PS - what was the article (or name of the candidate)? If you're in the right, maybe other people such as myself can have a look, and put the changes back.
Anecdotes are not evidence, and tell us nothing about trends in contributions.
But yes, basically some people have a bad experience about working with other people online anonymously. But it is a mistake to think that this means Wikipedia is flawed - for all we know, the other person is also here complaining about people who kept adding "rubbish" to an article... I'm sure you think your change was valid, and maybe it was, but that's not always the case. There's no right answer, yet people will always come away, complaining about Wikipedia, no matter what their edit was.
It's entirely natural that some people aren't cut out for Wikipedia editing - I wouldn't expect a massive collabation with large numbers of anonymous people online to be easy. I mean, what do you propose? That all edits should be allowed to stay? Well no, that would be unworkable.
Many things in life, especially those in life that involve working with other people, require cooperation and time, and sometimes not everything goes your way. It is a mistake to think that making the edit is the only work necessary, because such a policy of no reverts would be unworkable. You have to sometimes discuss changes with other people - that's true of all sorts of things in life, such as open source projects, volunteer work, or jobs. But that doesn't mean that no one is interested, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with the activity. Imagine someone saying "I tried working in a band once, but it was hopeless, the other guys didn't want to play any of the songs I wrote or listen to my suggestions, so I left" - sure, it's a nice little anecdote, but it tells us nothing about (a) whether you were in the right or not, (b) about trends in music, or (c) whether working in bands is a good idea or not, other than the obvious point that you have to be prepared to work with other people, who sometimes may not agree with you.
Why is Wikipedia so different? Yes, by all means tell us about how you didn't like being an editor, but please don't present that as criticism of the project, or evidence of a trend - anymore than my dislike of playing football is valid criticism of football, or evidence of a decline in the sport.
Elsewhere on this page: "Wikipedia is crap! I tried to make an edit on the Elephant page, about a sudden increase in numbers, and it got reverted! Everytime! Well, that ends my experience of editing with Wikipedia, I don't know why I bother! And obviously therefore no one else will, and Wikipedia is doomed."
The funny thing is, elsewhere on this artice will be people bitching about "Well I left Wikipedia, I got fed up of people coming in an making changes to articles, without discussing with people or following basic guidelines". I'm not saying you're in the wrong, I'm just saying there's no right answer here, and the fault is not with "Wikipedia" as an entity.
The fallacy is referring to "Wikipedia" as if it was some single entity. The problem is between the editors - and when you edit, that includes you. There's no you-and-them, as the them may well be other people who are complaining about "Wikipedia", when by "Wikipedia" they actually mean their experience with you.
The only plausible time when a them-and-us argument is valid is when discussing Wikipedia admins (who are granted special privileges). But this doesn't apply to editors. You were an editor, and are just as much a target of Wikipedia criticism as any other editor.
The bottom line is that when you have a massive collaboration between people online who don't even know each other, there are going to be disagreements. Unfortunately, rather than debate it with each other, sometimes both sides of an argument will take it out on "Wikipedia", each of them referring to the other side's view as wrong, and an example of how doomed Wikipedia is.
Thankfully, criticisms on Slashdot comments or in the tabloids don't change the fact that out of this collabaration, we nonetheless actually have a resultant free encyclopedia that's pretty damn good.
The point being, there's no automated way to do this, in order come up with statistics about the site.
An anecdote of "Well I stopped editing in 2004, and so did some people I know" may make for interesting discussion, but doesn't tell us anything useful about trends in Wikipedia editing as a whole, and certainly doesn't support the recent story.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one of Slashdot's blindspots - where the usual thought out points go out of the window in the groupthink, and mod points are dished out purely on who can criticise Wikipedia, for whatever reason, be it a personal bad experience of editing there, or some axe to grind against its policies.
As opposed to simply reeling off ad hominems, and attacking his writing strategy rather than his argument?
He didn't say "it ain't so". RTFA. In fact, it doesn't even dispute it even though that's presumably the intent, it simply talks of looking further into the figures.
The first two things listed may not be directly related to the number of editors - but that's the point! "Number of editors leaving" is a rather meaningless figure. You have to look at the whole picture, which is what he's doing. And the second one is related - they're still getting new articles, so there's yet to be any problem.
The third one is directly related.
He then goes in depth in discussing the alleged claims of the 49,000 figure.
It's curious watching how the mod points work - I get modded up, but then a load of mod points evidently get dished out to an Apple fan who, rather than debate facts, is incapable of that, and mods down anything that disagrees with his pro-Apple worldview.
When will Slashdot return to distributing mod points fairly (I haven't had any in years), instead of giving loads of points to a small handful of people?
Asking fair questions is not a troll. Similarly for my other posts, talking on-topic is not off-topic. Whoever did this should be the one to lose mod points.
PS - as for your other comment, I remember on other stories how people were insisting that Iphones ran OS X... Obviously it does when it's something to brag about, and it doesn't when it's a problem, I guess.
That would be the bandwidth hogs who are paying the highest rates for the fastest connection?
And if Virgin Media are implementing this invasive system because their business model is so broken that they can't provide the service that people are paying them for, I think that says all we need to know.
Indeed - it's a bit annoying that any posts about the UK have to turn into a US vs UK match, as if it was some kind of competition (if it's a competition, it's one where citizens in both countries lose!)
All we need is someone to pipe up and say that if only we had guns in the UK, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
All the "But I wouldn't buy it anyway" people are full of shit. Lets say nobody was able to pirate Windows tomorrow. According to that deranged logic, all of those people will switch to switch to Linux/BSD/OSX/etc since they weren't going to buy it anyway.
You fail at basic logic. Firstly not everyone says "But I wouldn't buy it anyway". Secondly, even if that was true, your claim only shows that some of them are lying, not all of them.
If it was impossible to pirate Windows, then I bet that at least some people would switch to alternatives cheaper than buying Windows.
As for the rest of your post, last time I looked, if sales dropped, the record industry don't give more - they simply blame it on piracy.
2. Include a token reference to Android, portraying them as the sole competition in the mobile market, so you can make Apple look better.
3. Not include the link to Apple. If you want to make wild claims about Apple and the Iphone, remember these are best done without a single citation.
Personally I'd say that this story is vaguely notable for once, due to it covering the Newton. But sadly I suspect it only made the front page because of the magic "Iphone" reference.
And sure enough, just after I post about how people here seem to have no idea of the phone market, one comes along:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was something coming out of MS, Verizon, Dell, or the likes that was interesting
Well, what about all of the interesting phones that are coming from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola etc? Virtually zero coverage, it's been that way for years - so yes, I'm correcting you that you are wrong:)
Unless for some reason, there's something special about MS, Verizon, Dell and Apple that they deserve coverage, but not the existing phone companies?
As for viral, I don't think he's suggesting that it's planted by Apple shills - personally I don't, but the point is that Apple are very good at getting other companies and individuals to give them free advertising and hype. No shills needed.
Hear hear. (And actually, I'm surprised that there's only one today, for once.)
It's particularly odd, given the small market share of the Iphone. If it was the Ipod, sure, I could understand - the largest in that market. Hell, even Macs have a larger market share, yet there are only occasional stories about them. But for the Iphone, there are quite literally daily stories - with virtually zero coverage of any of the other mobile phone companies (e.g., Nokia, who have about 40% of the market).
And the viral marketing works. I thought this was a place for people to be knowledgable about technology, but there are people who seriously believe that Apple sell more phones than anyone else (or even that they are in the majority - more than everyone else put together). They actually believe that the Iphone is the only phone, or the first phone, that can do things such as accessing the Internet. They still think that most phones in the market are still using WAP - something that was around 10 years ago.
Oh but occasionally we get stories about Blackberry and Android - also minor players - so I don't know what the logic is. Although coverage of Blackberry and Android seems mainly so they can be presented as token competition ("Look, the Iphone is better than them, or was before them", whilst pretending that that's all the market consists of.)
Yes, obviously the computers, mp3 players and phones simply didn't work at all before Apple came along.
And mobile web browsing was doing fine, years before. Yes, perhaps Apple was better than what came previous when it was first released, but that's true of all high end products! It's a natural consequence of any market where things get continually better. You can't point at Apple alone, and say "Look, they were (slightly) better than what was there before, therefore Apple are the greatest!", whilst conveniently ignoring every other high end phone in existance, before and after then, that made things better too!
Yes, Apple innovate. Just like every other technology company out there.
When was the last time you checked out the mobile market? Pretty much every phone has large screens, and slim cases, even the dirt cheap ones, without keyboards (and as someone who would prefer an actual keyboard, I find it annoying).
(And before anyone says it was the Iphone that caused this - screens have continually being getting larger since before the Iphone, and it was an obvious progression to what we have now; the Iphone wasn't first with touchscreen AFAIK; and slim cases were around before - e.g., Motorola's RAZR.)
The key to a beating the iPhone
Check out the market share - most companies, such as Nokia and Samsung, are already beating it. Of course I'll probably be modded down for saying so, because debates on Apple stories are won by whoever has mod points (which is never me, incidentally), and not who speaks the facts.
Er, they're not scrambling to catch up on. Or okay, I'll bite - what are they scrambling to catch up? (And before you reply, I want actual features or objective examples, not undefined things like "Well it does it better, it just does", because obviously there's no way we can discuss or measure that.)
Yes, it certainly created a "buzz", but I'm not sure that's anything other than a marketing achievement.
And yes, it's the first phone you've done things with, but you make the classic fallacy (common in "my OS/etc is best" geek arguments) of assuming that everyone's experience is the same. For me, the first phone that I used for Internet access and apps was the Motorola V980 phone. But I don't assume that therefore there's something special about it - I'm knowledgable about the actual reality and history of the mobile market. I don't demand three articles a day on Slashdot about the almighty Motorola V980. (And I'm not sure that the Iphone application technology is anything innovative - doesn't support cross-platform technology such as Java, only runs Apple approved applications, and can't multitask them.)
and it has taken an astounding share of that usage compared to it's market share
Citation needed. Because the stats I've seen don't show Apple as the best seller - Nokia are still dominant, followed by Samsung, then a load of other companies. And the RIM. Oh, and then Apple.
As for what you say - yes, when the Iphone came out, it was doing things better than phones previously. But that's true of just about all high end phones! It's called progress. When Opera Mobile (and Mini) appeared, they were better than things previously. And immediately after the Iphone, other phones from other companies continued to improve technology. That's the point - there's nothing special about the Iphone, apart from being one in a long line of high end phones from various companies. But for some reason, even years later, all we hear is Iphone Iphone Iphone, and never about any of the interesting developments from major players like Nokia.
But by this logic, almost every phone on the market multitasks - e.g., my phone's built in mp3 player can run at the same time as the built in email client.
The point is that it doesn't run more than one third party application at once (which really means it's a feature phone, not a smartphone - unless you use the broader definition of smartphone that would also include all feature phones). For years, when people talked about multitasking on phones, this is what they meant - it's only with the Iphone that suddenly the terms have to be used differently, to hide the things it doesn't do, and pretend it's a "smartphone"...
Slashdot Mirror
PS - what was the article (or name of the candidate)? If you're in the right, maybe other people such as myself can have a look, and put the changes back.
Anecdotes are not evidence, and tell us nothing about trends in contributions.
But yes, basically some people have a bad experience about working with other people online anonymously. But it is a mistake to think that this means Wikipedia is flawed - for all we know, the other person is also here complaining about people who kept adding "rubbish" to an article... I'm sure you think your change was valid, and maybe it was, but that's not always the case. There's no right answer, yet people will always come away, complaining about Wikipedia, no matter what their edit was.
It's entirely natural that some people aren't cut out for Wikipedia editing - I wouldn't expect a massive collabation with large numbers of anonymous people online to be easy. I mean, what do you propose? That all edits should be allowed to stay? Well no, that would be unworkable.
Many things in life, especially those in life that involve working with other people, require cooperation and time, and sometimes not everything goes your way. It is a mistake to think that making the edit is the only work necessary, because such a policy of no reverts would be unworkable. You have to sometimes discuss changes with other people - that's true of all sorts of things in life, such as open source projects, volunteer work, or jobs. But that doesn't mean that no one is interested, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with the activity. Imagine someone saying "I tried working in a band once, but it was hopeless, the other guys didn't want to play any of the songs I wrote or listen to my suggestions, so I left" - sure, it's a nice little anecdote, but it tells us nothing about (a) whether you were in the right or not, (b) about trends in music, or (c) whether working in bands is a good idea or not, other than the obvious point that you have to be prepared to work with other people, who sometimes may not agree with you.
Why is Wikipedia so different? Yes, by all means tell us about how you didn't like being an editor, but please don't present that as criticism of the project, or evidence of a trend - anymore than my dislike of playing football is valid criticism of football, or evidence of a decline in the sport.
Elsewhere on this page: "Wikipedia is crap! I tried to make an edit on the Elephant page, about a sudden increase in numbers, and it got reverted! Everytime! Well, that ends my experience of editing with Wikipedia, I don't know why I bother! And obviously therefore no one else will, and Wikipedia is doomed."
The funny thing is, elsewhere on this artice will be people bitching about "Well I left Wikipedia, I got fed up of people coming in an making changes to articles, without discussing with people or following basic guidelines". I'm not saying you're in the wrong, I'm just saying there's no right answer here, and the fault is not with "Wikipedia" as an entity.
The fallacy is referring to "Wikipedia" as if it was some single entity. The problem is between the editors - and when you edit, that includes you. There's no you-and-them, as the them may well be other people who are complaining about "Wikipedia", when by "Wikipedia" they actually mean their experience with you.
The only plausible time when a them-and-us argument is valid is when discussing Wikipedia admins (who are granted special privileges). But this doesn't apply to editors. You were an editor, and are just as much a target of Wikipedia criticism as any other editor.
The bottom line is that when you have a massive collaboration between people online who don't even know each other, there are going to be disagreements. Unfortunately, rather than debate it with each other, sometimes both sides of an argument will take it out on "Wikipedia", each of them referring to the other side's view as wrong, and an example of how doomed Wikipedia is.
Thankfully, criticisms on Slashdot comments or in the tabloids don't change the fact that out of this collabaration, we nonetheless actually have a resultant free encyclopedia that's pretty damn good.
The point being, there's no automated way to do this, in order come up with statistics about the site.
An anecdote of "Well I stopped editing in 2004, and so did some people I know" may make for interesting discussion, but doesn't tell us anything useful about trends in Wikipedia editing as a whole, and certainly doesn't support the recent story.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one of Slashdot's blindspots - where the usual thought out points go out of the window in the groupthink, and mod points are dished out purely on who can criticise Wikipedia, for whatever reason, be it a personal bad experience of editing there, or some axe to grind against its policies.
As opposed to simply reeling off ad hominems, and attacking his writing strategy rather than his argument?
He didn't say "it ain't so". RTFA. In fact, it doesn't even dispute it even though that's presumably the intent, it simply talks of looking further into the figures.
The first two things listed may not be directly related to the number of editors - but that's the point! "Number of editors leaving" is a rather meaningless figure. You have to look at the whole picture, which is what he's doing. And the second one is related - they're still getting new articles, so there's yet to be any problem.
The third one is directly related.
He then goes in depth in discussing the alleged claims of the 49,000 figure.
Am I reading the same article as you?
It's curious watching how the mod points work - I get modded up, but then a load of mod points evidently get dished out to an Apple fan who, rather than debate facts, is incapable of that, and mods down anything that disagrees with his pro-Apple worldview.
When will Slashdot return to distributing mod points fairly (I haven't had any in years), instead of giving loads of points to a small handful of people?
Asking fair questions is not a troll. Similarly for my other posts, talking on-topic is not off-topic. Whoever did this should be the one to lose mod points.
In which case, that should be the argument against this news story, not the idea of jail breaking.
Be fair now - they couldn't find anything else for today's daily Iphone Slashvertisement, so they had to run with this.
PS - as for your other comment, I remember on other stories how people were insisting that Iphones ran OS X... Obviously it does when it's something to brag about, and it doesn't when it's a problem, I guess.
Everytime someone wants to do something all other phones can do (run any app, or use as a modem), it's: "Doesn't matter, you can just jailbreak it".
Everytime someone points out a gaping security issue, it's: "Who cares, only applies to jailbroken phones".
Which is it?
That would be the bandwidth hogs who are paying the highest rates for the fastest connection?
And if Virgin Media are implementing this invasive system because their business model is so broken that they can't provide the service that people are paying them for, I think that says all we need to know.
I'm on cable, but my "20Mb" connection is still stuck at 4Mb, according to all the tests I've done :/
Indeed - it's a bit annoying that any posts about the UK have to turn into a US vs UK match, as if it was some kind of competition (if it's a competition, it's one where citizens in both countries lose!)
All we need is someone to pipe up and say that if only we had guns in the UK, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
I want 1005 accuracy. I don't want 2+2 = 3.9999999999882 on average after 100 runs, then having it fail every time when I do an if(2+2) == 4).
Sure, I could use a delta, and then make sure it's under that, but then you have the accumulation of errors and tolerances.
I take it you've never done programming, or not with floating points, anyway. Because that's exactly how it is, already.
All the "But I wouldn't buy it anyway" people are full of shit. Lets say nobody was able to pirate Windows tomorrow. According to that deranged logic, all of those people will switch to switch to Linux/BSD/OSX/etc since they weren't going to buy it anyway.
You fail at basic logic. Firstly not everyone says "But I wouldn't buy it anyway". Secondly, even if that was true, your claim only shows that some of them are lying, not all of them.
If it was impossible to pirate Windows, then I bet that at least some people would switch to alternatives cheaper than buying Windows.
As for the rest of your post, last time I looked, if sales dropped, the record industry don't give more - they simply blame it on piracy.
1. Mention how you can access the Apple Store website On Your Iphone. That's a guaranteed way to get a story.
2. Include a token reference to Android, portraying them as the sole competition in the mobile market, so you can make Apple look better.
3. Not include the link to Apple. If you want to make wild claims about Apple and the Iphone, remember these are best done without a single citation.
Personally I'd say that this story is vaguely notable for once, due to it covering the Newton. But sadly I suspect it only made the front page because of the magic "Iphone" reference.
And sure enough, just after I post about how people here seem to have no idea of the phone market, one comes along:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was something coming out of MS, Verizon, Dell, or the likes that was interesting
Well, what about all of the interesting phones that are coming from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola etc? Virtually zero coverage, it's been that way for years - so yes, I'm correcting you that you are wrong :)
Unless for some reason, there's something special about MS, Verizon, Dell and Apple that they deserve coverage, but not the existing phone companies?
As for viral, I don't think he's suggesting that it's planted by Apple shills - personally I don't, but the point is that Apple are very good at getting other companies and individuals to give them free advertising and hype. No shills needed.
Hear hear. (And actually, I'm surprised that there's only one today, for once.)
It's particularly odd, given the small market share of the Iphone. If it was the Ipod, sure, I could understand - the largest in that market. Hell, even Macs have a larger market share, yet there are only occasional stories about them. But for the Iphone, there are quite literally daily stories - with virtually zero coverage of any of the other mobile phone companies (e.g., Nokia, who have about 40% of the market).
And the viral marketing works. I thought this was a place for people to be knowledgable about technology, but there are people who seriously believe that Apple sell more phones than anyone else (or even that they are in the majority - more than everyone else put together). They actually believe that the Iphone is the only phone, or the first phone, that can do things such as accessing the Internet. They still think that most phones in the market are still using WAP - something that was around 10 years ago.
Oh but occasionally we get stories about Blackberry and Android - also minor players - so I don't know what the logic is. Although coverage of Blackberry and Android seems mainly so they can be presented as token competition ("Look, the Iphone is better than them, or was before them", whilst pretending that that's all the market consists of.)
Yes, obviously the computers, mp3 players and phones simply didn't work at all before Apple came along.
And mobile web browsing was doing fine, years before. Yes, perhaps Apple was better than what came previous when it was first released, but that's true of all high end products! It's a natural consequence of any market where things get continually better. You can't point at Apple alone, and say "Look, they were (slightly) better than what was there before, therefore Apple are the greatest!", whilst conveniently ignoring every other high end phone in existance, before and after then, that made things better too!
Yes, Apple innovate. Just like every other technology company out there.
When was the last time you checked out the mobile market? Pretty much every phone has large screens, and slim cases, even the dirt cheap ones, without keyboards (and as someone who would prefer an actual keyboard, I find it annoying).
(And before anyone says it was the Iphone that caused this - screens have continually being getting larger since before the Iphone, and it was an obvious progression to what we have now; the Iphone wasn't first with touchscreen AFAIK; and slim cases were around before - e.g., Motorola's RAZR.)
The key to a beating the iPhone
Check out the market share - most companies, such as Nokia and Samsung, are already beating it. Of course I'll probably be modded down for saying so, because debates on Apple stories are won by whoever has mod points (which is never me, incidentally), and not who speaks the facts.
Er, they're not scrambling to catch up on. Or okay, I'll bite - what are they scrambling to catch up? (And before you reply, I want actual features or objective examples, not undefined things like "Well it does it better, it just does", because obviously there's no way we can discuss or measure that.)
Yes, it certainly created a "buzz", but I'm not sure that's anything other than a marketing achievement.
And yes, it's the first phone you've done things with, but you make the classic fallacy (common in "my OS/etc is best" geek arguments) of assuming that everyone's experience is the same. For me, the first phone that I used for Internet access and apps was the Motorola V980 phone. But I don't assume that therefore there's something special about it - I'm knowledgable about the actual reality and history of the mobile market. I don't demand three articles a day on Slashdot about the almighty Motorola V980. (And I'm not sure that the Iphone application technology is anything innovative - doesn't support cross-platform technology such as Java, only runs Apple approved applications, and can't multitask them.)
and it has taken an astounding share of that usage compared to it's market share
Citation needed?
made it a best seller
Citation needed. Because the stats I've seen don't show Apple as the best seller - Nokia are still dominant, followed by Samsung, then a load of other companies. And the RIM. Oh, and then Apple.
As for what you say - yes, when the Iphone came out, it was doing things better than phones previously. But that's true of just about all high end phones! It's called progress. When Opera Mobile (and Mini) appeared, they were better than things previously. And immediately after the Iphone, other phones from other companies continued to improve technology. That's the point - there's nothing special about the Iphone, apart from being one in a long line of high end phones from various companies. But for some reason, even years later, all we hear is Iphone Iphone Iphone, and never about any of the interesting developments from major players like Nokia.
But by this logic, almost every phone on the market multitasks - e.g., my phone's built in mp3 player can run at the same time as the built in email client.
The point is that it doesn't run more than one third party application at once (which really means it's a feature phone, not a smartphone - unless you use the broader definition of smartphone that would also include all feature phones). For years, when people talked about multitasking on phones, this is what they meant - it's only with the Iphone that suddenly the terms have to be used differently, to hide the things it doesn't do, and pretend it's a "smartphone"...