Wikipedia isn't an option for what's probably a large majority of the world right now either, but that's beside the point. You were referring to "greater good," not "ease of access." If you equate the two that's fine, but I doubt most people do. The infrequent updates were probably not a good thing, but overly-frequent updates aren't really a good thing either, particularly when so many of them are wrong. And "comprehensive" is in the eye of the beholder, if you know what I mean.
As for me, I didn't lose any jobs because of Wikipedia or any other website (that I know of). If anything I'm as dependent on internet access to make a living as anyone, but I'm still concerned about the increasingly serious plight of professional scholars, researchers and publishers - and you should be too.
His point was that there is ample evidence to suggest that the Wikipedia community operates as a kind of cult, or has serious cult-like aspects - which it does. The things he mentioned specifically are just the tip of the iceberg.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it is, in fact, a quasi-religious cult - for that they would need some means of physically restraining people who want to leave. There would probably also be ice cream and cake, which Wikipedia doesn't have either.
Wikipedia hasn't "unleashed" any "greater good" that wasn't "unleashed" by every other encyclopedia or general-reference work that's ever been published. The fact that they "unleash" it for free only makes it harder for knowledge workers to make a living, and makes it harder for people with limited internet access to take advantage of the drop in price. Overall, Wikipedia remains a net-negative for Western culture, and probably society in general. They can probably still improve to the point where that's no longer true, but they're not going to do it with the current administrative crew, nor with the current software limitations, which are getting increasingly embarrassing, especially when it comes to user access and other security features.
Finally, running an Ayn Rand mailing list is far worse than burning a baby with a lit cigarette. After all, with the baby, eventually the crying will subside and the skin lesions will heal.
The fact that you would say this is "really all you need as a definition" speaks volumes about your own personal biases, does it not? Not to mention your apparent predilection for gloss-overs, generalities, and oversimplification of complex realities.
WR is probably more open and less totalitarian than Wikipedia is, at least where it really counts - and to some extent it always has been. As for Wales and Essjay not being relevant, if that's true why are they mentioned every time a negative story about Wikipedia crops up?
What he's essentially saying is that like so many Wikipedia quality studies, the methodology is fundamentally flawed by its attempt to quantify an inconsistent, arbitrary, and easily-gamed system.
Articles are actually scored using a point system, which is even more arcane than the above post to which you refer. The points an article needs to move up this game-like hierarchy are at the very bottom of that page - Class C is 225 points, Class B is 300 points, A and "GA" (Good Article) are both 400 points, and "FA" (Featured Article) is 500 points. The actual formula for this is too complicated for humans to calculate on an ongoing basis, so they programmed bots to do it.
The problem (in terms of evaluating articles for statistical purposes) is that the points are assigned by groups of people in different topic areas, working separately from each other, each with different sets of quality criteria. So, the people assigning points for mathematics articles have a completely different set of standards from the people assigning points for Pokemon articles. The study doesn't account for this, because it cannot account for it. It isn't a particularly large sample, either, and since it doesn't include any of the enormous number of articles that obviously suck, it should be almost immediately dismissible by anyone who's actually paying attention.
Wikipedia is one of those things that resists statistical evaluation by its very nature - it can only be properly evaluated by ongoing observation and analysis. Wikipedians will never admit that, though, because it leads to people concluding that Wikipedia is a failure, and it also gives credence to the more "involved" critics, such as those that are to be found on sites like WikipediaReview.com, Akahele.org, and so on. They would rather people only criticized them over problems like "accuracy" and "reliability," because they can argue that the solutions to those problems all, by necessity, involve obtaining more manpower. Inaccuracy thus becomes a recruiting tool; recruitment is essential to Wikipedia's continued popularity; popularity equals "success."
How do people define the term "success" in a case like Bomis? I suppose it made enough money to keep a few people employed, but it never really broke out of the porn-link farming business to become a mainstream portal site, and even if it had, it's doubtful they would have had the wherewithal to adapt once the portal business gave way to the search-engine business. They were able to stay in business for more than a couple of years, mainly by taking advantage of the fact that men like to look at pictures of women with large breasts. Is that how we really define "success" in the internet era?
Either way, I can see why he wouldn't mention it in his speech - the TEDx people probably aren't especially pro-pornography.
Also, Wikipedia is still a "dumb idea," though I suppose that depends on how you define "dumb" and "idea." If a dumb idea is something that has a negative effect on world culture, exploits poor and weak-minded individuals to no good purpose, and hurts the economy by helping to drive traditional publishing and journalism entities out of business in favor of low-quality free content, then it's a dumb idea. Unfortunately, it seems as though society these days has redefined these terms so completely, doing things that are good is now effectively the same as failing.
And if people are dumb enough to believe that this story is really that simple, then they're probably dumb enough to believe this version of it, I suppose.
It's a little longer, but how about this one: Enemy of Overstock.com spams Wikipedia, writes article about himself, and allies himself with corrupt admins to protect said article after indie web journalist who is not (yet) an Overstock employee attempts to add info about a lawsuit against enemy, which is reverted. Indie web journalist sends an e-mail to one of the WP admins with an offsite-linked.GIF file (last I checked,.GIF files aren't necessarily considered "infections") to determine who actually reads the e-mail. E-mail is not read by the WP admin at all, but is in fact read by enemy. Indie web journalist is then hired by Overstock.com.
But the part about Wikipedia blocking him is accurate, at least! I guess one out of four isn't so bad, considering the source...
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Wikipedia isn't an option for what's probably a large majority of the world right now either, but that's beside the point. You were referring to "greater good," not "ease of access." If you equate the two that's fine, but I doubt most people do. The infrequent updates were probably not a good thing, but overly-frequent updates aren't really a good thing either, particularly when so many of them are wrong. And "comprehensive" is in the eye of the beholder, if you know what I mean.
As for me, I didn't lose any jobs because of Wikipedia or any other website (that I know of). If anything I'm as dependent on internet access to make a living as anyone, but I'm still concerned about the increasingly serious plight of professional scholars, researchers and publishers - and you should be too.
Try reading the post again.
His point was that there is ample evidence to suggest that the Wikipedia community operates as a kind of cult, or has serious cult-like aspects - which it does. The things he mentioned specifically are just the tip of the iceberg.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it is, in fact, a quasi-religious cult - for that they would need some means of physically restraining people who want to leave. There would probably also be ice cream and cake, which Wikipedia doesn't have either.
Wikipedia hasn't "unleashed" any "greater good" that wasn't "unleashed" by every other encyclopedia or general-reference work that's ever been published. The fact that they "unleash" it for free only makes it harder for knowledge workers to make a living, and makes it harder for people with limited internet access to take advantage of the drop in price. Overall, Wikipedia remains a net-negative for Western culture, and probably society in general. They can probably still improve to the point where that's no longer true, but they're not going to do it with the current administrative crew, nor with the current software limitations, which are getting increasingly embarrassing, especially when it comes to user access and other security features.
Finally, running an Ayn Rand mailing list is far worse than burning a baby with a lit cigarette. After all, with the baby, eventually the crying will subside and the skin lesions will heal.
The fact that you would say this is "really all you need as a definition" speaks volumes about your own personal biases, does it not? Not to mention your apparent predilection for gloss-overs, generalities, and oversimplification of complex realities.
WR is probably more open and less totalitarian than Wikipedia is, at least where it really counts - and to some extent it always has been. As for Wales and Essjay not being relevant, if that's true why are they mentioned every time a negative story about Wikipedia crops up?
What he's essentially saying is that like so many Wikipedia quality studies, the methodology is fundamentally flawed by its attempt to quantify an inconsistent, arbitrary, and easily-gamed system.
Articles are actually scored using a point system, which is even more arcane than the above post to which you refer. The points an article needs to move up this game-like hierarchy are at the very bottom of that page - Class C is 225 points, Class B is 300 points, A and "GA" (Good Article) are both 400 points, and "FA" (Featured Article) is 500 points. The actual formula for this is too complicated for humans to calculate on an ongoing basis, so they programmed bots to do it.
The problem (in terms of evaluating articles for statistical purposes) is that the points are assigned by groups of people in different topic areas, working separately from each other, each with different sets of quality criteria. So, the people assigning points for mathematics articles have a completely different set of standards from the people assigning points for Pokemon articles. The study doesn't account for this, because it cannot account for it. It isn't a particularly large sample, either, and since it doesn't include any of the enormous number of articles that obviously suck, it should be almost immediately dismissible by anyone who's actually paying attention.
Wikipedia is one of those things that resists statistical evaluation by its very nature - it can only be properly evaluated by ongoing observation and analysis. Wikipedians will never admit that, though, because it leads to people concluding that Wikipedia is a failure, and it also gives credence to the more "involved" critics, such as those that are to be found on sites like WikipediaReview.com, Akahele.org, and so on. They would rather people only criticized them over problems like "accuracy" and "reliability," because they can argue that the solutions to those problems all, by necessity, involve obtaining more manpower. Inaccuracy thus becomes a recruiting tool; recruitment is essential to Wikipedia's continued popularity; popularity equals "success."
How do people define the term "success" in a case like Bomis? I suppose it made enough money to keep a few people employed, but it never really broke out of the porn-link farming business to become a mainstream portal site, and even if it had, it's doubtful they would have had the wherewithal to adapt once the portal business gave way to the search-engine business. They were able to stay in business for more than a couple of years, mainly by taking advantage of the fact that men like to look at pictures of women with large breasts. Is that how we really define "success" in the internet era?
Either way, I can see why he wouldn't mention it in his speech - the TEDx people probably aren't especially pro-pornography.
Also, Wikipedia is still a "dumb idea," though I suppose that depends on how you define "dumb" and "idea." If a dumb idea is something that has a negative effect on world culture, exploits poor and weak-minded individuals to no good purpose, and hurts the economy by helping to drive traditional publishing and journalism entities out of business in favor of low-quality free content, then it's a dumb idea. Unfortunately, it seems as though society these days has redefined these terms so completely, doing things that are good is now effectively the same as failing.
And if people are dumb enough to believe that this story is really that simple, then they're probably dumb enough to believe this version of it, I suppose.
.GIF file (last I checked, .GIF files aren't necessarily considered "infections") to determine who actually reads the e-mail. E-mail is not read by the WP admin at all, but is in fact read by enemy. Indie web journalist is then hired by Overstock.com.
It's a little longer, but how about this one: Enemy of Overstock.com spams Wikipedia, writes article about himself, and allies himself with corrupt admins to protect said article after indie web journalist who is not (yet) an Overstock employee attempts to add info about a lawsuit against enemy, which is reverted. Indie web journalist sends an e-mail to one of the WP admins with an offsite-linked
But the part about Wikipedia blocking him is accurate, at least! I guess one out of four isn't so bad, considering the source...
And the moral of the story: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=14446&pid=65149&st=0&#entry65149
I probably needn't point this out, but the word "cabal" appears in the Register article exactly zero times.