>"They're totally immune to the idea that someone is being honest." Not what I've seen, and not what is instructed.
It's what I've seen. Three times I've entered the system. Three times I've been abused and blocked when I was either mereley arguing my points or trying to support someone else who was blocked for doing nothing wrong by a moderator who (a) misinterpreted their actions and then (b) utterly refused to apologize. Attempting to argue with these blocks brings a flurry of supporters to the faulty admin's side, who then apply blocks on the deeply-considered premise of "enough!" And then anyone supportin me is accused of being my sock-puppet.
The paranoia, lack of due diligence, lack of due process, hypocrisy about civility and assuming good faith, and abuse of negative reinforcement, run rampant in the admin corps. But you'll never see popular outcry against it, because anyone it's been used against has either left permanently or turned to a life of trolling to mock it.
The system creates vandals.
>"the software can't decide what is and is not an appropriate use of the system." Should it? How?
Yes it should. Because the wikipedia's moderators are being subjective rather than objectively applying the policies and guidelines. To the point that they make errors and, rather than apologize, make threats and excuses. The directives for admins state that admins have no special authority to edit, but I've seen several who use their admin status as intimidation.
>"It's entirely likely that the signal-to-noise ratio of the Wikipedia will drop (get worse) as time goes on, and it's not the fault of the users, it's the fault of the system and the admins." You've got a quite simplistic opinion here. I take it all (most) of the admins act in bad faith and all the non-admins (like me) act in good faith? That ain't what I've seen.
I'm not the one being simplistic. You're taking my argument to an extreme I neither stated nor implied. The fact is, so long as it is easier to gain adminship than to lose it, adminship will be abused. And that's a far worse problem than the abuse of a brand-new edit window by a brand-new anonymous user.
>"And no realistic way to take away adminship" Have you used it?
Yes, I have, and I was called "troll" and "disruptive", blocked repeatedly, and then cut off from my own talk page (the only place a blocked person can post).
It's possible that this was merely due to a sequence of admins making rash decisions, but it's also possible it's due to collusion and conspiracy on their part.
The number of admins defrocked is sickeningly low. And their politicking amongst themselves is a sham that only serves to reduce the likelihood that they'll be seen as a problem.
I won't be contributing any more of my time to the Wikipedia until it's made clear that admins are to be humble, courteous, and objective, and that due process and positive reinforcement are more important than rationalization and negative reinforcement.
Being given the power to block users should be enough advantage. Beyond that, the general public of the wikipedia should have the benefit of the doubt in all disputes with admins, and a forum in which to complain where admin-level personnel can not apply blocks.
I've discussed these things with Jimmy Wales himself, and he's apathetic towards the problem. He apparently enjoys being King, and doesn't care that his system automatically ingrains error into the output.
What makes your IT job more enjoyable is being treated like a second-class employee. Having to reheat the coffee when you're called in by someone who can't find the "any" key. Training your own replacement before he takes your job home to Bangalore.
See, the problem is, all you need to know before editing the first time is that there's an edit button and a submit button.
There's no training whatsoever.
And the admins have developed a knee-jerk culture. They're totally immune to the idea that someone is being honest. And when you try to point out that the admin is being dishonest, they label you a troll and other admins conspire to keep you from defending yourself.
There's no real training for admins, either. And no realistic way to take away adminship (try instituting arbitration from behind a sequence of blocks; not everyone can just change their IP, and doing so is a blockable offense anyway). So there's no incentive for them to learn to be humble and respect their ability to enrage honest people. They know they can taunt and dissemble and never face repercussions as long as they aren't openly profane. And I've never seen one yet apologize for abusing their authority.
They don't have any authority, anyway. Their job is to mechanically apply the policies, because the software can't decide what is and is not an appropriate use of the system. But they've gotten way out of hand.
The primary problem with the system is that there are hundreds of admins, and it takes just one with a mistaken apprehension of a user's action to cause a problem. It's impossible to get literally every one of them to agree on anything, so any user is liable to be abused at any moment. And virtually no user is capable of knowing the exact behavioral keyhole through which to walk in order to get an admin defrocked.
Because of the one-sided nature of a debate in which one party can totally silence the other, noise is introduced into the system.
It's entirely likely that the signal-to-noise ratio of the Wikipedia will drop (get worse) as time goes on, and it's not the fault of the users, it's the fault of the system and the admins.
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
No, and I wouldn't try to talk her out of one, either.
That's a shame. I just downloaded the newest JDK (5.0), and started playing with the IDE, netbeans (comes in the same package), which has a very nice quick-start tutorial, and frankly, I'm impressed. It's not all intuitive, but the richness of it means I don't hit walls too hard, the way I did the first 3 times I tried MS Visual whatever.
I guess I'll just have to get things done without being part of a madding crowd, then...
That's not self-awareness, it's merely self-recognition.
Or rather, it's an identification protocol sent through a loopback channel to a pattern-recognition processor mapping the local identifier value to the response methods associated with itself.
Removing Larry Sanger as a founder of Wikipedia is not just a faux pas. It's revisionism. It's going to become the archetype for the no-autobio policy.
Does Hollywood not care that "Superman" is supposed to be "super", i.e., more-than, a "man"?
You don't androgynize Superman. You don't play the surprise card when it comes to his power. You put out there a man who looks like a man and represents exactly what he is: the strongest, fastest, least-vulnerable humanoid on the planet.
If I wanted irony in my superhero, I'd make a movie about Underdog, or Yoda.
This is just a waste of the symbolism to turn a profit on the name-recognition factor.
I wear cycling pants at the gym. Old ones with just a thin chamois. I do this because part of my workout involves riding a stationary cycle and I hate having sweats or gym shorts bunching up. But, not to brag, I spend the rest of the workout trying not to show off, especially in profile.
So I understand what the censors mean.
And I think they should just let the world know that men have sex organs, too.
No, it was found to have fewer errors on a per-word basis. Which is an error in half of your facts in that post.
Regardless: If you come away from the Wikipedia spouting 4 wrong things, you think that's better than coming away spouting 3 wrong things and less trivia?
On a "percentage of articles likely to be horribly wrong" basis, the Wikipedia is a total disaster.
Google will help you find the information yourself. Relying on Wikipedia will cause you to believe you've found it when you haven't.
And Wikipedia isn't going to get any better until its power structure is totally reformed. The politicking and tyranny are ingraining the culture of error production.
Slashdot Mirror
>And this privacy was guaranteed where?
The United States Constitution.
Hint: think, don't just repeat the nonsense arguments that Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity shout at their hand-picked strawmen.
In other words, they didn't just tap the phones of a few people.
They invaded the privacy of EVERY person in the country.
Rather than provide leadership and encourage us to cooperate with each other as a society, they've chosen the route of paranoia, secrecy, and tyranny.
>"They're totally immune to the idea that someone is being honest." Not what I've seen, and not what is instructed.
It's what I've seen. Three times I've entered the system. Three times I've been abused and blocked when I was either mereley arguing my points or trying to support someone else who was blocked for doing nothing wrong by a moderator who (a) misinterpreted their actions and then (b) utterly refused to apologize. Attempting to argue with these blocks brings a flurry of supporters to the faulty admin's side, who then apply blocks on the deeply-considered premise of "enough!" And then anyone supportin me is accused of being my sock-puppet.
The paranoia, lack of due diligence, lack of due process, hypocrisy about civility and assuming good faith, and abuse of negative reinforcement, run rampant in the admin corps. But you'll never see popular outcry against it, because anyone it's been used against has either left permanently or turned to a life of trolling to mock it.
The system creates vandals.
>"the software can't decide what is and is not an appropriate use of the system." Should it? How?
Yes it should. Because the wikipedia's moderators are being subjective rather than objectively applying the policies and guidelines. To the point that they make errors and, rather than apologize, make threats and excuses. The directives for admins state that admins have no special authority to edit, but I've seen several who use their admin status as intimidation.
>"It's entirely likely that the signal-to-noise ratio of the Wikipedia will drop (get worse) as time goes on, and it's not the fault of the users, it's the fault of the system and the admins."
You've got a quite simplistic opinion here. I take it all (most) of the admins act in bad faith and all the non-admins (like me) act in good faith? That ain't what I've seen.
I'm not the one being simplistic. You're taking my argument to an extreme I neither stated nor implied. The fact is, so long as it is easier to gain adminship than to lose it, adminship will be abused. And that's a far worse problem than the abuse of a brand-new edit window by a brand-new anonymous user.
>"And no realistic way to take away adminship" Have you used it?
Yes, I have, and I was called "troll" and "disruptive", blocked repeatedly, and then cut off from my own talk page (the only place a blocked person can post).
It's possible that this was merely due to a sequence of admins making rash decisions, but it's also possible it's due to collusion and conspiracy on their part.
The number of admins defrocked is sickeningly low. And their politicking amongst themselves is a sham that only serves to reduce the likelihood that they'll be seen as a problem.
I won't be contributing any more of my time to the Wikipedia until it's made clear that admins are to be humble, courteous, and objective, and that due process and positive reinforcement are more important than rationalization and negative reinforcement.
Being given the power to block users should be enough advantage. Beyond that, the general public of the wikipedia should have the benefit of the doubt in all disputes with admins, and a forum in which to complain where admin-level personnel can not apply blocks.
I've discussed these things with Jimmy Wales himself, and he's apathetic towards the problem. He apparently enjoys being King, and doesn't care that his system automatically ingrains error into the output.
Of course not. Fun? Enjoyable? Bosh!
What makes your IT job more enjoyable is being treated like a second-class employee. Having to reheat the coffee when you're called in by someone who can't find the "any" key. Training your own replacement before he takes your job home to Bangalore.
Fun? What an astonishing waste of time.
See, the problem is, all you need to know before editing the first time is that there's an edit button and a submit button.
There's no training whatsoever.
And the admins have developed a knee-jerk culture. They're totally immune to the idea that someone is being honest. And when you try to point out that the admin is being dishonest, they label you a troll and other admins conspire to keep you from defending yourself.
There's no real training for admins, either. And no realistic way to take away adminship (try instituting arbitration from behind a sequence of blocks; not everyone can just change their IP, and doing so is a blockable offense anyway). So there's no incentive for them to learn to be humble and respect their ability to enrage honest people. They know they can taunt and dissemble and never face repercussions as long as they aren't openly profane. And I've never seen one yet apologize for abusing their authority.
They don't have any authority, anyway. Their job is to mechanically apply the policies, because the software can't decide what is and is not an appropriate use of the system. But they've gotten way out of hand.
The primary problem with the system is that there are hundreds of admins, and it takes just one with a mistaken apprehension of a user's action to cause a problem. It's impossible to get literally every one of them to agree on anything, so any user is liable to be abused at any moment. And virtually no user is capable of knowing the exact behavioral keyhole through which to walk in order to get an admin defrocked.
Because of the one-sided nature of a debate in which one party can totally silence the other, noise is introduced into the system.
It's entirely likely that the signal-to-noise ratio of the Wikipedia will drop (get worse) as time goes on, and it's not the fault of the users, it's the fault of the system and the admins.
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
No, and I wouldn't try to talk her out of one, either.
The idea of a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" died when it became easier to gain adminship than to lose it.
They've been creating a culture of petty tyranny ever since, and driving away honest users.
They've made it free because eclipse is about to kick their ass off the IDE map.
Soon, even the "enterprise" IDEs will be free or nearly so.
That's a shame. I just downloaded the newest JDK (5.0), and started playing with the IDE, netbeans (comes in the same package), which has a very nice quick-start tutorial, and frankly, I'm impressed. It's not all intuitive, but the richness of it means I don't hit walls too hard, the way I did the first 3 times I tried MS Visual whatever.
I guess I'll just have to get things done without being part of a madding crowd, then...
That's not self-awareness, it's merely self-recognition.
Or rather, it's an identification protocol sent through a loopback channel to a pattern-recognition processor mapping the local identifier value to the response methods associated with itself.
If they're broadcasting their data through my head, I have every right to digitize it.
That is all.
Damien, do you think that catchers will start using the inside protector any time soon?
Removing Larry Sanger as a founder of Wikipedia is not just a faux pas. It's revisionism. It's going to become the archetype for the no-autobio policy.
And I'm not surprised that his simpering accolytes would mod a true fact as a "troll", twice.
The goal of the Wikipedia is to become the sum of human knowledtge.
To some people, that means the errors in individual human knowledge are to be left intact, as well.
I've had occasion to correspond with Jimmy Wales, and suspected he's a closet hypocrite. So this doesn't surprise me.
Now that Google's sold out, who's the new Google going to be?
Confiscation of rapidly depreciating capital assets and diminution of character is not without cost.
But nobody ever compensates you for this.
And you're giving your government even more excuses to do it without true cause.
Larry Wall is eccentric?
Then I must be loony as a kookaburra.
That's because it's Digital Quality.
Have you noticed that "Digital Quality" has no meaning other than "it uses 1's and 0's." I.e., it's redundant.
16-bit color is "digital quality".
ASCII is "digital quality".
The money deducted from your bank account by DirecTV via EFT every month is "digital quality".
But they're getting more actual quality out of it than you are.
Niven's just showing us that he doesn't know how to control himself.
Collective sigh...
George Reeves remains the manliest Superman ever.
Does Hollywood not care that "Superman" is supposed to be "super", i.e., more-than, a "man"?
You don't androgynize Superman. You don't play the surprise card when it comes to his power. You put out there a man who looks like a man and represents exactly what he is: the strongest, fastest, least-vulnerable humanoid on the planet.
If I wanted irony in my superhero, I'd make a movie about Underdog, or Yoda.
This is just a waste of the symbolism to turn a profit on the name-recognition factor.
I wear cycling pants at the gym. Old ones with just a thin chamois. I do this because part of my workout involves riding a stationary cycle and I hate having sweats or gym shorts bunching up. But, not to brag, I spend the rest of the workout trying not to show off, especially in profile.
So I understand what the censors mean.
And I think they should just let the world know that men have sex organs, too.
My electrically-assisted car depends on the energy of braking to return energy to acceleration.
If the local government is STEALING power from me, then I will have to burn more gasoline.
No, it was found to have fewer errors on a per-word basis. Which is an error in half of your facts in that post.
Regardless: If you come away from the Wikipedia spouting 4 wrong things, you think that's better than coming away spouting 3 wrong things and less trivia?
On a "percentage of articles likely to be horribly wrong" basis, the Wikipedia is a total disaster.
Google will help you find the information yourself. Relying on Wikipedia will cause you to believe you've found it when you haven't.
And Wikipedia isn't going to get any better until its power structure is totally reformed. The politicking and tyranny are ingraining the culture of error production.