Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Well-known & overlooked Wikipedia essays
Everyone who studies the phenomenon of Wikipedia knows about Raul's Laws. Everyone who writes about Wikipedia quotes from them as if they are the authoritative commentary on how Wikipedia works, something I noticed as I read Joseph Reagle's Good Faith Collaboration. Many of the chapters in his book begin with a headnote drawn from this collection.
It is well-known because it was the first collection of observations compiled, & a number of other Wikipedians contributed their own "Laws". So one could conclude that it this collection of essays is an authoritative statement on Wikipedia.
But I consider anyone who cites "Raul's Laws" guilty of considering only one vision of Wikipedia. There are other, IMHO more insightful, personal essays. One alternative I consider the counterpoint to Raul's Laws is Antandrus' observations on Wikipedia behavior. Where Raul's Laws is full of statements added by people eager to be part of the spotlight (& yes, that comment could be applied to me), & for that reason this collection often appears flashy & superficial, I often think of Antandrus' list as quiet & profound. One goes to Raul's Laws to add a witty comment for others to see; one goes to Antandrus' list to read & wonder if anyone else has seen it.
I don't have any desire to criticize Raul's list; there are a number of valid insights there. I simply believe that Antandrus' list is too easily overlooked by people -- both pundits & Wikipedians -- who want to understand what is going on there. Often something is better explained in the latter's list than in the former's.
I am often amazed at how many essays on Wikipedia can be found in the personal spaces of many users, many yielding far more insight than those in the public "Wikipedia" name space. Wikipedians often are reluctant to put their essays in public spaces because then they will lose control over what is often a personal reflection on their own experiences. Unfortunately this means the best writing on & about Wikipedia is the hardest to find.
Geoff
It is well-known because it was the first collection of observations compiled, & a number of other Wikipedians contributed their own "Laws". So one could conclude that it this collection of essays is an authoritative statement on Wikipedia.
But I consider anyone who cites "Raul's Laws" guilty of considering only one vision of Wikipedia. There are other, IMHO more insightful, personal essays. One alternative I consider the counterpoint to Raul's Laws is Antandrus' observations on Wikipedia behavior. Where Raul's Laws is full of statements added by people eager to be part of the spotlight (& yes, that comment could be applied to me), & for that reason this collection often appears flashy & superficial, I often think of Antandrus' list as quiet & profound. One goes to Raul's Laws to add a witty comment for others to see; one goes to Antandrus' list to read & wonder if anyone else has seen it.
I don't have any desire to criticize Raul's list; there are a number of valid insights there. I simply believe that Antandrus' list is too easily overlooked by people -- both pundits & Wikipedians -- who want to understand what is going on there. Often something is better explained in the latter's list than in the former's.
I am often amazed at how many essays on Wikipedia can be found in the personal spaces of many users, many yielding far more insight than those in the public "Wikipedia" name space. Wikipedians often are reluctant to put their essays in public spaces because then they will lose control over what is often a personal reflection on their own experiences. Unfortunately this means the best writing on & about Wikipedia is the hardest to find.
Geoff
Friday, October 01, 2010
To make something, it helps to know what it is
Instead of doing something productive like folding clothes or writing Wikipedia articles, I spent a slice of my free time this afternoon looking at the links in the Navibox of Essays on building Wikipedia. It links to a number of interesting essays; not "interesting" in the sense of encouraging me to be a better writer of Wikipedia articles, but "interesting" in the sense of making me wonder about the mindset of my fellow editors.
Take, for example, this passage from the essay "Wikipedia:Bare notability", concerning research from non-web sources:
The first thing I thought when I read that second sentence was, "But it must be true: I read it on the Internet." In a sarcastic tone, of course.
Of course, I changed it. My version might be considered too harsh, and might be severely rewritten by the time anyone reads this, but dammit when did it become common knowledge that the resources of your local library was always a poor second to the results of a Google search?
I wish my concerns ended there. I read a few more essays, some better thought-through than this one, until I found myself looking for a specific one, which was not there: How to research and write an article for Wikipedia. Actually, after "Wikipedia:Bare notability", I'd be happy to find an essay on only how to research an article; but essays on both would be useful.
My first thought was to consult my copy of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research papers, sixth edition, and use that to fill the need. The MLA Handbook has a useful chapter at the front on how to research and write a research paper, and after all the average Wikipedia article is a research paper. But after reading the first five pages of that book I had to put that idea aside, partly because to use it as an authority I'd have to deal with the author's assumption that a good research paper will include an idea or interpretation which has not been expressed before -- which violates Wikipedia's policy on no original research -- and explaining that away would effectively negate the MLA Handbook's value as an authority. (BTW, the major reason I had to put the book aside was that I had to get my daughter Rachel to lie back down to her nap. The joys of children!)
More importantly, I believe we would not have many of the problems over content had a definition over what is an encyclopedia. Instead we have Jimmy Wales' assertion, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." So instead of creating an encyclopedia, an introduction to a subject with clues to learn more about it, we have a website with the authoritative statement on practically every conceivable subject, which means a great many people have a vested interest in what it says. Not only topics about which people have killed and died over (like Israel and Palestine), or people have argued about for centuries (like any religious belief or creed), but even something like the aorist conjugation.
But this is an understandable oversight: in the early days of Wikipedia, everyone involved knew what an encyclopedia was, and knew what a satisfactory encyclopedia article should look like. However with the passing years the community around Wikipedia has changed, and I can't help but suspect a large number of Wikipedians have never seen an actual encyclopedia in book form. They have an unrealistic assumption of an encyclopedia, which is often far more serious or stodgy than the ones I used in high school were. So that horse has escaped the barn long before anyone could close the door.
But at the least, could someone write an essay on how to research a subject for an article? It would benefit both Wikipedia's reputation for reliability, as well as the new contributor who might not know about the resources available, both online and off. I would write that essay, but on one hand I suspect my reputation on Wikipedia has suffered greatly and on the other my own interest in the project has likewise suffered greatly.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Wikipedia, writing
Take, for example, this passage from the essay "Wikipedia:Bare notability", concerning research from non-web sources:
Look off the web: Visiting your local library may help. But sources found on the web are more likely to be trusted than those that are not simply because they are accessible to more people. So if an off-web source is used, try to make it as detailed as possible to increase the chances of verifiability.
The first thing I thought when I read that second sentence was, "But it must be true: I read it on the Internet." In a sarcastic tone, of course.
Of course, I changed it. My version might be considered too harsh, and might be severely rewritten by the time anyone reads this, but dammit when did it become common knowledge that the resources of your local library was always a poor second to the results of a Google search?
I wish my concerns ended there. I read a few more essays, some better thought-through than this one, until I found myself looking for a specific one, which was not there: How to research and write an article for Wikipedia. Actually, after "Wikipedia:Bare notability", I'd be happy to find an essay on only how to research an article; but essays on both would be useful.
My first thought was to consult my copy of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research papers, sixth edition, and use that to fill the need. The MLA Handbook has a useful chapter at the front on how to research and write a research paper, and after all the average Wikipedia article is a research paper. But after reading the first five pages of that book I had to put that idea aside, partly because to use it as an authority I'd have to deal with the author's assumption that a good research paper will include an idea or interpretation which has not been expressed before -- which violates Wikipedia's policy on no original research -- and explaining that away would effectively negate the MLA Handbook's value as an authority. (BTW, the major reason I had to put the book aside was that I had to get my daughter Rachel to lie back down to her nap. The joys of children!)
More importantly, I believe we would not have many of the problems over content had a definition over what is an encyclopedia. Instead we have Jimmy Wales' assertion, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." So instead of creating an encyclopedia, an introduction to a subject with clues to learn more about it, we have a website with the authoritative statement on practically every conceivable subject, which means a great many people have a vested interest in what it says. Not only topics about which people have killed and died over (like Israel and Palestine), or people have argued about for centuries (like any religious belief or creed), but even something like the aorist conjugation.
But this is an understandable oversight: in the early days of Wikipedia, everyone involved knew what an encyclopedia was, and knew what a satisfactory encyclopedia article should look like. However with the passing years the community around Wikipedia has changed, and I can't help but suspect a large number of Wikipedians have never seen an actual encyclopedia in book form. They have an unrealistic assumption of an encyclopedia, which is often far more serious or stodgy than the ones I used in high school were. So that horse has escaped the barn long before anyone could close the door.
But at the least, could someone write an essay on how to research a subject for an article? It would benefit both Wikipedia's reputation for reliability, as well as the new contributor who might not know about the resources available, both online and off. I would write that essay, but on one hand I suspect my reputation on Wikipedia has suffered greatly and on the other my own interest in the project has likewise suffered greatly.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Wikipedia, writing
Labels: encyclopedias, research, speculations, wikipedia, writing
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
A thought for spring
The liberal arts is a struggle. It is the unending, yet inevitably unsuccessful, rearguard struggle against ignorance and oblivion. Every day new people are born, who eventually learn to talk, to read, to think. Unless we share with them our experiences, our wisdom & histories, they will never know them. But we cannot share all of these with those who come after us, so every day as someone dies, another battle is lost.
That is why I tell myself I contribute to Wikipedia.
It is one way to transfer what has been preserved in print into the electronic medium, where hopefully this material will continue to survive, & be found & used by those who are not yet alive. However, not all of this material will make the transition; the majority of what has been written has not made the jump into print, & the majority of what has been said, let alone experienced, has likewise failed to make the jump into a more permanent form.
So the best we can do is to keep the number of defeats to a manageable number, & hope that those who are not yet alive will join in this unending, demoralizing rearguard struggle. For if we concede this struggle, the result will be worse than the current status.
Geoff
That is why I tell myself I contribute to Wikipedia.
It is one way to transfer what has been preserved in print into the electronic medium, where hopefully this material will continue to survive, & be found & used by those who are not yet alive. However, not all of this material will make the transition; the majority of what has been written has not made the jump into print, & the majority of what has been said, let alone experienced, has likewise failed to make the jump into a more permanent form.
So the best we can do is to keep the number of defeats to a manageable number, & hope that those who are not yet alive will join in this unending, demoralizing rearguard struggle. For if we concede this struggle, the result will be worse than the current status.
Geoff
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Thursday, December 11, 2008
After much time
I left a comment on the Talk page to Wikipedia:Don't Feed the Divas, which expresses something that I've been trying to say in a way that didn't sound to me as if I were simply whining. I don't know how many people read that page, so I thought I would reprint it here -- in case anyone is still monitoring my blog.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online information, wikipedia
Geoff
Reading this essay, I wondered if it applied to me; after all, a few months back I grew angry over how I was being treated, threw a fit & went on a Wikibreak. However considering my experience carefully, I saw that it actually didn't. First, anyone who has contributed to Wikipedia for more than a few months will agree that there are some unpleasant people here that make the experience unpleasant: cranks & ruleswankers, for example. Then there is the matter that the most active Wikipedian remains a stranger to the vast majority of other active contributors: we have little or no ability to build up an informal reputation here, even as far as to alert our peers that one is not just another newbie. As a result, as much as any of us -- okay, as much as I would like to receive lots of praise & validation that I'm an important member of Wikipedia, most of the time I'm by far happier if the rest of you just leave me alone to work on my own little corner. I don't want any praise, just a reasonable amount of civility & the assumptoin that I usually know what I'm doing.
Next, my motivations didn't quite match those described in this essay. I had decided to leave for a while first -- yes, in part to see if anyone noticed, but also because I was growing angry with certain users & knew that if I did take a break I might do something I would later regret. But no one noticed; we all think we're more important than we really are & it sucks when we learn the truth. I was about to accept this humbling discovery & move on with my life when, glancing thru the usual places in an admittedly self-centered quest for validation, I found Yet Another thread about a certain borderline contributor. Now that ticked me off & I threw a tantrum, which got me attention, sadly. And I still wonder why the only way I could get any attention was by being unreasonable.
Lastly, I have been troubled by a phenomenon of Wikipedia which has continued for a long time, several years in fact: the steady loss of experienced members. Almost all of the people who made Wikipedia work when I started here back in late 2002 have gone, & I wonder why that is. These people are our institutional history, the ones with experience in the ways of Wikipedia who can prevent us from repeating mistakes. Most of them have gone & the few who haven't operate under the radar, more interested in being left alone to edit articles than to share their experience with newer Wikipedians. It's as if being a Wikipedian means you contribute until you eventually burn out, then either blow up like a supernova or simply fade away like a dimming white dwarf. Neither is a worthy ending for so many altruistic contributions to an important project.
Technocrati tags: online information, wikipedia
Labels: blogging, wikipedia, writing
Friday, February 08, 2008
Piecemeal updates
I've been busy with many things that keep me away from my computer, as well as this blog, so I'm way behind in updating anyone who is still reading. But let me provide a paragraph or two on the most important things.
1. At the age of fifty, I've become a father for the first time. Which is the primary reason why I haven't written any new posts. We adopted Rachel Kendra Claire, to give her the name we selected; her birth mother named her Rachel Lynn. She was born Friday at 5:02 am; we got to take her home Sunday afternoon, and I took the next three days off work to be with my girls. I plan on taking a month off to help in the child-raising when Yvette's stock of vacation time has run out.
To anticipate the next question, you can find pictures of her at burling.myphotoalbum.com. And one of those pictures leads to the next item.
2. First impressions on John Broughton's book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. My review copy arrived Monday, and in the time between changing diapers, feeding Rachel et cetera, I managed to glance through the first two hundred pages. Although I have some criticisms of the book, overall it is a solid and comprehensive look at not only the technology one uses to edit Wikipedia, but also a levelheaded discussion of the community and how to work with it. Not only would newcomers benefit from reading it, but I believe that veterans like me would be served by keeping it nearby to help with the numerous policies, fora and nifty software tools of Wikipedia.
3. I became a member of the Working Group on ethnic and cultural edit wars . One of the chronic problems of Wikipedia has been to handle the nationalistic rivalries that arise from having both an encyclopedia that is open to all and from following the Neutral Point of View policy. One of my other members is Milos Rancic, with whom I have had many thoughtful discussions on this issue, and I look forward to seeing his input on many more. (A recent example is his post on art and ethnic strife.)
One of my hopes, besides reaching out to some of the members of WikiProject Africa, is to post a number of my position papers here, in hope of attracting more input -- or perhaps to explain some of the Working Group's ideals.
Last Wednesday was WikiWednesday, which brings me to my last two points:
4. Pete Forsyth's vision of WikiGovernment. He presented this vision of using Wiki technology to improve popular representation Wednesday night, and although there are many weaknesses, I stand by the first comment I made that night: almost any problem one could envision for this project has been encountered by Wikipedia. In many cases these problems were handled successfully, and in many cases they were handled poorly -- yet studying what Wikipedia did would be the first step to address the problem when it appears in Pete's project.
5. A new map of the World Wide Web Joe Cohen brought a schematic map created by Information Architects, showing the most important Web sites, and based on the Tokyo subway map. Maps always attract my attention, but I could not take mine off of this one. (A more recent one can be seen here).
Geoff
Technocrati tags: John Broughton, online communities, O'Reilly, Portland Tech, wikipedia
1. At the age of fifty, I've become a father for the first time. Which is the primary reason why I haven't written any new posts. We adopted Rachel Kendra Claire, to give her the name we selected; her birth mother named her Rachel Lynn. She was born Friday at 5:02 am; we got to take her home Sunday afternoon, and I took the next three days off work to be with my girls. I plan on taking a month off to help in the child-raising when Yvette's stock of vacation time has run out.
To anticipate the next question, you can find pictures of her at burling.myphotoalbum.com. And one of those pictures leads to the next item.
2. First impressions on John Broughton's book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. My review copy arrived Monday, and in the time between changing diapers, feeding Rachel et cetera, I managed to glance through the first two hundred pages. Although I have some criticisms of the book, overall it is a solid and comprehensive look at not only the technology one uses to edit Wikipedia, but also a levelheaded discussion of the community and how to work with it. Not only would newcomers benefit from reading it, but I believe that veterans like me would be served by keeping it nearby to help with the numerous policies, fora and nifty software tools of Wikipedia.
3. I became a member of the Working Group on ethnic and cultural edit wars . One of the chronic problems of Wikipedia has been to handle the nationalistic rivalries that arise from having both an encyclopedia that is open to all and from following the Neutral Point of View policy. One of my other members is Milos Rancic, with whom I have had many thoughtful discussions on this issue, and I look forward to seeing his input on many more. (A recent example is his post on art and ethnic strife.)
One of my hopes, besides reaching out to some of the members of WikiProject Africa, is to post a number of my position papers here, in hope of attracting more input -- or perhaps to explain some of the Working Group's ideals.
Last Wednesday was WikiWednesday, which brings me to my last two points:
4. Pete Forsyth's vision of WikiGovernment. He presented this vision of using Wiki technology to improve popular representation Wednesday night, and although there are many weaknesses, I stand by the first comment I made that night: almost any problem one could envision for this project has been encountered by Wikipedia. In many cases these problems were handled successfully, and in many cases they were handled poorly -- yet studying what Wikipedia did would be the first step to address the problem when it appears in Pete's project.
5. A new map of the World Wide Web Joe Cohen brought a schematic map created by Information Architects, showing the most important Web sites, and based on the Tokyo subway map. Maps always attract my attention, but I could not take mine off of this one. (A more recent one can be seen here).
Geoff
Technocrati tags: John Broughton, online communities, O'Reilly, Portland Tech, wikipedia
Labels: free culture, personal, portland tech, wikipedia, writing
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Is Wikipedia Losing its Potential?
It's a familiar story, maybe bordering a little on urban legend: parents go out of town for the weekend, leaving their teenage son at home. Free of parential oversight, he throws a party and invites everyone he knows and more, and trashes the house. Then the parents come home.
In essence, this is why the case of Corey Delaney is notable, and worth a mention in Wikipedia. What many 15-year-old boys talk about doing, what their parents fear they might do, and what has become the plot of countless movies and television episodes, Delaney did. And it was a blow-out of a party: according to one source, this young Australian threw a party that attracted as many as 500 people, and required a platoon of police, supported by dogs and a helicopter to break it up. For a while, he was on the run from not only the authorities, who wanted to serve him with a bill for the damages, but an even more intimidating nemesis: his parents.
When I was his age, over here in the US, my wildest dream was getting my hands on a six-pack of beer and a cute girl to drink it with. As irresponsible as it is to say this, part of me admires him -- even though he looks like an ersatz pimp in his oversized sunglasses and unbuttoned shirt.
Yes, someone created an article about him in Wikipedia. And yes, the article was deleted, someone insisted that the discussion for deletion should be hidden (after all, Delaney is a minor), and the deletion argument continued to deletion review. (For those not in the know about Wikipedia culture, this is a process that, in some ways, is more like asking your dad for something after your mother has said no than appealing a judge's decision to a higher court.)
I didn't get involved in this argument, in part because I discovered it long after the battlelines had hardened and it was clear that the article would stay gone, but also in part because the battlelines over this notable event had been drawn far differently than they should have been. What is notable about this incident is not Corey Delaney himself -- but the wild party itself. In my, perhaps twisted, opinion the story would have been just as notable had this party been thrown by Delaney's best friend -- or the nerdiest guy in their high school class. However when people heard about this incident, their response was to create a new article about Delaney -- who might change his ways, and decide not to continue the path of being famous because he's well-known, and instead become something less notable like a fireman, an investment fund manager, a Microsoft employee, or a Wikipedia editor.
Instead, this was an incident that should have been added to an existing article. There, the entire matter could have been covered in a few sentences, properly sourced, handled and forgotten. (Maybe I'll make that very edit in a few months -- if I remember to.) These kinds of wild, teenager-created parties do happen; I remember reading how these kinds of parties were a chronic nuisence in the Hamburg, Germany area in a German newsmagazine. Further, many years from now when someone, who remembers that this incident did make the news, and wants to now more, the first place she or he will start looking will not be under this kid's name, but under something more generic, like "party".
But there's a more troubling problem here than just a fight over whether we should have an article. It is an amazing lack of imagination, a quality which continues to grow. In some ways, our choice of new articles -- and their treatment -- on Wikipedia betrays a very conservative approach to possible topics. Instead of organizing information in new and intellectually stimulating ways, Wikipedians are instead modeling their approach in the ways most familiar and accessible to them. Jimbo Wales made a call over a year ago to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles; for many, this apparently means making Wikipedia more like a circa-1955 version of Encyclopedia Britannica than the Encyclopedia Britannica!
Not to say that I have surpassed this race towards mediocrity: almost all of the new articles I have recently created are about settlements -- villages and towns -- in Ethiopia. One could say that I'm not writing an encyclopedia, but a gazetteer; I have the notes for writing an account about a religious dispute of the Ethiopian church, a subject I doubt exists anywhere else online or in print. And writing that article and making it available for free to everyone, would doubtlessly encourage someone who is an expert -- in other words, someone who knows something about the subject -- to write a better account.
The last is just a thought I have when I wonder what I should be working on for Wikipedia.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Corey Delaney, Free culture, Wikipedia, Writing,
In essence, this is why the case of Corey Delaney is notable, and worth a mention in Wikipedia. What many 15-year-old boys talk about doing, what their parents fear they might do, and what has become the plot of countless movies and television episodes, Delaney did. And it was a blow-out of a party: according to one source, this young Australian threw a party that attracted as many as 500 people, and required a platoon of police, supported by dogs and a helicopter to break it up. For a while, he was on the run from not only the authorities, who wanted to serve him with a bill for the damages, but an even more intimidating nemesis: his parents.
When I was his age, over here in the US, my wildest dream was getting my hands on a six-pack of beer and a cute girl to drink it with. As irresponsible as it is to say this, part of me admires him -- even though he looks like an ersatz pimp in his oversized sunglasses and unbuttoned shirt.
Yes, someone created an article about him in Wikipedia. And yes, the article was deleted, someone insisted that the discussion for deletion should be hidden (after all, Delaney is a minor), and the deletion argument continued to deletion review. (For those not in the know about Wikipedia culture, this is a process that, in some ways, is more like asking your dad for something after your mother has said no than appealing a judge's decision to a higher court.)
I didn't get involved in this argument, in part because I discovered it long after the battlelines had hardened and it was clear that the article would stay gone, but also in part because the battlelines over this notable event had been drawn far differently than they should have been. What is notable about this incident is not Corey Delaney himself -- but the wild party itself. In my, perhaps twisted, opinion the story would have been just as notable had this party been thrown by Delaney's best friend -- or the nerdiest guy in their high school class. However when people heard about this incident, their response was to create a new article about Delaney -- who might change his ways, and decide not to continue the path of being famous because he's well-known, and instead become something less notable like a fireman, an investment fund manager, a Microsoft employee, or a Wikipedia editor.
Instead, this was an incident that should have been added to an existing article. There, the entire matter could have been covered in a few sentences, properly sourced, handled and forgotten. (Maybe I'll make that very edit in a few months -- if I remember to.) These kinds of wild, teenager-created parties do happen; I remember reading how these kinds of parties were a chronic nuisence in the Hamburg, Germany area in a German newsmagazine. Further, many years from now when someone, who remembers that this incident did make the news, and wants to now more, the first place she or he will start looking will not be under this kid's name, but under something more generic, like "party".
But there's a more troubling problem here than just a fight over whether we should have an article. It is an amazing lack of imagination, a quality which continues to grow. In some ways, our choice of new articles -- and their treatment -- on Wikipedia betrays a very conservative approach to possible topics. Instead of organizing information in new and intellectually stimulating ways, Wikipedians are instead modeling their approach in the ways most familiar and accessible to them. Jimbo Wales made a call over a year ago to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles; for many, this apparently means making Wikipedia more like a circa-1955 version of Encyclopedia Britannica than the Encyclopedia Britannica!
Not to say that I have surpassed this race towards mediocrity: almost all of the new articles I have recently created are about settlements -- villages and towns -- in Ethiopia. One could say that I'm not writing an encyclopedia, but a gazetteer; I have the notes for writing an account about a religious dispute of the Ethiopian church, a subject I doubt exists anywhere else online or in print. And writing that article and making it available for free to everyone, would doubtlessly encourage someone who is an expert -- in other words, someone who knows something about the subject -- to write a better account.
The last is just a thought I have when I wonder what I should be working on for Wikipedia.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Corey Delaney, Free culture, Wikipedia, Writing,
Labels: free culture, speculations, wikipedia, writing
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Another frontier for Free Culture to tame
The new forum WikBack, where a number of Wikipedia/Wikimedia regulars are meeting, so far has proven to have a very favorable message-to-noise ratio. One of the jems here is UninvitedCompany's post on the proprietary stranglehold on sheet music, which I quote in total below. (Thread here)
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Free culture, music, online communities, Wikback, wikipedia
Geoff
One of the last frontiers of the open content movement is sheet music, that is, the written form of music that is part of the western musical tradition from roughly the 15th century to today.
Musicians and musicologists have long been the captive of specialized publishing houses who produce sheet music. Initially, that was because of the difficult and specialized skill required to prepare musical works for printing. In current times, proliferation of open content is hindered mainly by the relatively small audience (most people cannot read music) and the difficulty of transcribing music into a grammar which software music typesetting programs can read.
The most successful project still operating is Mutopia, which has a small (1000 or so items), fragmented library of pieces hand-typeset from public domain scores using the Lilypond software, which is open source.
Project Gutenberg, primarily a text-based project, includes a handful of scores in its collection. Progress there is limited by the lack of support for music notation in the Distributed Proofreaders project that serves as the source for nearly all new PG material.
Until recently, a project that aimed to collect and organize high-resolution scans of public-domain sheet music (http://imslp.org) was shut down after receiving copyright complaints from a publisher. The site has been off-line for approximately two months, and while discussion is reportedly under way regarding rehosting the site, no visible progress has been made.
The copyright complaints appear to me and to many observers to be without merit, and involve the web site (which is based in Canada) providing material that is still in copyright in Austria and a few other countries where copyright terms are unusually lengthy.
The IMSLP story is an example of the lengths to which the music publishing industry is willing to go to undermine free alternatives. Over half the volume of sheet music sales in the U.S. are low-end educational materials aimed primarily at teachers and the beginners they serve. These materials are inexpensive, and most are recently written and still under copyright.
The remainder is purchased by churches, performing groups, individual musicians, and teachers who work at college or university levels. These works, by and large, were composed prior to 1910, and music publishers have used a combination of semi-legitimate copyright and scare tactics to prevent an open content market from developing. Since the works themselves are no longer subject to copyright, publishers produce new "editions" which incorporate fingerings, interpretive notes, or graphic design purportedly under copyright. At the same time, industry groups have carried out a "copying is stealing" campaign, and place draconian notices on publications stating that any copying for any reason is a crime (despite the fact that this is frequently not the case).
The legal attack on IMSLP is part of this coordinated effort.
Progress on projects like Mutopia is hindered by the lack of a common grammar for transcription of music scores. Music is traditionally written in a freeform, two-dimensional, position-dependent format. Efforts to come up with a standard machine-readable format for music, like MusicXML, have not received widespread support. The best available formats are specific to individual music typesetting programs, be they commercial or open source. Matters are further complicated by the fact that no format has proven enduring -- both the open source and commercial products routinely invalidate older input when new software versions are released.
Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons sheet music content is limited to a handful of sample scores, due in part to a lack of editing support for music in MediaWiki.
The questions then are these:
- What is the way forward on sheet music for the open content community
- Should the WikiMedia foundation start a new project or otherwise provide support for the fledgling open-content sheet music community?
- What technical initiatives make sense given the fragmented and difficult tools landscape?
Technocrati tags: Free culture, music, online communities, Wikback, wikipedia
Labels: free culture, wikimedia, wikipedia, writing
Monday, December 31, 2007
Midway in Life
Saturday was my 50th birthday, and I celabrated it in a number of idiosyncratic ways with Yvette -- which included dropping about 100ドル dollars on Lego blocks at the local Lego store. (As a contrast, shortly afterwards we stopped by the Sharper Image store and despite the fact we are both nerds, neither of us found the gadgets currently for sale there worth buying.)
I've procrastinated over writing anything about this milestone event. One reason is that I wanted to say something profound and significant about it, but couldn't. Another is that admitting to my age means acknowledging a number of things, many of which would indicate that I haven't ended up where I thought I would be ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Yesterday I confessed to my friends that years ago I thought I would have a number of books published by now, be an established pundit of some intellectual stature, and be busy mentoring a new generation. Finding that my primary intellectual achievements has been a large number of positive, but certainly not important, contributions to Wikipedia and this blog, I can't help but feel that I've failed to fulfill the potential I know I once had, and my time to do so is now undeniably finite.
It would be easy to dismiss this as mid-life angst. Not everyone can be a Jimbo Wales (to name one example), travelling the world to speak to enthusiastic audiences, which would be a hard thing for any bright, ambitious person to accept; for there to be a top 1%, there has to be a lesser 99% who are denied recognition for their contributions.
However, I have my own achievements to be proud of. For example, many years ago I had a hand in defeating the adoption of UCITA in Oregon, which was a good thing that helped many, many people. And reflecting clearly on my past activities, I have to also acknowledge that many achievements are far more difficult than they might appear at first. I encountered a couple of simple, if not trivial, examples of this last night while working on Wikipedia: I spent a couple of hours integrating content into the article on Bonga, a town in southern Ethiopia, yet appears in the contribution history as only a pair of edits; and hours creating a new article on the Germama River which amounted to less than 1200 bytes. The reason both took so long was that my goal was to contribute usable content, integrated with relevant articles in Wikipedia, rather than simply adding text in a way that improves my editcount statistics, or argues a given opinion on a subject.
This insight does make significant achievements all the more impressive, even if careful research reveals that those achievements were accomplished with little effort. Still, I know I worry more now about how productively I spend time than I did when I was younger; I only hope that this worry does not erode either my sense of humor, or my sense of fun.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: achievements, age, writing
I've procrastinated over writing anything about this milestone event. One reason is that I wanted to say something profound and significant about it, but couldn't. Another is that admitting to my age means acknowledging a number of things, many of which would indicate that I haven't ended up where I thought I would be ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Yesterday I confessed to my friends that years ago I thought I would have a number of books published by now, be an established pundit of some intellectual stature, and be busy mentoring a new generation. Finding that my primary intellectual achievements has been a large number of positive, but certainly not important, contributions to Wikipedia and this blog, I can't help but feel that I've failed to fulfill the potential I know I once had, and my time to do so is now undeniably finite.
It would be easy to dismiss this as mid-life angst. Not everyone can be a Jimbo Wales (to name one example), travelling the world to speak to enthusiastic audiences, which would be a hard thing for any bright, ambitious person to accept; for there to be a top 1%, there has to be a lesser 99% who are denied recognition for their contributions.
However, I have my own achievements to be proud of. For example, many years ago I had a hand in defeating the adoption of UCITA in Oregon, which was a good thing that helped many, many people. And reflecting clearly on my past activities, I have to also acknowledge that many achievements are far more difficult than they might appear at first. I encountered a couple of simple, if not trivial, examples of this last night while working on Wikipedia: I spent a couple of hours integrating content into the article on Bonga, a town in southern Ethiopia, yet appears in the contribution history as only a pair of edits; and hours creating a new article on the Germama River which amounted to less than 1200 bytes. The reason both took so long was that my goal was to contribute usable content, integrated with relevant articles in Wikipedia, rather than simply adding text in a way that improves my editcount statistics, or argues a given opinion on a subject.
This insight does make significant achievements all the more impressive, even if careful research reveals that those achievements were accomplished with little effort. Still, I know I worry more now about how productively I spend time than I did when I was younger; I only hope that this worry does not erode either my sense of humor, or my sense of fun.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: achievements, age, writing
Labels: personal, speculations, writing
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Andrew Lih gets quoted by the press again
Deletionists vs. Inclusionists in back in the news. Simon Pulsifer, one-time champion of having the most edits on Wikipedia, is also quoted. I find it notable that Simon has adopted one of my tactics in dealing with foolish editors; sometimes a quiet, yet persistent approach is the best tactic.
Andrew has been interviewed on this matter once in the past.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Andrew has been interviewed on this matter once in the past.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Thursday, November 29, 2007
When a Wiki doesn't work
Although I am obviously a fan of this kind of software application, the statement "People who want to bring out the best in themselves and their organizations immediately think of Wiki as the best way to collaborate" in this proposed vision statement got me thinking about the flaws in a Wiki. My thinking was based, more or less, on the old precept that "no tool solves all problems", but once I started it was clear to me that this is a question of understanding the problem, evaluating all of the solutions, and determining the best fit -- with the caveat that some unforseen element may overturn this deliberate process and force one to accept a different solution.
There are a number of criteria and concerns I could mention, but I'm limiting myself to just those which I have found to be the most significant. Which are two.
The first is that the distance between author and audience on a Wiki is very close. In other words, the lag time between what a person adds to a Wiki page and any response -- for example, someone deleting or adding to that person's contribution -- is surprisingly short.
Although as an author I like the fact that I can get immediate feedback from an audience over what I have said or written, sometimes this feedback arrives too soon and forces me to respond. Since I'm not as good at thinking on my feet as many people are (actually, not as good as almost anyone), my responses aren't as good as they could be: either I emphasize the wrong points or explain them incorrectly; I get my facts wrong; I lose my temper; or I settle for a quick and unproductive comeback intended just to shut the person up.
I'm not alone in this desire for some amount of lag time: Wikipedia has a chronic problem with edit wars. Someone will add a passage to an article, someone else will read it, disagree, and replace those words with their own. And it continues, blocking the growth or improvement of the article until either one (or both) are blocked from it or (far less commonly, at least as I remember) they discuss their disagreement and come to a consensus.
One could argue that edit wars are a due to a misunderstanding about ownership, but I think the problem is far more subtle. The goal of the Wikipedia project is to create a text, an encyclopedia; however, Wikis best lend themselves to creating conversations. I use this distinction of "text" and "conversation" with care: the first is a product of research, analysis, and creation, all of which require time -- often years -- to produce; the second is a product of two opinions or points of view interacting, which requires a minimum of time or the conversation dies. The point of creating a text is to have a finished, cohesive work, and the dynamics of a conversation work against that: who has not been interrupted in a conversation? This makes one angry, an anger similar to the anger present in most edit wars.
Although I've described these two as opposed to one another, they aren't absolutes, but rather end points of a continuum. Texts range from electronic ones (like email, usenet, webpages) to printed ones (e.g. an article in a magazine or a printed book) which are often, if not always, written in response to an earlier text. This can be seen as a conversation where the responses are separated by years or more; Western philosophy is sometimes described, not entirely as a joke, as an ongoing discussion with the works of Plato, who lived 24 centuries ago -- which makes this a very slow discussion. Further, even in face-to-face discussions, it is not uncommon for one party to pause and research a fact in a reference book or online.
This leads to my second consideration: content on a Wiki is never finished. Some emphasize the positive aspects of this fact: documents on a Wiki never go out of date, because anyone (with the needed permissions, of course) can update them. The problem that a published book has, that it begins to gradually become inaccurate the moment it is printed, is solved with a Wiki!
While this is a good thing, this unfinished quality can also be a drawback. For no matter how much work is done on a Wiki page, it can always be altered -- and sometimes drastically. Content can be replaced with better content -- or with worse; what makes one Wiki page successful can be removed with a careless or badly-considered edit -- or one intended to improve some other aspect of the page. Hence a Wiki is more akin to a conversation, than a collection of texts.
There are ways to deal with this issue. The Wikimedia software, for example, is written to keep copies of earlier versions of the pages in the application -- so nothing is truly lost. Or one can impliment the practice of marking some pages as "stable", "featured" or "finished", and make them more difficult to change. This is simply one of many issues that an adopter needs to think about when considering a Wiki to help with collaboration.
Now I have encountered some people mention that these points make a Wiki a poor application for the business environment, and point to the apparent anarchy that exists around Wikipedia: anyone can -- and does -- edit Wikipedia. How can a Wiki work inside a business? What these people overlook is the power of the community associated with the Wiki application: this community not only nourishes the content on the Wiki, but this community protects it. Look at the countless pages of policy, dispute resolution, and so forth that exist on Wikipedia currently -- there is a great deal of control over the content on Wikipedia; some would say too much. Any successful business already has these controls in place. It currently uses them to encourage its employees to contribute to its profit; if these controls cannot be replicated to monitor edits to a corporate Wiki, then the business is clearly doomed.
Hmm. I started this post by stating that there were two considerations, but find that there are three: how will the collaborative community make use of a Wiki. Some communities will accept it with little or no encouragement; some have already found a way to collaborate without one, and the effort to get this community to accept a Wiki may be a waste of time and resources. After all, why trade in a car that works -- and is owned free and clear -- for this year's model?
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, online collaboration, software, Wikipedia, writing
There are a number of criteria and concerns I could mention, but I'm limiting myself to just those which I have found to be the most significant. Which are two.
The first is that the distance between author and audience on a Wiki is very close. In other words, the lag time between what a person adds to a Wiki page and any response -- for example, someone deleting or adding to that person's contribution -- is surprisingly short.
Although as an author I like the fact that I can get immediate feedback from an audience over what I have said or written, sometimes this feedback arrives too soon and forces me to respond. Since I'm not as good at thinking on my feet as many people are (actually, not as good as almost anyone), my responses aren't as good as they could be: either I emphasize the wrong points or explain them incorrectly; I get my facts wrong; I lose my temper; or I settle for a quick and unproductive comeback intended just to shut the person up.
I'm not alone in this desire for some amount of lag time: Wikipedia has a chronic problem with edit wars. Someone will add a passage to an article, someone else will read it, disagree, and replace those words with their own. And it continues, blocking the growth or improvement of the article until either one (or both) are blocked from it or (far less commonly, at least as I remember) they discuss their disagreement and come to a consensus.
One could argue that edit wars are a due to a misunderstanding about ownership, but I think the problem is far more subtle. The goal of the Wikipedia project is to create a text, an encyclopedia; however, Wikis best lend themselves to creating conversations. I use this distinction of "text" and "conversation" with care: the first is a product of research, analysis, and creation, all of which require time -- often years -- to produce; the second is a product of two opinions or points of view interacting, which requires a minimum of time or the conversation dies. The point of creating a text is to have a finished, cohesive work, and the dynamics of a conversation work against that: who has not been interrupted in a conversation? This makes one angry, an anger similar to the anger present in most edit wars.
Although I've described these two as opposed to one another, they aren't absolutes, but rather end points of a continuum. Texts range from electronic ones (like email, usenet, webpages) to printed ones (e.g. an article in a magazine or a printed book) which are often, if not always, written in response to an earlier text. This can be seen as a conversation where the responses are separated by years or more; Western philosophy is sometimes described, not entirely as a joke, as an ongoing discussion with the works of Plato, who lived 24 centuries ago -- which makes this a very slow discussion. Further, even in face-to-face discussions, it is not uncommon for one party to pause and research a fact in a reference book or online.
This leads to my second consideration: content on a Wiki is never finished. Some emphasize the positive aspects of this fact: documents on a Wiki never go out of date, because anyone (with the needed permissions, of course) can update them. The problem that a published book has, that it begins to gradually become inaccurate the moment it is printed, is solved with a Wiki!
While this is a good thing, this unfinished quality can also be a drawback. For no matter how much work is done on a Wiki page, it can always be altered -- and sometimes drastically. Content can be replaced with better content -- or with worse; what makes one Wiki page successful can be removed with a careless or badly-considered edit -- or one intended to improve some other aspect of the page. Hence a Wiki is more akin to a conversation, than a collection of texts.
There are ways to deal with this issue. The Wikimedia software, for example, is written to keep copies of earlier versions of the pages in the application -- so nothing is truly lost. Or one can impliment the practice of marking some pages as "stable", "featured" or "finished", and make them more difficult to change. This is simply one of many issues that an adopter needs to think about when considering a Wiki to help with collaboration.
Now I have encountered some people mention that these points make a Wiki a poor application for the business environment, and point to the apparent anarchy that exists around Wikipedia: anyone can -- and does -- edit Wikipedia. How can a Wiki work inside a business? What these people overlook is the power of the community associated with the Wiki application: this community not only nourishes the content on the Wiki, but this community protects it. Look at the countless pages of policy, dispute resolution, and so forth that exist on Wikipedia currently -- there is a great deal of control over the content on Wikipedia; some would say too much. Any successful business already has these controls in place. It currently uses them to encourage its employees to contribute to its profit; if these controls cannot be replicated to monitor edits to a corporate Wiki, then the business is clearly doomed.
Hmm. I started this post by stating that there were two considerations, but find that there are three: how will the collaborative community make use of a Wiki. Some communities will accept it with little or no encouragement; some have already found a way to collaborate without one, and the effort to get this community to accept a Wiki may be a waste of time and resources. After all, why trade in a car that works -- and is owned free and clear -- for this year's model?
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, online collaboration, software, Wikipedia, writing
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Sunday, November 18, 2007
One of the Things I hate to do
Is reverting contributions like this one to Wikipedia articles. But I must, for a simple reason: while it's probably reliable information, I can't verify it. Nor can anyone else until the government of Ethiopia starts doing a better job of making more information -- like simple modifications to their internal administrative structure -- publically available. If this were done in English (because I don't read Amharic or any of the 70-odd languages spoken in Ethiopia), and on one of many websites the Ethiopian government maintains would be great, but as far as I know current information is not even available in print.
At least Wikipedia's articles about the subdivisions of that country -- the Regions or States, the Zones, and the Woredas or local districts -- are much more current than many other sources. It's not uncommon to find materials published in the last few years which still refer to the provinces that existed in Emperor Haile Selassie's time -- about a generation ago.
I well know the reasons why this is the case: the agencies responsible for this are underfunded and understaffed -- as well as a constant brain drain from the public sector to non-governmental organizations, if not out of the country. But alot of these barriers could be overcome with help from volunteer online groups if the information were somehow made available.
Until then, I'm forced to apply the rules in a way that I really don't want to, because the alternative is to do assert no quality control whatever. Better to have information that is reliabbly correct, but out of date, rather than information that may be current and correct -- but not at all reliable.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Africa, Ethiopia, online information, wikipedia
At least Wikipedia's articles about the subdivisions of that country -- the Regions or States, the Zones, and the Woredas or local districts -- are much more current than many other sources. It's not uncommon to find materials published in the last few years which still refer to the provinces that existed in Emperor Haile Selassie's time -- about a generation ago.
I well know the reasons why this is the case: the agencies responsible for this are underfunded and understaffed -- as well as a constant brain drain from the public sector to non-governmental organizations, if not out of the country. But alot of these barriers could be overcome with help from volunteer online groups if the information were somehow made available.
Until then, I'm forced to apply the rules in a way that I really don't want to, because the alternative is to do assert no quality control whatever. Better to have information that is reliabbly correct, but out of date, rather than information that may be current and correct -- but not at all reliable.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Africa, Ethiopia, online information, wikipedia
Thursday, November 15, 2007
WikiEN-l
My activities related to Wikipedia involve more than writing articles. For example, I spend probably as much time away from the computer (or at least on the computer, and online, but not at the Wikipedia website) researching information as I do editting. (I have to find content to add to Wikipedia somehow, and its one of the better ways to find reliable information.) Another activity that occupies a sizable amount of time is reading the various discussions on Wikipedia about Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Administrators noticeboards, Wikipedia:Administrators noticeboards/Incidents, fora at the Village Pump (when I remember it exists), the Signpost, talk pages at various WikiProjects, and about once a week I read through the archives of WikiEN-l.
WikiEN-l used to be far more important than it is now, but I still find it useful to read on a periodic basis. Sometimes I find gems like this announcement of another study about the community dynamics of Wikipedia -- but often I read it for the discussion. There are just under half a dozen people posting there whose opinions I respect, many times more people who I don't know but I'm willing to read in any case and allow them to persuade me, and two or three troublemakers. By "troublemakers", I mean individuals who have been banned from Wikipedia and desperate to complain some more about how unfair people are there.
I can't honestly say that the community around WikiEN-l is really any different from other communities around any other mailing list: there are some people worth reading and some who are wasting everyone else's time. It's just that WikiEN-l has a reputation of being a more serious or important forum to discuss issues concerning the English language Wikipedia. So after lurking there earlier this week, spending a few hours reading, I was left with the impression that the mailling list has outlasted its purpose.
Now WikiEN-l has always had a certain degree of venom or bitterness in its communications. People complain or vent there about daily stupidity on Wikipedia. Troublemakers go there to complain that they are misunderstood and should be reinstated -- or that Wikipedia is broken and needs to be fixed. Then, as happens whenever one brings together a large number of people seriously interested in one project, a number of flame wars will break out, and you can have two or more respected Wikipedians calling each other "troll" or "vandal" or worse. However, the atmosphere there has turned far more nasty than can be explained by these causes: its has turned into a cesspit -- okay, maybe I should say "another cesspit" -- where people go to flame each other, everyone and everything. When things calm down a little, someone -- not always one of the troublemakers -- stirs the sewage and another flamewar breaks out.
This is not just a bad day there. I read a week's worth of email, and the last couple of times I've lurked there things have not been much better. I'd read to find the occasional gem that made the effort worth it, but it's gotten to the point where the effort is not worth it any more. One can make a valuable point or win an argument on WikiEN-l, but chances are good no one outside the list will notice as well as few on the list; ideas, both good and bad, are simply being drowned out by accusations, counter-accusations, and more until the original idea is forgotten.
I find this disappointing, if not sad. As I wrote above, there are some bright and articulate people on the list, as well as some people who are eager to show that they, too, are bright and articulate; but all that is happening there is that they are complaining and arguing over...at this point I don't really know, and I'm no longer that interested enough to untangle things. People are unhappy with Wikipedia, but people have always been unhappy with Wikipedia. People make mistakes; good ideas get overlooked; someone who is an asset to the project encounters one failure too many, feels burnt out, and leaves -- sometimes memorably.
Yet if all of this energy led to some goal, served some purpose, maybe it would be justified; as far as I can tell, very few Wikipedians -- even those who might be said to be part of the alleged "inside clique" -- pay any attention to it. It's become one more dynamic in the project community that doesn't further its purpose -- that is, if Wikipedia has a clear purpose beyond "creating an encyclopedia." Even then, what encyclopedia that exists is incomplete and unreliable -- "early beta" as one participant has described its quality. Much -- if not the majority -- of the energy around Wikipedia seems to go into the process of writing an encyclopedia -- fighting vandalism, flagging articles for quality, arguing over guidelines and procedures.
I don't know what the answer is, but I didn't find it reading WikiEN-l. It might be time to simply shut the list down. Doing that won't solve the problem alone, but by removing one outlet for writing about the process of writing an encyclopedia, it might encourage people to simply just write one.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, Wikipedia, writing
WikiEN-l used to be far more important than it is now, but I still find it useful to read on a periodic basis. Sometimes I find gems like this announcement of another study about the community dynamics of Wikipedia -- but often I read it for the discussion. There are just under half a dozen people posting there whose opinions I respect, many times more people who I don't know but I'm willing to read in any case and allow them to persuade me, and two or three troublemakers. By "troublemakers", I mean individuals who have been banned from Wikipedia and desperate to complain some more about how unfair people are there.
I can't honestly say that the community around WikiEN-l is really any different from other communities around any other mailing list: there are some people worth reading and some who are wasting everyone else's time. It's just that WikiEN-l has a reputation of being a more serious or important forum to discuss issues concerning the English language Wikipedia. So after lurking there earlier this week, spending a few hours reading, I was left with the impression that the mailling list has outlasted its purpose.
Now WikiEN-l has always had a certain degree of venom or bitterness in its communications. People complain or vent there about daily stupidity on Wikipedia. Troublemakers go there to complain that they are misunderstood and should be reinstated -- or that Wikipedia is broken and needs to be fixed. Then, as happens whenever one brings together a large number of people seriously interested in one project, a number of flame wars will break out, and you can have two or more respected Wikipedians calling each other "troll" or "vandal" or worse. However, the atmosphere there has turned far more nasty than can be explained by these causes: its has turned into a cesspit -- okay, maybe I should say "another cesspit" -- where people go to flame each other, everyone and everything. When things calm down a little, someone -- not always one of the troublemakers -- stirs the sewage and another flamewar breaks out.
This is not just a bad day there. I read a week's worth of email, and the last couple of times I've lurked there things have not been much better. I'd read to find the occasional gem that made the effort worth it, but it's gotten to the point where the effort is not worth it any more. One can make a valuable point or win an argument on WikiEN-l, but chances are good no one outside the list will notice as well as few on the list; ideas, both good and bad, are simply being drowned out by accusations, counter-accusations, and more until the original idea is forgotten.
I find this disappointing, if not sad. As I wrote above, there are some bright and articulate people on the list, as well as some people who are eager to show that they, too, are bright and articulate; but all that is happening there is that they are complaining and arguing over...at this point I don't really know, and I'm no longer that interested enough to untangle things. People are unhappy with Wikipedia, but people have always been unhappy with Wikipedia. People make mistakes; good ideas get overlooked; someone who is an asset to the project encounters one failure too many, feels burnt out, and leaves -- sometimes memorably.
Yet if all of this energy led to some goal, served some purpose, maybe it would be justified; as far as I can tell, very few Wikipedians -- even those who might be said to be part of the alleged "inside clique" -- pay any attention to it. It's become one more dynamic in the project community that doesn't further its purpose -- that is, if Wikipedia has a clear purpose beyond "creating an encyclopedia." Even then, what encyclopedia that exists is incomplete and unreliable -- "early beta" as one participant has described its quality. Much -- if not the majority -- of the energy around Wikipedia seems to go into the process of writing an encyclopedia -- fighting vandalism, flagging articles for quality, arguing over guidelines and procedures.
I don't know what the answer is, but I didn't find it reading WikiEN-l. It might be time to simply shut the list down. Doing that won't solve the problem alone, but by removing one outlet for writing about the process of writing an encyclopedia, it might encourage people to simply just write one.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, Wikipedia, writing
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
It was bound to happen
Many years ago, I had a conversation with my high school debate teacher (yes, it was that long ago) about falsifying the research the debate team used. He pointed out that fabricated information has a tendency to be shared by all team members, and mentioned an instance not long before where it harmed someone -- not the person who fabricated it -- in a debate.
I was reminded of this discussion when I stumbled onto a discussion at Wikipedia: Administrators' Noticeboard/Incidents. Someone, to everyone's shock, had managed to insert over the space of two years, a surprising amount of fabricated or misrepresented information, into a number of articles. He evaded notice by being civil, quick to back down in a conflict, and by focussing his attention on a number of subjects that non-experts were not likely to challenge his edits -- especially when he provided what appeared to be, at a casual examination, reliable sources.
As other editors worked their way down his rabbit-holes of his sources and evidence (another phrase that comes to mind is "mares nest"), it became obvious that he had constructed an elaborate collection of unacceptable sources. He would cite works that did not support his assertions; they either contradicted his assertion or were entirely irrelevant. Some were relevant, but clearly outdated. Still others appeared to be peer-reviewed literature, but on closer examination were not; they were published by groups with deceptively similar names, or self-published. And many of these papers and monographs leaned on each other: publication A would cite publication B, which would cite publication C, which would cite publication A.
I'm not mentioning the user name because my I'm not writing about this specific user, but about the problem he revealed. Despite the fact Wikipedians are always reviewing each others' work and challenging each other's conclusions, there is an irreducable level of trust between all of us. If someone makes statements about a given source, we fidn ourselves assuming that they are telling us the truth about that source.
Wikipedia functions on a certain level of mutual trust, and in the most part, people do not violate this trust. Even the troublemakers, the self-promoters, and the tendentious editors almost always honestly report the contents of their sources. Those who don't -- until now -- are also unable to show enough self-control to be effective in the give-and-take that makes up much of the Wiki environment, stop being civil or clearly violate one of the customs of the Wikipedia culture, and are quickly banned from the site and their edits reverted.
However, this affair has pointed out that this level of trust may not work any more; if an editor claims that an uncommon resource -- say a rare book or an article published in an obscure technical journal -- says something, how do we know that this editor is not lying? While this is less of a concern for established editors than new ones, the fact remains that this specific user contributed 8000 edits over two years, before someone noticed.
This is not a theoretical problem; in my own case, I have been using more and more uncommon works on the history of Ethiopia. Not every article in Wikipedia is a reworking of what is posted on the Internet; some of us do use sources printed on paper! This leads to the problem that not all of these printed works are easily accessible. In my case, like many serious Wikipedians, I have gradually accumulated a collection of books on my topic of interest to overcome this problem. Since not everyone using Wikipedia can do this, should I continue to use them because they cannot verify what I report these sources contain?
Maybe this is a just problem that was bound to happen eventually. As a group attracts more people, the chances that at least one person will abuse that trust increases until it happens. We should be glad that Wikipedia went almost 6 years before this became a serious problem.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, reliability, research, trust, Wikipedia
I was reminded of this discussion when I stumbled onto a discussion at Wikipedia: Administrators' Noticeboard/Incidents. Someone, to everyone's shock, had managed to insert over the space of two years, a surprising amount of fabricated or misrepresented information, into a number of articles. He evaded notice by being civil, quick to back down in a conflict, and by focussing his attention on a number of subjects that non-experts were not likely to challenge his edits -- especially when he provided what appeared to be, at a casual examination, reliable sources.
As other editors worked their way down his rabbit-holes of his sources and evidence (another phrase that comes to mind is "mares nest"), it became obvious that he had constructed an elaborate collection of unacceptable sources. He would cite works that did not support his assertions; they either contradicted his assertion or were entirely irrelevant. Some were relevant, but clearly outdated. Still others appeared to be peer-reviewed literature, but on closer examination were not; they were published by groups with deceptively similar names, or self-published. And many of these papers and monographs leaned on each other: publication A would cite publication B, which would cite publication C, which would cite publication A.
I'm not mentioning the user name because my I'm not writing about this specific user, but about the problem he revealed. Despite the fact Wikipedians are always reviewing each others' work and challenging each other's conclusions, there is an irreducable level of trust between all of us. If someone makes statements about a given source, we fidn ourselves assuming that they are telling us the truth about that source.
Wikipedia functions on a certain level of mutual trust, and in the most part, people do not violate this trust. Even the troublemakers, the self-promoters, and the tendentious editors almost always honestly report the contents of their sources. Those who don't -- until now -- are also unable to show enough self-control to be effective in the give-and-take that makes up much of the Wiki environment, stop being civil or clearly violate one of the customs of the Wikipedia culture, and are quickly banned from the site and their edits reverted.
However, this affair has pointed out that this level of trust may not work any more; if an editor claims that an uncommon resource -- say a rare book or an article published in an obscure technical journal -- says something, how do we know that this editor is not lying? While this is less of a concern for established editors than new ones, the fact remains that this specific user contributed 8000 edits over two years, before someone noticed.
This is not a theoretical problem; in my own case, I have been using more and more uncommon works on the history of Ethiopia. Not every article in Wikipedia is a reworking of what is posted on the Internet; some of us do use sources printed on paper! This leads to the problem that not all of these printed works are easily accessible. In my case, like many serious Wikipedians, I have gradually accumulated a collection of books on my topic of interest to overcome this problem. Since not everyone using Wikipedia can do this, should I continue to use them because they cannot verify what I report these sources contain?
Maybe this is a just problem that was bound to happen eventually. As a group attracts more people, the chances that at least one person will abuse that trust increases until it happens. We should be glad that Wikipedia went almost 6 years before this became a serious problem.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, reliability, research, trust, Wikipedia
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Friday, October 19, 2007
An upcoming Wikipedia event
Gnome week: an effort to improve articles. Not that Wikipedians should limit themselves to doing this to one week a year, though.
Related to this is Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, Wikipedia, writing
Related to this is Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: online communities, Wikipedia, writing
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Another insightful study
Although it could be argued this is dangerously self-referential: Dragon's flight performed this statistical analysis on Wikipedia's log files which includes looking at the edit histories for 118793 English Wikipedia articles (~6% of all articles).
(I found this through Dragon's flight's announcement on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list. The resulting thread is also worth a read.)
Although some might disagree with this observation, I find this is evidence against my theory that the slowing rate of new article creation is due to a lack of "low-hanging fruit", instead the slowing rate is due to limits on the number of people joining the English-language Wikipedia: the community is reaching its limit of members. There are just so many people in the world who would consider writing encyclopedia articles as "fun." Another thing to consider, is that as non-English Wikipedias gain viability people for whom English is a second language are more likely either to leave the English Wikipedia for the one in their native language, or never to contribute in the first place.
October is producing a bumper crop of studies and facts to chew on, and it's not even half over.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Online communities, Outreach, Statistics, Wikis, wikipedia
(I found this through Dragon's flight's announcement on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list. The resulting thread is also worth a read.)
Although some might disagree with this observation, I find this is evidence against my theory that the slowing rate of new article creation is due to a lack of "low-hanging fruit", instead the slowing rate is due to limits on the number of people joining the English-language Wikipedia: the community is reaching its limit of members. There are just so many people in the world who would consider writing encyclopedia articles as "fun." Another thing to consider, is that as non-English Wikipedias gain viability people for whom English is a second language are more likely either to leave the English Wikipedia for the one in their native language, or never to contribute in the first place.
October is producing a bumper crop of studies and facts to chew on, and it's not even half over.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Online communities, Outreach, Statistics, Wikis, wikipedia
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Edit wars: an afterthought
Getting quoted in the LA Times definitely put a spike in my traffic. Unfortunately, I didn't know which one of the many topics I want to write about to write about -- so instead, I focussed my attention on improving a couple of Wikipedia articles: Tekle Giyorgis I of Ethiopia and 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia. I guess my stage fright is rooted in the knowledge that anyone can edit Wikipedia and is left with an impression about the project -- this sincere and heart-felt comment is one such example (the anonymous comment, not Kelly's post) -- but not anyone do it in a productive way. So rather than writing long, overly-rhetorical essays about how people should contribute, I guess I'm more comfortable just trying to do what I say.
However, there is one important thing after all this that I believe we need to keep in mind: talk about encyclopedia vs. community concerning Wikipedia is at best nonsensical, and at worst distracting from diagnosis of the real problems. We need both, because they support the project in different ways. I think of the encyclopedia element, what is being created, is like bone and the community, the group that creates it, like soft tissue: each supports the other, each protects the other, and one without the other will lead to the death of both.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
However, there is one important thing after all this that I believe we need to keep in mind: talk about encyclopedia vs. community concerning Wikipedia is at best nonsensical, and at worst distracting from diagnosis of the real problems. We need both, because they support the project in different ways. I think of the encyclopedia element, what is being created, is like bone and the community, the group that creates it, like soft tissue: each supports the other, each protects the other, and one without the other will lead to the death of both.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Labels: blogging, wikipedia, writing
Friday, September 28, 2007
Does this mean I'm important, or I just have a big mouth
You decide: I was quoted in this article that appeared in the L.A. Times about the Mzoli's Meats deletion battle. (At least they quoted one person worth listening to -- Andrew Lih.) As soon as I get over the shock that someone actually takes me seriously, I'll try to form an opinion about the article.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Sunday, September 23, 2007
But there are sometimes good things
My last post was probably too negative, implying that Wikipedia is, despite anyone's most heroic efforts, sliding into a quicksand of factionalism. Like most of humanity, I have a tendency to speak out more often to complain about bad things than to say anything about the good things.
One reason that I continue to contribute material to Wikipedia is in the not unrealistic expectation that my contributions will attract contributions from people who know more than me on the subject. It's not an unrealistic expectation, because it's often happened in the past. One example was, due to the effort Yom and I were devoting to Ethiopain articles at the time, when we received a querry from someone who wanted to write an article about the Sof Omar caves in that country, and after a little encouragement he wrote a nice little article, and supplied some images for it. This author just happened to have taken part in a formal British exploration of those caves in the 1970s, so he was undeniably an expert about what he was writing. (Unfortunately, due to the recent jihad against non-free images, one of the images he contributed with his article was removed because he forgot to include some statement needed to keep it in Wikipedia. I need to ask him to upload once again that image with the necessary legal verbage.)
However, a more recent contribution, one of those which encourages me to continue in my selfless and idealistic quest, was one I discovered last night. When I had originally started the article on Onesimos Nesib, who translated the Bible into the Oromo language, I found a mention of a one Aster Ganno, who is said to have actually done much of the work without receiving any credit for her contributions. I didn't think that I would ever find much about her -- women and their work in the 19th century tend to be poorly documented, and documentation on African women moreso -- so I simply mentioned her name in the article and moved on.
When I reviewed recent changes to the Onesimus Nesib article, I saw that several had been made by an editor who had not created a userpage. Often this is a clue that the person is a troublemaker, intending only to stay on Wikipedia long enough to either vandalize some articles -- or to stuff them with a rant for or against some specific point of view on a subject. Other times this is a clue that the person is new to Wikipedia, or not as familiar with computers as with the subject she/he wants to contribute to. It was the later in this case: Peter Unseth, who had co-authored the article on Aster Ganno for the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, a comprehensive reference work on Ethiopian history and culture, generously donated some of his learning to Wikipedia. As I traced the history of his contributions, I felt as if I were sitting at the same discussion with leading experts on Ethiopian history, clearly the same as auditting a virtual seminar -- and perhaps able to contribute my own opinion to the exchange.
Of course I left a thank-you note on his user talk page. It was a far more encouraging message to him than the two templates about improperly-contributed images left there before me.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Ethiopia, expert contributions, wikipedia
One reason that I continue to contribute material to Wikipedia is in the not unrealistic expectation that my contributions will attract contributions from people who know more than me on the subject. It's not an unrealistic expectation, because it's often happened in the past. One example was, due to the effort Yom and I were devoting to Ethiopain articles at the time, when we received a querry from someone who wanted to write an article about the Sof Omar caves in that country, and after a little encouragement he wrote a nice little article, and supplied some images for it. This author just happened to have taken part in a formal British exploration of those caves in the 1970s, so he was undeniably an expert about what he was writing. (Unfortunately, due to the recent jihad against non-free images, one of the images he contributed with his article was removed because he forgot to include some statement needed to keep it in Wikipedia. I need to ask him to upload once again that image with the necessary legal verbage.)
However, a more recent contribution, one of those which encourages me to continue in my selfless and idealistic quest, was one I discovered last night. When I had originally started the article on Onesimos Nesib, who translated the Bible into the Oromo language, I found a mention of a one Aster Ganno, who is said to have actually done much of the work without receiving any credit for her contributions. I didn't think that I would ever find much about her -- women and their work in the 19th century tend to be poorly documented, and documentation on African women moreso -- so I simply mentioned her name in the article and moved on.
When I reviewed recent changes to the Onesimus Nesib article, I saw that several had been made by an editor who had not created a userpage. Often this is a clue that the person is a troublemaker, intending only to stay on Wikipedia long enough to either vandalize some articles -- or to stuff them with a rant for or against some specific point of view on a subject. Other times this is a clue that the person is new to Wikipedia, or not as familiar with computers as with the subject she/he wants to contribute to. It was the later in this case: Peter Unseth, who had co-authored the article on Aster Ganno for the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, a comprehensive reference work on Ethiopian history and culture, generously donated some of his learning to Wikipedia. As I traced the history of his contributions, I felt as if I were sitting at the same discussion with leading experts on Ethiopian history, clearly the same as auditting a virtual seminar -- and perhaps able to contribute my own opinion to the exchange.
Of course I left a thank-you note on his user talk page. It was a far more encouraging message to him than the two templates about improperly-contributed images left there before me.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Ethiopia, expert contributions, wikipedia
Thursday, September 20, 2007
If the first time around is comedy, and the second time tragedy, then what is ...?
It's hard to get back into the rhythm of blogging when one has drifted away. Writing on a regular basis requires not only discipline, but a certain amount of courage -- because one's mistakes in both grammar and logic are put out where everyone can see tehm. Yet sometimes, something happens that makes me willing to forget that I'm not that good of a writer and just post an opinion -- especially when it appears that everyone involved is going at the matter in the wrong way.
The matter I'm thinking of is the ruckus over the Mzoli's Meats nomination for deletion. This is one of those exchanges on Wikipedia that leaves me shaking my head.
Ben Yates spoke up about the nomination, pointing to this post
on WikiEN-l, and tied it to another email in the thread about how the obsession about driving spam from Wikipedia can harm it: marginal articles on worthwhile subjects get flushed from the system before they can be properly reviewed. This is not a bad sentiment: there is a lot of enthusiasm -- often too much -- from some members over fighting spam, vandalism, and giving the troublemakers the bum's rush out. But this story is more complex than what it might appear.
First, there was this question posted to the Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard. Note the identities involved: the question is raised by a veteran Admin who has been around for a while. The Wikipedians who respond are likewise all familiar with the Wikipedia culture. And the advice offered?
And if you look at the version of the article they were discussing, it's not hard to side with them:
It would have been helpful if there had been a sentence or two at the beginning to explain why this particular restaurant was worth an article in an encyclopedia.
Odd that no one there raised the point expressed in the Article for Deletion discussion:
Instead, the original discussion appears to be more concerned about whether Jimbo Wales gets a free pass concerning this article, and I detect an implication that he might have made a mistake creating it. Especially when it comes to articles on restaurants, because the burden of proof is greater: far too often, articles on restaurants are little more than advertising, and the vast majority of restaurants are not worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.
However, the possibility that Jimbo had simply forgot how important it was to explain the notability of the topic is never explored because another veteran Admin deleted it out of hand. This is the same Admin who returned from a Wikivacation by posting a screed which read, in part:
Well, his motivation is clear. And I have to respect his following comment in the deletion discussion: "Wasn't Jimbo the one who said we need to stop using {{fact}} and either source it or remove it? As it stands, we've got a non-notable restaurant with almost no sourcing." But why another Admin decided to fight to the death over deleting this article is less clear. Although it was discussed.
Too bad no one thought to discuss why the Admin, the one who had asked about this article back on the Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard, had failed to contribute to the discussion over deleting the article. If I were in that Admin's place, I would have stayed away, too; the argument there soon stopped being about if the article should be deleted, it was about proving someone wrong, and no one was at their best in this argument.
Not even Jimbo, who lashed out with the following: "You can dispute the article on the merits of the notability (though not successfully, I think), but the assumptions of bad faith in this argument are just shocking. Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby." Writing this, he failed to acknowledge that many Wikipedians honestly believe that there are groups of people with more influence than others, and treating this belief with contempt does not make it go away -- it only drives the frustration underground where it continues to grow. Maybe if he participated more he would see this sickness in Wikipedia -- but if he participated more, it might harm the ecology his careful laissez-faire strategy has created.
So why didn't I enter this discussion, and share some of these insights and help still the waters? Part of the reason was that I was busy part of the time this transpired undergoing an Alien Abduction special; but most the reason was that I was busy working on some articles. I had just discovered that through Google Books I could get a hold of a number of older, difficult-to-obtain works on Ethiopia, and was reading them. But the larger part of this larger reason was that I really didn't see any point in being part of this discussion: people were going to yell at each other, accuse each other of untrue motivations, and not try to listen to each other and find common ground.
When Wikipedia -- or any wiki -- works, it is truly a wonderful thing. (One example of this can be seen over at About Us, where they are implimenting a system called Consensus Polling. It's a directed conversation where the intent is to arrive at a conclusion that all members either agree with -- or can live with.) It is wonderful because it can get people to actually talk with -- rather than at -- each other, and leads them to form a consensus. But when it doesn't work, it is no different than pulling together any number of people selected at random, and giving them an acrimonious topic to discuss.
However many people remind us that Wikipedia is not an experiment in Wiki-culture, it is a project to build an encyclopedia. So instead of trying to make the Wiki stuff work, I'll take the easy way out and just work on the writing.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
The matter I'm thinking of is the ruckus over the Mzoli's Meats nomination for deletion. This is one of those exchanges on Wikipedia that leaves me shaking my head.
Ben Yates spoke up about the nomination, pointing to this post
on WikiEN-l, and tied it to another email in the thread about how the obsession about driving spam from Wikipedia can harm it: marginal articles on worthwhile subjects get flushed from the system before they can be properly reviewed. This is not a bad sentiment: there is a lot of enthusiasm -- often too much -- from some members over fighting spam, vandalism, and giving the troublemakers the bum's rush out. But this story is more complex than what it might appear.
First, there was this question posted to the Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard. Note the identities involved: the question is raised by a veteran Admin who has been around for a while. The Wikipedians who respond are likewise all familiar with the Wikipedia culture. And the advice offered?
- "Follow you heart. Look non-notable to me."
- "Keep in mind that Jimbo is just another editor (well, at most, just another admin)."
- "Looks like touristcruft, based on this. Though this is slightly better. Userfying might be best."
And if you look at the version of the article they were discussing, it's not hard to side with them:
Mzoli's Meats is a butcher shop and restuarant located in Guguletu township near Cape Town, South Africa.
It would have been helpful if there had been a sentence or two at the beginning to explain why this particular restaurant was worth an article in an encyclopedia.
Odd that no one there raised the point expressed in the Article for Deletion discussion:
The point isn't that it was Jimbo, the point is that it was someone who knows the rules. They aren't just adding their favorite restaurant to the Wiki, they're adding an article that they're honestly planning to source later. Most of the CSD tags are by editors who don't have such plans. We need to give our trusted editors a chance to source something they've added; otherwise, it becomes a race to see who can type the fastest, the prodder or the sourcer.
Instead, the original discussion appears to be more concerned about whether Jimbo Wales gets a free pass concerning this article, and I detect an implication that he might have made a mistake creating it. Especially when it comes to articles on restaurants, because the burden of proof is greater: far too often, articles on restaurants are little more than advertising, and the vast majority of restaurants are not worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.
However, the possibility that Jimbo had simply forgot how important it was to explain the notability of the topic is never explored because another veteran Admin deleted it out of hand. This is the same Admin who returned from a Wikivacation by posting a screed which read, in part:
I don't care what anyone says, the vast majority of administrators are pompous overbearing control freaks. They run around with this attitude that having +sysop is some sort of right, priviledge, or a permission to bully, harras and generally act like a dick, thinking they can get away with it. There IS a cabal, and it makes sneaky back-door decisions such as deletions, vote stacking, blocks, trying to force editors into 3RR, page protections, et cetera almost daily.
Well, his motivation is clear. And I have to respect his following comment in the deletion discussion: "Wasn't Jimbo the one who said we need to stop using {{fact}} and either source it or remove it? As it stands, we've got a non-notable restaurant with almost no sourcing." But why another Admin decided to fight to the death over deleting this article is less clear. Although it was discussed.
Too bad no one thought to discuss why the Admin, the one who had asked about this article back on the Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard, had failed to contribute to the discussion over deleting the article. If I were in that Admin's place, I would have stayed away, too; the argument there soon stopped being about if the article should be deleted, it was about proving someone wrong, and no one was at their best in this argument.
Not even Jimbo, who lashed out with the following: "You can dispute the article on the merits of the notability (though not successfully, I think), but the assumptions of bad faith in this argument are just shocking. Some people should excuse themselves from the project and find a new hobby." Writing this, he failed to acknowledge that many Wikipedians honestly believe that there are groups of people with more influence than others, and treating this belief with contempt does not make it go away -- it only drives the frustration underground where it continues to grow. Maybe if he participated more he would see this sickness in Wikipedia -- but if he participated more, it might harm the ecology his careful laissez-faire strategy has created.
So why didn't I enter this discussion, and share some of these insights and help still the waters? Part of the reason was that I was busy part of the time this transpired undergoing an Alien Abduction special; but most the reason was that I was busy working on some articles. I had just discovered that through Google Books I could get a hold of a number of older, difficult-to-obtain works on Ethiopia, and was reading them. But the larger part of this larger reason was that I really didn't see any point in being part of this discussion: people were going to yell at each other, accuse each other of untrue motivations, and not try to listen to each other and find common ground.
When Wikipedia -- or any wiki -- works, it is truly a wonderful thing. (One example of this can be seen over at About Us, where they are implimenting a system called Consensus Polling. It's a directed conversation where the intent is to arrive at a conclusion that all members either agree with -- or can live with.) It is wonderful because it can get people to actually talk with -- rather than at -- each other, and leads them to form a consensus. But when it doesn't work, it is no different than pulling together any number of people selected at random, and giving them an acrimonious topic to discuss.
However many people remind us that Wikipedia is not an experiment in Wiki-culture, it is a project to build an encyclopedia. So instead of trying to make the Wiki stuff work, I'll take the easy way out and just work on the writing.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Mzoli's Meats, Online communities, Wikis, wikipedia
Labels: speculations, wikipedia, writing
Saturday, July 21, 2007
I finished reading the Last Harry Potter an Hour Ago
And here are my spoilers for those of you who haven't read it:
And having read the last chapter of the book, which Rowling wrote many years ago when she first sketched out the plot for this series, and which she admits she had rewritten because things changed changed as she wrote the books, I wonder how the first draft read. How did she originally plan to end the series, and who did she plan would live?
And Rowling never tells us what happens to the Dursleys at the end of the series. All of the Dursley fans are left hanging, wondering if they survived, and whether Dudley ever found a respectable job.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Harry Potter, spoilers, writing
- Harry doesn't appear in the first chapter.
- The last word in the book is "well."
- Almost every scene used in the previous six books appears in this book. Including Platform 9 3/4
- Almost every character who appeared in the previous six books appears in this book. Including Colin Creevey.
And having read the last chapter of the book, which Rowling wrote many years ago when she first sketched out the plot for this series, and which she admits she had rewritten because things changed changed as she wrote the books, I wonder how the first draft read. How did she originally plan to end the series, and who did she plan would live?
And Rowling never tells us what happens to the Dursleys at the end of the series. All of the Dursley fans are left hanging, wondering if they survived, and whether Dudley ever found a respectable job.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Harry Potter, spoilers, writing
Labels: writing
