<CPOV> The Wikipedia Cult -- Focal Problem : Banning

[Jon Awbrey]

Re: http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/2010-June/000185.html

Alan Shapiro wrote:
 >
 > well, that's a very intelligent and balanced statement
 > (except for the first three words, which are themselves
 > a binary opposition, you're taking the position that
 > there is absolutely no truth in what i am saying?).
 > I applaud this statement. It is much more reasonable
 > than most of the assertions in the recent avalanche
 > of declarations coming on this listserv.
 >
 > My statement was not directly at you personally.
 >
 > Alan

Being a Peircean pragmatic thinker, by virtue or maybe by dint of
long-continuing auto-inculcation, I can't help coloring outside
the lines of dyadic thinking for very long, so let me let that
business pass.

One of the lessons that my teachers pounded into my head over many long
years of alio-inculcation was that education and inquiry have as much
to do with process as product, as much to do with conduct as content.

Wikipedia, just to take up the current example, begins to look like
a very different proposition when we start to examine the reality
of practice that prevails in its orbit.

Maybe it would help to focus, one by one, on particular practices
that distinguish Wikipedia Culture from other systems that we know?

One practice that is very symptomatic of cults, dogmatic organizations,
faith-oriented groups, religions, sects, whatever you want to call them,
is the practice of banning, shunning, or excommunicating onetime members
of the group, members who were once considered "good faith" participants.

Jon Awbrey

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