Wikipedia nets tens -if not hundreds- of thousands of dollars from geek who believe that they are helping to sponsor an open, collaborative encyclopedia.
What was it Johnny Rotten said? "Do you ever feel like you're being cheated?"
someone would combine wikipedia style information hording with a /. style moderating and meta-moderating system...
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
The problem in this case is two-fold, but the cause is the same: wikipedia reaching worldwide popularity.
First of all, wikipedia by it's nature is not supposed to have higher-ups, but an administrator group is a technical necessity. These administrators are motivated by the growing popularity of wikipedia in two ways: they gained more power ("Cmon! I'm an administrator on the english wikipedia! Wow!") or in other words, the social status of their administrator title got more important. This is bound to make the admins feel a lot more different, even if unconsciously or unwittingly. They try to protect wikipedia and overreact, get overly paranoid and lose focus of their true goal.
The second reason they can behave wrongly is simply that the social infrastructure didn't adapt to the popularity yet. What I mean is that administrators are not distinct, named, accountable people. They edit using their administrator account (officially, even if some of them use alternative accounts in reality), they are not named people. To fix these problems there has to be a clear separation of priviledges, and clear identifiability and accountability for administrators.
Admins should be compelled to do their actions with their real names attached to it, not behind nicknames. No non-administrator wikipedia contribution should take place on their admin accounts. They should be editing using a non-priviledged account. The regular account of admin personnel should not necessarily be revealed, but admins should be verifying each other's work.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy ...
"Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."
It has always been like this, will always be like this
--- censored
Some Register journalists seem to have a grudge against Wikipedia and take every opportunity to run it down -- and if you think I'm a Wikipedian acolyte, I just casually, anonymously, edit articles as I come across errors. I've had a few busybodies revert my edits, declaring them "vandalism", so I'm aware that there are "injustices" done, but on the whole I think it works.
They're hurting Wikipedia more than the petty vandals they're trying to stop, even bad guys with admin rights. :-(
It's one thing to contribute and have someone occasionally wreck thing up -- that can be repaired easily. It's a whole other thing to feel like you're contributing to admins with this mindset. Regaining confidence in the leadership isn't done in a similar fashion by a click of a button.
Alright, now I'm waiting to hear what Jimbo Wales will do to stop this behavior. Surely that can is a reasonable expectation?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
When this list started, it was a "CyberStalking" mailing list. It was not an admin list. I got myself unsubscribed for various reasons. If it has turned into an admin list, this is very bad business.
I should also note that there are many non-admins on that list. There are many very negative individuals, and I saw a lot of attacking of Jimbo, who was trying to sort out the cyber-stalking issues, which I should note are real and pretty serious.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Has anyone considered that Wikipedia is really a giant social experiment rather than an encyclopedia?
I agree with most of what you say, but I believe you are mistaken about payment, and I think FOSS provides a good illustration of why.
Once necessities have been taken care of, social status is probably the greatest motivation for people to make money. Paying contributors doesn't really change that. You are right that not all people crave power or exclusivity. But power is not the only social reward - there are other alternatives besides money. (Exclusivity is itself not a reword, only a way to achieve status.) Reputation does not have to be exclusive. Indeed it requires inclusion - you can't have a reputation all by your lonesome. And it doesn't have to involve negative power dynamics.
Many well-regarded FOSS developers achieved their reputations without power tripping. In this they are constrained, as you suggest, by the choices of participants (the competition you cite is a particular way of achieving this) - in the case of FOSS, forking or the threat of forking constrains projects from degenerating too much. Many projects aren't exclusive either: the whole point of the exercise is to draw in participants. Linus's reputation is largely built on the number of participants in Linux, and on his ability to manage based on consent (which I believe contributes to his reputation).
There are two kinds of gift-giving in cultures in which it is important. In both cases, people try to incur debts by giving gifts. One kind of giving is agonistic (competitive): the objective is to give gifts to people unable to return them, thereby demonstrating dominance over them. The second kind of giving also incurs debts, but it involves exchange. Even though a return gift is given, the slate is not wiped clean - both parties remain somewhat in debt. Social bonds are formed, giving rise to community. I believe most successful FOSS involves the second kind of giving.
I'm sorry, but with so many whack-jobs in the world, it doesn't surprise me in the least that some people are banned from wikipedia. It's been one of the enduring complaints about wikipedia that anyone can edit it - editing existing content, removing real information, and adding their dumb ideas to the encyclopedia. I'm sure some people are ridiculously tenacious about adding bad information to the pages, and think that the rest of the world is wrong about Autism/ Bigfoot/ the Kennedy Assassination/ psychics/ global warming/ whatever. Not to mention all the publicity that occurred when the IPs tracing back to politician's offices or large corporations were caught changing pages to make their opponents look bad / make themselves look good. It doesn't surprise me that some wikipedia higher-ups feel like some particular users are like bulls in their china shop, and rather than running behind them trying to clean up the mess, think it's simply easier and better to ban certain people.
You can't simultaneously complain that wikipedia is vulnerable to edits by ignorant/malicious/troll/pro-spin users, and complain that wikipedia takes action against those users by identifying them and banning them.
In this case, one of the higher-ups banned a user who seems to be a productive contributor - which is essentially an abuse of power. But, I fail to see how the "secret mailing list" is controversial.
SnipURL-link to popup-spamming GNAA page. Send it to your nemesis, but don't open!
he'd have posted it to Wikileaks.
I'd do a mass sign-up of the secret list:
http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wpcyberstalking
(as posted in another post, but up here, it'll get more coverage... here goes my karma, watch it slide!)
Since the first group sites came into existence, part of the process has involved a 'good old boys' secret list that runs in the background.
/., or Better Homes & Gardens, there is A L W A Y S a group of buddies who deem themselves special and above the unwashed masses. They spend their days hanging out on their own 'invisible' list, laughing at newbies, scorning the newest know-it-alls and patting each other on the back as they surreptitiously bring in new friends and make life hard for anyone they feel should move on. They will deny it until they wear the writing off their keycaps, but that's just part of thrill. After all, they do it for your own good, and if they didn't, the sky would darken, the ground would shake and life as we know it would cease in a heartbeat.
:)
I don't care if you want to use as examples the Apple Support Forums,
So consider this a lesson if it comes at all as a surprise. And if it brings back memories of playground days when your biggest fear was being out with the in crowd, yep...this is a basic as human nature gets - digital or not.
Just remember - the more a group of admins insists there is no 'good old boys' background list on your favorite forum, etc., the more interesting it would be to find out just what kind of dirt they're dishing
on Wikipedia all are equal but some are more equal than others.
echo $SIGNATURE
You misunderstand - I saw adminship as a responsibility, not a privilege. I was on Wikipedia to write articles, not engage in petty Wikipolitics. I don't have the time, nor the inclination to try to reform Wikipedia. Firstly, it's not really possible. Secondly, unless you have tried dealing with the numerous trolls, nasty editors or those who are trying to convert Wikipedia into Wikicruft then you can't possibly know how hard it is to be an admin who tries to stick to core principles.
Basically, the bottom line is: nowadays on Wikipedia you are either an admin or an editor. I tried to be both, and it sucked up all my time. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. There are systemic issues on Wikipedia, I don't know how they should be fixed, nor do I much care anymore. Unless something is done, we're going to see a lot more of this silliness. Which is sad, very sad.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Durova.
Ugly, pointless women in charge.
Getting rid of her will cut out a lot of the cancer there.
The Register hates Wikipedia and at every opportunity seeks to spin the tiniest thing into major news that is negative about Wikipedia.
I don't know why they do this, penis envy?
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Wikipedia has created its own polit bureau like the east block in its haydays. How democratic!
Lets not forget what Durova means in slavonic languages. From Russian "Durak", Durova means "daughter of stupid".
Editor falsifying his entire life to give more weight to his editorial views? "Eh well he was protecting himself from stalkers".
Mods discussing mod stuff off-site (granted, completely counter to the notion of transparency that Wikis serve to enable)? "HOLY SHIT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED THE FUCKING FURY YOU ASSHOLES".
Strange group, this Wikipedia. I go there for information on my favorite Pokemon, but for anything serious, I'd much rather google <seriousthing> -wikipedia
Why shouldn't certain administrators band together to fight insidious vandalism? It's their prerogative. And the insidious vandals can band together if they want to too.
That said, the "profiling" methods used are unnecessary and wrong. If editors are being abusive, ban them. If they're trolling, ban them. It's a lot of work, but people volunteer to be administrators in order to do the dirty work, right? Right?
Doh
Nobody's put their finger on this yet in a systematic way. Maybe it's for lack of time; maybe people's brains are wired differently. I need to show you not just what Wikipedia Review is doing to us, but how they're doing it.
And I'm setting this forth as a brief seminar so you can do more than recognize when it's presented to you; you can find these signs yourselves.
The one thing I have to ask is that you all be very tight lipped about this.
First, the good news:
1. They're working from the same playbook. 2. They don't know this list exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=167325580&oldid=167325471
Now, the case study:
Here's a troublemaker whose username is two exclamation points with no letters. !!
It's what I would call "ripened sock" - a padded history of redirects, minor edits, and some DYK work. Some of the folks at WR do this to game the community's good faith. I can tell immediately that it's not the user's first account. Soon you'll see the telltale signs as quickly as I do.
A. In their efforts to deceive us, they forget that new users haven't learned edit summaries and wikimarkup.
Edit summary on the first edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_Kerr&diff=prev&oldid=141874955
Correct use of page links on the second edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Brocklehurst&diff=prev&oldid=141877151
Knows how to create line references on the third edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claude_Pompidou&diff=prev&oldid=142914869
Creates an appropriately formatted stub on the fourth edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colin_Rimer&diff=prev&oldid=142927003
B. They do wikignome work far too early in the account history to be genuine wikignomes. The purpose is to pad the account history with a track record of positive contributions that will insulate them against the banhammer later on.
Redirects a page on the seventh edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C3%8Ele-St-Louis&diff=prev&oldid=144015208
This user favors redirects and stub creations. Others do RC patrol or copyediting. They continue for days, weeks, or perhaps a few months playing "useful editor."
C. Many of them tip their hands occasionally during the preparation phase.
Obscene trolling; knows German: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Academic_Challenger&diff=prev&oldid=156788817
This user slips for the joy of trolling. Others let down their guard momentarily for WR-related incidents. Look for behavior that seems out of character such as a sudden cluster of talk page posts or odd edit summaries.
D. They are team players.
Here's the sock moving all of Giano's t
I guarantee that wherever there is an on-line community, you will find sub-groups within that community who want to discuss things away from the masses. Just like real-life, then?
Personally I think they do it because it's a cheap way to fill column inches and to push a few buttons on readers who recognize it for the invaluable service it is.
It's funny and tragic. And by far not limited to Wikipedia. Try your average club and you'll see exactly the same development. Hell, try anything where some people who have nothing in common but the goal at hand aggregate.
First, you'll see people form groups. Then you'll see (some) groups trying to gain power. No matter how petty (and in Wikipedia's case it's anything but petty. People have replaced Google with Wikipedia as a source for good links).
Generally, you'll have two kinds of groups in every assembly of human beings. Those that want to push the cause along and those that want to control it. The latter will most certainly claim they belong to the first group (often even to themselves), but in general they would do anything to aggregate more power, no matter whether the group moves anywhere anymore.
With power and the lust for it comes paranoia. Because the knave thinks the way he is, they start seeing usurpators who want to control the group anywhere. So they become secretive and paranoid. Anyone who is "good" (as in, is actually pushing the cause ahead and keeps things moving) will be seen as a threat, because he will invariably be liked by those who're also in for the cause. Someone who is liked has peer backing, and that could threaten the power base of this group. So he will be mobbed until he leaves.
What's finally left is a dead hulk. Everyone who wanted to move the cause along will have left, what's left is the power hungry group and some tagalongs and posers who present no danger to said group, but who are also not getting the cause anywhere. They're just in for the "experience" and the fame of being "there" and being part of it. Because if they would actually start pushing ahead, they would be seen as a threat to the power group and removed.
Sad, really. But if you can't get rid of such power whores, you'll end up with a dead project.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why should I be? The left-wing extremist that admin polish part of wiki make any, I repeat ANY, other input to wiki senseless. They take it as attack on whatever-you-can-imagine minority, and that results in ban, no mather how many 'edits' you have.
The sad thing is, that well known pl-wiki admin Lcamtuf, a nice and inteligent guy, let himself being engaged into games like described above. And another sad thing is that, he isn't alone...
quote:
In their efforts to deceive us, they forget that new users are morons and haven't learned edit summaries and wikimarkup.
end_quote:
- rather telling about how some Wikipedia administrators feel about contributors and users, eh?
Bullshit, all the comment says is "Given Microsoft's attitude towards the process, I'm assuming the response was "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, and fuck you, I'm out!""
Nice try.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Probably because you got your social foundation in an US high school.
It is one of the most annoying things about working with young Americans, they (or some of them) tend to translate their conceptions of the dysfunctions of the US high schools to every social organization they encounter. "It is just a popularity contest". "They want to be part of the in crowd".
These phrases resonate well with you because of bad experiences during the most vulnerable time of your life, but they are meaningless to those of us who never experienced life in a US high school first hand (which you will never understand, because you see everything in those terms).
just seem like a couple o' bitches duking it out, shame about the integrity of wikipedia tho, that site rocks.
prepare the survey weasels.
You mean the owner and root admin of a site performed his duty as root admin? Say it isn't so!
The truth is, sometimes you just HAVE to do your job or your site will end up like YouTube is. Honestly, I wish I could ban some youtube users (spammers, trollers, those not even discussing the video in question when they use the discussion tool), but no: its an "open forum" of information.
Funny how quickly "open forum" turns into "stagnant quagmire".
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
""Wikipedians are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list."
WTF?? Is this Junior High or something??
What a bunch of whiney faggots
.
So can anyone provide insight on whether this sort of thing is going on across all areas of Wikipedia -- or is it just part of the English-language culture? I would be interested in knowing how the French, German, or Russian versions have wound up self-organizing for example.
Salute the little green Nazi with the "Seig hiel" arm gesture at the top of every Wikipedia page.
Two words: "true colors"
They have done the same with many other people who have identified as paedophiles, and Jimbo Wales is responsible for many of the blocks.
They use the list to ban people who don't violate Wikipedia rules yet damage the "reputation" of the Wiki.
There is indeed a secret mailing list, Jimbo knows about it, and Jimbo is involved.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
"You can't simultaneously complain that wikipedia is vulnerable to edits by ignorant/malicious/troll/pro-spin users, and complain that wikipedia takes action against those users by identifying them and banning them."
In fact you *can* complain about both, because both are problems and fundamental weaknesses of the democracy-leads-to-truth/accuracy approach. Wikipedia is entertainment, and not to be taken too seriously.
Not sure what the big deal is. Obviously problems / issues exist and the need to high bandwidth brainstorming without interruption can kick start ideas and solutions. They have a lot of issues with people stomping on them just to slow them down and make them look bad. A simple mailing list, luncheon, or whatever doesn't seem to be a big deal. Except for people that want to try and hold back ideas.
Its a political world and wp: is a political environment. Don't act like they were redistricting Texas in secret.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
There is a clique in Wikipedia that has tried to censor links to sites they think are "evil". Some people don't like this.
--Dan
Web Tips
Forking a project is relatively easy, if the insane are leading the asylum the real contributors move house. Moving house with wikipedia? Little less straightforward. The usefulness of contributions to code is also a little more easily gauged than the usefulness of wikipedia edits and admin actions (being an inclusionist I see a hell of a lot of admin actions as pretty much useless in fact).
Nuff Said.
because Wikipedia does have a slant, in political, religious, environmental, and other areas.
It is practiced and preached.
To avoid a slanted moderation or the implied existance of one there can be no secrecy. Wikipedia is supposed to be public, on the up and up, as such we need all the going on's there kept in the open. As soon as you permit one secret group within the organization others will crop up. Worse you will have created some who are more equal than others and thereby their opinion will determine what is allowed and not. Articles the favored few don't like will be subject to more scruitiny and subsequent bannings of the people who dispute them, facts not withstanding.
Basically what your claiming is anyone who disagrees and is aggressive about it is wrong and therefor rightly removed. In other words, the consensus doesn't have to be right, it just has to be.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Qualification in a field generally means no more than that the person being "qualified" (e.g. through a degree from an educational institute) in a certain field has shown to have undergone a systematic exposure to and a basic grounding in that previous knowledge. In addition a certain basic competence in the (established through consensus) techniques in that field has to be demonstrated.
By being aware of previously established techniques people can avoid treading in the same pitfalls as those before them (in the case of Mathematics, the Sciences and Engineering often centuries before them). In areas where previous knowledge is plentiful, well-established, and being proven on an hour-by-hour basis, a lack of that knowledge is usually enough to ensure that the odds of that someone saying of thinking anything worthwhile or even coherent about the theoretical size of that common background knowledge (the theory of that area) is really rather slim. There *are* exceptions, but they are mighty rare (the mathematician Ramanuyan was one).
That is as far as thoughts on theory go. However, there is something that generally trumps theory, and that is (valid and careful) observation. Raw data if you like. Precisely how valid an observation is is something an amateur unfortunately often cannot tell because he doesn't know enough of the pitfalls that have been taught to qualified people. However, if he uses an established observational methodology (e.g. pointing a camera at the sky and carefully noting down when and where they did that) there isn't all that much they can do wrong.
If the camera subsequently shows flying saucers, then this bit of "evidence" has to be weighed against all the other bits of evidence that qualified practitioners know about, and may be discounted on that basis alone (it wouldn't be the first hoax). But this is hardly something that a serious amateur astronomer would do ... or even want to do. Amateurs can be as dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge as any qualified practitioner.
For this reason alone, amateur astronomers can contribute without academic qualifications. Simply because they can contribute instrumental observations. Such observations as a rule are highly reproducible (and may be objective, valid and valuable even if they are not reproducible because they record one-of-a-kind phenomena), and their value is one of *discovery*.
This however does *not* contradict the idea that an "amateur" in a certain field is unlikely to be able to fruitfully contribute to thoughts about the theory of that field. As such "amateur astronomers" are a very poor example.
The same holds for Chemistry, Physics, Biology and any kind of engineering. As long as someone can come up with an interesting (and reproducible) observation, they can make a contribution to the total stock of knowledge. When it comes to interpreting that observation, and/or fitting that observation into a theoretical framework one simply needs to know the theory, which is quite unlikely without qualification.
The way you said it was funny but what you said is true. This is extremely childish behavior, and is VERY commonplace in most online communities. The only difference is that in this case, there was a written record of it and it was discovered by the community, and the community, as a collective, actually cared. I was once the victim of an almost identical situation, this is nothing uncommon. I know quite a few people who've suffered a similar treatment. Online communities are so rife with corruption, it almost makes meatspace look good. Perhaps what's worse is that the admins don't really have anything to gain from such behavior. They must get a feeling of power from it that they enjoy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's actually quite an amazingly bad URL. There I was thinking I was safer on a Mac ...
.. incredible.
Spawns hundreds of windows, adds contacts in IM, heaps of emails and dials someone on skype
don't click!!
Every few months a new story surfaces about how Wikipedia is controlled by a small number of asshats. So why do I never hear about someone forking the project and coming up with a new web encyclopedia?
<southpark_saddamhussein> :D
Relax guy, take a load off!
</southpark_saddamhussein>
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I've said this before but anyway- the Wikipedia has become successful in spite of the policies, power-mad admins and "leadership" rather than because of all that. It's a wiki, lots of people used it and it grew.
:).
The rotten core was/is usually covered by all the good stuff added by other people.
Nowadays it sure looks like they're trying hard to "outshine" the good with their rottenness. Mass deletion of stuff and attempts to get rid of contributors/contributions.
Who knows, maybe someone might start a new wiki, and people might copy stuff over, and it might be less rotten in the core, for a while
http://www.wikipediareview.com/ is the site that started the entire investigation. Read the entire thing here.
And read the links.
Any group has one or more defined goals. At some point, a new goal spontaneously appears: perpetuate the group. Eventually, that goal begins to take precidence over the other goals.
It's often the overriding pursuit of that goal at the expense of the original goals that winds up destroying the group.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I wouldn't agree that wikipedia is worthless. Go back just a short 10 years ago, maybe even just 5 for that matter, and the "easy" way to get information about some topic was to ask your drunk uncle, or some other old fart at the family picnic. Want to know about WWII the easy way? Ask grandma/pa, want to know about Vietnam or JFK, ask mom and dad, or your uncle. Sure, you could have gone to a library, searched for some books that are hundreds of pages long, mostly filler, to get the 5 sentences of information you're looking for or you could have flipped open your dated set of encyclopedias and read what the "historians" said, which lacks the quick and easy references to related topics and in book form means that you still need to go the library to lookup the references and get any real details.
In other words, I like to consider wikipedia my non-kid touching, molestation free drunk uncle of information, maybe, or maybe not, more accurate, but at least I can get quick answers on a lot of topics and I can see how topics are related and then just search google for more information or confirmation of the information I've found, and best of all, it doesn't even cost me a 6-pack.
First of all, the Register is the only news source carrying this? I'd rather trust the Weekly World News.
Secondly, this goes to show that any project, no matter its aims, no matter its implementation, no matter how 'open', will naturally end up developing political systems. Kind of an interesting social experiment.
Comment of the year
Err, not quite. As a amateur and a professional astronomer, I'd say that
during the last 100 years or so, amateur astronomers have contributed significantly to a few aspects of astronomy, but calling them a backbone of astronomy is simply untrue. Very few, if any, important developments in the astronomy have anything to do with amateur astronomers.
If you are looking for a field where the non-professional contribution really is significant, try zoology, especially the hunt for new animal species. The value of 'parataxonimists', well-learned laymen, is uncontested.
Sites like this aren't democracies. They're businesses, controlled by one or a few people, who take advantage of their users generating content for free to make money for their business. All this "democracy" crap is just a bunch of "Web 2.0" hype.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He hates
Open Source
Creative Commons
Wikipedia (even more when it becomes CC licensed)
ANY attempt by a music rightsholder to NOT use the current RIAA-style method of payment (read if you can his pieces on Radiohead)
And he may be working under a pseudonym or three on El Reg.
Yet he still isn't kicked out for the insane batshit twat that he is.
He's a real-life Verity Slob.
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.wikitruth.info/
"On-Wiki" they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.
Dude, where's my packet?
So. It seems like the website Wikipedia Review is THE place to go for all the hot Wikipedia-scandal gossip.
...And was automatically redirected to an article on Criticism of Wikipedia, which links to more Wikipedia hating sites than you would ever care to shake a stick at. (Including Wikipedia Review)
So I went to their site, and read a bunch about how the elite Wikipedia cabal are trying to cover up all traces of Wikipedia Review existing...
So then I went to Wikipedia. And typed "Wikipedia Review" into the search box...
Nothing to see here. Honestly, I might've thought there was, if The Register hadn't shown their blatant anti-Wikipedia bias time and time and time again. I used to like El Reg.. heck, I used to think Wikipedia sucked.. but time has proven Wikipedia to be a far more useful and reliable site than The Register ever was.
If you found this article interesting, you may enjoy articles on "David Icke", "The Feted Inner Core", and "Nasa Never Actually Went To The Moon You Gulliable Noob"
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
This discussion is over. You lose.
I find it odd that the article doesn't identify this "secret" mailing list. Is it just wikien-l, which is not secret at all and which anyone can join? I'm not currently on it, so I don't know if the brouhaha in question surfaced there.
If it's not wikien-l, then what list is it?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Users of social network talk outside of network, discuss network. News at 11.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Corruption infects Wikipedia to the core, and I predict it's only a matter of time before we see either a massive shake-up or a spectacular meltdown.
sPh
Wikipedia is run by human beings. And that means trouble.
Citizendium.com, while being more restrictive in its rules regarding contributions, seems to have a more transparent, collegial outlook than Wikipedia. The following is a "recruitment letter" taken from the site, for what it's worth:
"Dear colleagues,
Many people have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia, which has made huge amounts of information freely available, but whose contents cannot be controlled for quality. Citizendium is a relatively new, expert-led online encyclopedia project at http://www.citizendium.org/. It was founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, and is intended to be a more accurate and credible, publicly owned and authored encyclopedia.
But for a wiki to be successful, there is a serious hurdle to clear: critical mass. If people don't see enough other people working on the wiki, they don't have an incentive to work on it themselves. Your expertise is urgently needed to make Citizendium a success. Please consider joining Citizendium soon in the Computers Workgroup.
Citizendium is currently in the process of reaching out to mailing lists and professional associations. In Citizendium, people author using their real identities, and expert editors provide gentle oversight. A sophisticated set of policies for maintaining quality and resolving issues of judgement and knowledge are being crafted by a dedicated community of both professional and citizen authors and editors.
In the meanwhile, if you'd like to sign up to join the project--as an editor *or* a rank-and-file author--then please apply here:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:RequestAccount
Help Citizendium show the world what is possible when strong collaboration is gently led by real experts. More importantly, if there are large quantities of information about computers available online, let's make sure it's of high quality."
The way the WikiClique works can be seen here. A Wikipedia editor, Ashibaka, has a legitimate concern about the copyright status of an image (one that was ultimately vindicated when the image was deleted later), but is ganged up on by SlimVirgin, Jayjg, and FeloniousMonk, all fervent supporters of the clique (and probably members of the secret "cyberstalking" list). At one point, FeloniousMonk has the chutzpah to say "What I've seen here is very one-sided bullying and intimidation of SV over a petty, contrived issue, and it's going to stop, Kelly included." Yes, it was a one-sided bullying and intimidation, but it's by him and his buddies. "Kelly" here is Kelly Martin, then an administrator (who was trying to step in and stop the fight in a fair and balanced way); she's since become a Wikipedia critic with a very incisive blog.
Another interesting Wikipedia-related blog
--Dan
Web Tips
Isn't it time for him to come in here and tell us that it isn't a big deal and how we're all being trolled?
What you teach to a student and what you allow to be in the comprehensive collection of a culture's knowledge are two entirely different things. What is taught in school will always have some political or cultural slant to it; specifically because teaching time is an incredibly limited resource. It's not that teaching students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't have value - it's that teaching them about evolution will get you more mileage. You have to make those trade-offs in a curriculum.
There is no significant resource crunch in Wikipedia - at least that cannot be hurdled with a little clever organization. The point of Wikipedia is not to present a tailored, lean set of articles. Rather, it is to present everything. Everything and it's brother. And then some. This is what I think people fail to realize is a substantive difference between Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias; they have no effective maximum size. There is no point in excluding something. There is only a point in organizing it differently, and calling it what it is: a mainstream theory or a competing metaphysical model or a fringe cultural icon.
"First, you must keep a clean spirit. Second, you must look things in the face and know them for what they are." - Marc Anthony
[Ego]out
Just the project cited as the principle example of free speech on planet Earth... being run by a cabal with "special" powers... backed by a dictator.
Nothing to get excited about. Move along, move along.
...suggests that it may not actually be true that there is an absolute truth. Even the statement "There is ... such a thing [as absolute truth], it's just that nobody really knows for sure" is logically contradictory. We actually have no proof of absolute truth; only some evidence to support it, and the distinct logical possibility it doesn't exist.
[Ego]out
That's why I love Slashdot. It has never pretended to be anything more than Cmdr. Taco's personal blog. Yet it works better, and this little dictatorship is more open and free than Wikipedia. What does that say about human nature?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The best way to address the issue would be to ban women from editing. They are responsible for the most vicious politics in the whole thing.
Not necessarily. There are usually actually people who honestly try to pursue the original goal, to the end. They want the whole group (not just theirs but all the people participating) to have fun and to achive what they want.
Unfortunately those people are usually not really interested in steering power. They don't care, as long as "the rest" doesn't work against the original goal, they're fine with it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Like I said, you will encounter this everywhere. From non-profit organisations to corporations. Actually even more in the former than the latter, but it's not impossible to see this also in companies. It's pretty much the source for mobbing, in the most classic case. A new employee coming in, doing his best to work for the "official" company goal while his coworkers are already doing their best for their own, in other words, creating job security by obscurity (i.e. making themselves irreplacable by withholding information and stalling).
Now, he is productive, often more productive than his coworkers, simply because he doesn't spend half his time building walls against a layoff. Which is a threat to his coworkers, since their boss could see that the output can be much higher than what they achive.
Same train of logic, different setting and different reasons. But it's pretty much the same deal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
but the Register writeup makes the entire arb process at WP sound like something between Animal Farm and the French Revolution. Come to think of it, very close to the latter, complete with the rampant paranoia about counter-revolutionary elements.
Next up, la Grande Terreur. A lovely mob dynamic they seem to have going.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
They aren't even interested in accuracy. I recently fixed a "hello world" example that was ill-formed (according to the language's standard). It was prompted changed back, with a nasty comment not to change it again.
I see this meme a lot here on /., but it's obviously false. Browse through most any scientific topic (even many obscure topics have good representation) and you'll very quickly come across in-depth articles heavy in math, chemistry, etc. As an engineering PhD student I often find Wikipedia to be a useful resource for basic info.
If you only use Wikipedia for trivia then of course your perception will be skewed.
This is the problem with a secret mailing list and secrecy generally. It's fine to talk privately, but when decisions are made without the input of the community, or without the ability of the community to vet the process, then the conditions are ripe for corruption, anger and paranoia.
the editorial staff of any large collaboration will suffer the same trevails and useless insider versus outsider drama and cliques and power plays
but of course, the haters will come out of the woodwork trumpeting this scandal as a reason why wikipedia is wrong
this does in fact besmirch wikipedia in general, but it doesn't count as a reason to find wikipedia inferior in quality, as it is a problem that all encyclopedias or any publication with large editorial staff and the drama that comes with
so holding this scandal against wikipedia uniquely is not valid
"context"
it's a valuable concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I always said it as "In C++, only you and your friends can play with your private parts."
It appears that Durova, aka Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the linked
Full disclosure here.
Dude, where's my packet?
People LOVE to believe that the Nazi's were at any time a majority.
Turns out, however, that a sufficiently motivated and brutal minority can cow the majority.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Sadly, to get the real story, you need to read external sources such as:
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.wikitruth.info/
And to get the real story about THOSE sites, you need sources like:
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruth.com/
* http://www.wikitruthreview.com/
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruthreview.info/
* http://www.whocaresaboutyourpissingcontestsijustwanttolooksomethingupquickly.com/
... that no one invited me to the super secret treehouse mailing list. :(
Try editing anything significant on Wikipedia. It's nearly impossible to get something to stick if you haven't read all the rules and policy they've implemented. And it's not like it's just a list of guidelines or something, it's article after article (and these are MASSIVE articles) that people are supposed to read before they edit anything. It's completely ridiculous.
Also, people on Wikipedia are really caught up in the idea of deleting instead of fixing. If something isn't formatted correctly, they don't fix it, they nominate it for deletion. So then the original editor has to go spend time convincing people his article is worthy of keeping before he can do anything to it. And in the meantime the article has a giant MARKED FOR DELETION tag that gives Wikipedia oh-so-much credibility.
I started the Antec page on Wikipedia. I haven't worked on it much, but literally moments after I started it some ill-informed deletion monger marked it for speedy deletion (this is the kind of deletion that people use when they think a page has no place on Wikipedia and doesn't need much debate) because Antec was not notable enough. Not because he actually thought a major computer hardware manufacturer wasn't important for an encyclopedia that includes a massive page on Jedi fighting styles, but because he hadn't ever heard of Antec, and couldn't be bothered to search around for anything. So he decided to delete it. It didn't get deleted, mind you, but it's a pain in the ass to convince people not to, because apparently the fact that there are pages for every other smaller case manufacturer isn't not justification for having a page on Wikipedia (that is an official Wikipedia policy, and is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard; if there are pages for every company LESS notable than Antec, then that is damn good justification for Antec having a page also).
Well, that's a pretty flimsy distinction they're trying to build up. Democracy means rule by the people, not necessarily a particular voting system. Granted, if people referred to a Wikipedia as representative democracy, or direct democracy, then they'd be wrong. That's not what I (or anyone else I know) would do, though. People go to wikipedia and see publically contributed content. They see that they can contribute content themselves, and a (yes) democratic process of majority editing power will decide who has the truth of it*. Those who get more involved or have a certain background also see the license, and associate it with all sorts of freedom and good, open decision making processes.
Ask yourself this: how many people have contributed to pages of interest on wikipedia? Now... how many of them know that little piece of text you linked to exists? How many of them have edited it? How many of them agree with it? How many of them would take their open content and setup a new site elsewhere, holding to the principles THEY believe wikipedia is about, if pushed into it?
Film @ 11
It isn't intolerant to be intolerant? Well as long as your foundation for thought is a contradiction, the only structure you have is nonsense.
Yes, being intolerant is intolerant. It is a tautology. In your system some forms of intolerance are accepted. Your framework differs from those that you want to "shut up" simply in what axioms you have adopted. This, coincidentally, is the nature of most disagreements that are not the result of cognitive dissonance. So it comes as no surprise that it's the basis for your smug, all-knowing, "Pfft, go take a Philosophy class" ad hominem nonsense.
Mindless twit.
Much as I hate to rain on your parade, it looks as if there was a debate about the notability and wording of the issue. The current revision of "Criticism of Wikipedia" mentions the incident and references the register article. Admin "Jossi" is the most recent person to amend the entry. Clearly s/he is not that happy about it, but it is in nevertheless. I suppose it will survive in the current version.
...says EVERYTHING http://encyclopediadramatica.com/images/8/8f/Damn_furries_wikipedia.jpg
I'm not a sex offender (nor am I a terrorist), and I'm blatantly opposed to child molestation, so I don't see how the URL you posted is relevant to me.
Paedophiles are people who are sexually attracted to children; only a small number actually act on their fantasies.
I briefly discussed my views here.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Authoritarian dictatorship is the best form of government provided you get the right dictator. The (eventual) problem is that there is no good way to insure dictatorial successors who entertain the same notion of 'rightness'. Or to protect against senility, for that matter.
This is the single best summary I've ever seen of what has happened (and is continuing to happen) at Wikipedia. I edited there copiously for a little over a year, until I became disheartened by the syndrome you describe: miscreant admins, cabalistic behavior, junior high cliquishness. It's not worth the time and frustration.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Content behind redirect leads to shock site.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=secret+mailing+list&go=Go
and you get:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You searched for secret mailing list [Index]
[snip]
No page with that title exists.
All I want to know is, did the whistle blower come out on wikileak.org?
L053R
Willy on Wheels was just a joke. The real "wheels" is wikipedia itself!
The word "valid" is not a synonym for "prevail". Valid means worthy of respectful consideration by the other involved parties. An opinion such as "all opinions are equal (and deserve to prevail)" is unlikely to prevail because it doesn't lead to a workable outcome.
Intelligent design and evolution are less incompatible than most people think. What evolution teaches is that we have made a very large number or precise observations (across a broad swath of distinct disciplines ranging from astronomy to geology to biochemistry) that fit coherently within a 13-billion year story, with a handful of memorable moments in the theatrical trailer: 2.5Ga (toxigen), 500Ma (bilateria), 250Ma (first CGI extravaganza), 65Ma (second CGI extravaganza), 1.5Ma (habilis/erectus overlap), and 30ka (good riddance, hairy brute). Science digs up a lot of stuff that fits coherently within this narrative.
I.D. asserts that this could not have unfolded as described without guidance at the hand of an unexplained power, uh, the almighty basis step. Quite possible. It's quite possible the laws of probability were bent by a guiding force. Science can't readily dispute this. That whole period between 5Ma and 1.5Ma needs a little cleaning up before we tackle statistical plausibility of the narrative as a whole relative to any chosen cosmology.
It's also quite possible that the universe winked into existence at 8ka, with all the fossils embedded in granite and sandstone in their present configuration, and starlight of the released in space as-if it had been in transit for billions of years. Perhaps the almighty basis step likes to cover his/her/its creative seams.
What we need to teach in school is the coherence of the many observations we have gathered relative to the evolutionary narrative they fit within (thus far). There is no need whatsoever to assert that any of this actually happened. That's not a matter of science. Science describes, it does not explain. Evolution is a descriptive narrative, not a causative narrative.
I.D. is a causative narrative with little concern for unifying what sciences observes. It surprises me how little the I.D. movement cares about the handiwork of the almighty basis step. He/she/it apparently went to a lot of trouble to start things rolling with an entertaining yet exquisitely implausible back story.
If true the fallout is very damaging from this.
As the saying goes, and is confirmed here in black and white so to speak, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The very idea that a small group of people control this information basically makes these people a propaganda machine, not unlike NAZI Germany.
They simple have more advanced tools at their disposal.
I must admit I was not aware how the Wiki manages itself internally.
But clearly, there has to be a more public review of the process and these individuals cannot be trusted to police themselves.
Even a 75 minute ban is unacceptable. Given the remarks by the power structure, I am inclined to believe that this will only continue to become worse without:
1) A complete review of the policies in public used by the admins.
2) A restructuring of the decision making process to include public debate and review. I mean after all, we are talking about book or reference information, much of which doesn't change over time.
Edits made should be suitable for public or peer review and this process should be open, in similair fashion to edit made to software projects, which anyone can join a list to observe or participate.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
It took years of people complaining to get them to add something to the FAQ about the site editors/owners moderating. For the longest time, it was carefully worded to imply that only the users were doing moderation. When weird things happened, like some comment mysteriously got slammed with zillions of negative moderation points (far more than any ordinary user or group of users could ever have), why there was just shrugging and no explanation for that! They finally, finally, after much gnashing, relented and added the text that is in the FAQ today (or was last time I looked).
The guy's point applies to this place too.
I said "A vast collection of Pokemon trivia and amateur writing".
The science articles, which are either jargon-laden to the point of incomprehensibility, or completely condescending, definitely fit under the latter category.
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Several years ago, back in University when I got involved in the Engineering Society and was one of the student reps on the Academic Committee one term, I came to what I consider a very simple realization that is part of this. Time dealing with SF Fandom politics just drove it home.
There are a great many people out there whose primary purpose in life is to find a small enough pond that they can be a big fish in it.
Once they have found and taken such a pond, they will defend it far out of proportion to its actual worth because (in the backs of their minds where they don't admit it to themselves) they know this might be a fluke and don't want anybody more valid taking their pool away from them.
Like I said, the controlling group will deceive others (and often even themselves) into thinking they're actually in the moving group. In fact, they are not. They certainly move the organisation, but more often than not they move it primarily into a direction that gives them more control, and only secondarily forwards. If it happens to be the same direction, fine. If not, primary concerns win over secondary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You seem to be projecting or making assumptions of a situation that you weren't involved in. I worked closely with these people. They were smart, motivated, and dedicated to making the company succeed. There was also a collision over leadership, personalities, and decisions. It wasn't an either/or situation, and the idea that these people were enemies of the "good" people is laughable.
I'll do a little assuming of my own. Sounds like you were on the losing end of such a power struggle. Not because you were "good", but because there was general disagreement in how things were being run. Of course in your view, the other side are just power hungry people who will ruin the project, and anybody that agrees with them are just tagalongs.
But hey, I wasn't in your situation, and you weren't in mine. I'm just offering an alternative view.
Whem you say:
I am forced to admit that it's not impossible for amateurs to contribute. However I maintain however that it's (very) unlikely for people who lack knowledge of the underlying theory.
As an illustration I would like to point to a steady flow of letters to the Mathematics Department from people who send examples of trisecting angles, squaring circles, and doubling cubes. Nevermind that you can prove, using Galois field theory, that such constructions are outside the set of what can be generated with straightedge and compass. Taking a clean sheet of paper and starting to draw is *much* more satisfying than spending six months getting to grips with basic modern Algebra. And about half of them forget that they're supposed to only use straight edge and compass, and I am told that for the other half there are forms stating something like "Dear sir/madam, the first mistake we discovered in your work was on page ... line ...".
Then you have a trickle of letters to the physics department (often from people who insist on the deepest secrecy in order not to compromise their patent application) for a Perpetuum Mobile. Usually accompanied with non-standard terms to describe the effects of electromagnetism and involving smudged diagrams with lots of coils and one or more black boxes. What such letters tend to lack however is a grasp of elementary thermodynamics.
Closely followed by (usually very long) letters from people who wish to explain that Einstein was a Fool, and that Quantum Mechanics is Wrong, followed by an unintelligible essay using a wholly new and unique symbolism, a series of thought experiments to "prove" their point, topped off by a closing section claiming that their ideas have been unfairly sat upon by the "Scientific Establishment".
It excludes them from that opportunity. As well, discovery often depends on looking beyond established technique.
Well, yes. I agree with you're on that point. In Science, experiment is the final arbiter. However ... I still maintain that it's very helpful to actually understand established technique in the first place. Not so much because it will tell you where your chances of investigative success are rather slim, but because it will (a) help you to spot and avoid outright mistakes and (b) it will help you to write up what you did so that the rest of us can understand it. My point is that where scientific discovery is hard enough for honest, smart, and well-educated practitioners who talk to their peers, it's much harder for people who lack the education (or even the ability to write clearly).
Having said this I agree that of course being an amateur certainly doesn't mean you're a dolt. Far from it. It's an understanding of the basic theory plus a systematic exposure to what has been discovered already plus a healthy dose of self-criticism and a general ability to accept criticism that seem to be the prerequisites for ability to contribute. And yes, sometimes established scientists too suffer from collective blindness and group-think. But in my experience they are usually willing to listen to anyone they feel isn't about to waste their time.
Science was founded on the work of amateurs. Automatically discounting, or ignoring, comments from amateurs only hurts science.
As I proposed in my previous post, if there is a lot of (well-founded) existing theory in a field then it's important that would-be contributors know about that. Where such theory is absent (or not well-founded) keen-eyed amateurs really can contribute. No doubt about it.
But as I see it, automatically treating comments from amateurs with mu
Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use this item. The admins. secretly and habitually arrange for their Checkuser tool to invade Users' privacy (via so-called "private" requests made to those with the invasive Checkuser status) via email and IRC conversations. The poor regular Wiki users have no idea it's even happening so they can't even complain about a privacy abuse to the token Ombudsman set up on the official Checkuser request page.
I don't think we have a tautology. When saying, "It's not intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance," the first and second "intolerant"s do not mean the same thing. The first is the typical meaning of "intolerance"; i.e., to reject with malice. The second "intolerant" is being used to mean "to reject." No malice is imputed in the second one. A paraphrasing would be: It's not intolerant/malicious to discourage intolerance.
Sort of like the sentence, "A cool person is not cool," where the first usage is the colloquial "cool" and the second means "aloof." The false tautology comes from the fact that words have more than one meaning. However, when stating the tautology, "A equals A," A must mean the same thing both times. In our case, we're really saying, "It's not A[0] to be A[1] of A[0]."
Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive114#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use this item. The admins. secretly and habitually arrange for their Checkuser tool to invade Users' privacy (via so-called "private" requests made to those with the invasive Checkuser status) via email and IRC conversations. The poor regular Wiki users have no idea it's even happening so they can't even complain about a privacy abuse to the token Ombudsman set up on the official Checkuser request page.
Except that "notability" is a catch-all excuse for removing articles that an admin doesn't like.
The complaint isn't that people can't put whatever they want in a Wiki, it's that "notability" is often used as an excuse by snobby admins to remove articles they don't like. This is particularly true for online items which is ironic for an online encyclopedia that wants to be taken seriously.
Seems like the Wikipedia elite have taken Asimov's Foundation Series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Series) way too seriously and watch Survivor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_(TV_series)) way too much.
Jimbo & co.: Please reflect on and return to the original spirit and intent of Wikipedia. Or are the roots also riddled with conspiracies?