From juliana at networkcultures.org Wed Jun 2 11:43:17 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 11:43:17 +0200 (CEST) Subject: On Transparency Message-ID: <1847.145.92.114.183.1275471797.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> I have recently read a good article about governance in Wikipedia exemplified by the deletionists vs. inclusionists affaire, which I recommend. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2613/2479 I have gathered some of my thoughts on the subject. Foremost, what I find very important to keep in mind is that ?active and organized minorities often prevail over the uncoordinated majority of others?. Transparency is not so transparent after all I believe this is very harmful in a number of ways: First, people who join the project enter with a false idea and are later demotivated, which leads to less contributions, not just as a whole, but especially from people with different interests and opinions. This, I believe, will end up leading to a lack of diversity and a more ?POV? encyclopedia. Secondly, choosing which articles are worthy or not to be included in WP generates another unbalance. I am not talking about self-promotion or vandalism cases, but topics that are not popular or ?obscure?, but are nevertheless important for a minority. Should just the majority benefit from WP? Third, by choosing articles based on their ?notability?, together with the fact that these decisions might be run by an organized minority, won?t the effect be that readers of WP will only get the information this minority thinks is notable, and not ?the sum of all knowledge?? Can anyone truly decide what is notable to belong to this ?sum? or not and still be neutral? Or maybe should the ?sum of all knowledge? be called the ?sum of what we think is notable knowledge?? Lastly, at least for now, I would like to point out to the harmful effect it has on the world due to its large influence. Is our knowledge going to be, this way, standardized? Looking forward to hearing your opinions. All the best, Juliana Institute of Network Cultures HvA Interactive Media t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 www.networkcultures.org From Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu Wed Jun 2 15:16:16 2010 From: Mayo.Fuster at EUI.eu (Fuster, Mayo) Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 15:16:16 +0200 Subject: RS: On Transparency References: <1847.145.92.114.183.1275471797.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: Hello everybody! I hope that you are happy and fine! Thank you Juliana for your post in the e-list. >I have gathered some of my thoughts on the subject. >Foremost, what I find very important to keep in mind is that ?active and >organized minorities often prevail over the uncoordinated majority of >others?. Transparency is not so transparent after all I think this is related to two issues: the generation of groups inside big processes and the 90/9/1 distribution of participation. The generation of groups of affinity is large processes is not characteristic only of Wikipedia, but it is common in social movements organizing for example. In my view in some degree is logical and also in some degree is a sign of vitality of the processes. Also in moments of congregation such as the Wikipedia CPOV conference you could notice start to emerge affinities around common interest or common views. To me the problem came when it is ignore its existence and it is not integrated in the Governance of collective processes and regulate not only on individual behavier, but also groups inside collective processes. In this regard, for example, in last Wikimania (main annual meeting point of Wikipedians) there was a panel which address the issue on how to adapt the Arbitrarian Committe funtioning in conflict resolution to the dynamic of clusters against clusters conflicts. Then on the issue of 1/9/90 again this is not something characteristic only of Wikipedia, but widely spread in online groups and also in social movements organizing. For example in this e-list there is a small part of people who is contributing a lot and a large part does not. Again, I think the issue is to address it and not ignore it. Then to think what is the part of it that is linked to inequalities (such as how the 1/9/90 is reproducing inequalities in resources distribution in society: people with larger resources on time, skills, connectivity, etc will be able to contribute more which people without resources be limited). This needs to be consider and adapt the methodologies in order to not reproduce this sources of unequal participation. But there are also other reasons which could explain 1/9/90 distribution of participation which are not necessarily a sign of inequality. If you are interested, in this paper I reviewed the literature on 1/9/90 in online communities and try to explain which organizational characteristics of this are could explain the 1/9/90 distribution of participation: http://politicsofopensource.jitp.net/sites/politicsofopensource.jitp.net/files/papers/Fuster_1.pdf Have a nice day! Mayo ???`?.(*?.?(`?.? ?.??)?.?*).??`?? ????*???? Mayo Fuster Morell ?.?.?*?`?? ???`?.(?.??(?.?* *?.?)`?.?).??`?? Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info European University Institute - Phd Candidate School of information Berkeley Visiting researcher Phone Italy: 0039-3345440747 or 0039-0558409982 Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748 E-mail: mayo.fuster at eui.eu Skype: mayoneti Identi.ca: Mayo Postal address: Badia Fiesolana - Via dei Roccettini 9, I-50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) - Italy Fax [+39] 055 4685 201 -----Missatge original----- De: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org en nom de Juliana Brunello Enviat el: dc. 02/06/2010 11:43 Per a: cpov at listcultures.org Tema: On Transparency I have recently read a good article about governance in Wikipedia exemplified by the deletionists vs. inclusionists affaire, which I recommend. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2613/2479 I have gathered some of my thoughts on the subject. Foremost, what I find very important to keep in mind is that "active and organized minorities often prevail over the uncoordinated majority of others". Transparency is not so transparent after all. I believe this is very harmful in a number of ways: First, people who join the project enter with a false idea and are later demotivated, which leads to less contributions, not just as a whole, but especially from people with different interests and opinions. This, I believe, will end up leading to a lack of diversity and a more "POV" encyclopedia. Secondly, choosing which articles are worthy or not to be included in WP generates another unbalance. I am not talking about self-promotion or vandalism cases, but topics that are not popular or "obscure", but are nevertheless important for a minority. Should just the majority benefit from WP? Third, by choosing articles based on their "notability", together with the fact that these decisions might be run by an organized minority, won't the effect be that readers of WP will only get the information this minority thinks is notable, and not "the sum of all knowledge"? Can anyone truly decide what is notable to belong to this "sum" or not and still be neutral? Or maybe should the "sum of all knowledge" be called the "sum of what we think is notable knowledge"? Lastly, at least for now, I would like to point out to the harmful effect it has on the world due to its large influence. Is our knowledge going to be, this way, standardized? Looking forward to hearing your opinions. All the best, Juliana Institute of Network Cultures HvA Interactive Media t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 www.networkcultures.org _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Wed Jun 2 15:30:10 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:30:10 -0400 Subject: On Transparency In-Reply-To: <1847.145.92.114.183.1275471797.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1847.145.92.114.183.1275471797.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <4C065CE2.4050008@att.net> One of the founding ideals of the wiki paradigm was akin to what W.S. Burroughs called the "Naked Lunch", where everyone would be able to see exactly what was on every one else's fork. Wikipedia has strayed so far from that ideal that it no longer makes sense to refer to the WMF+WP+Wikia+PM+IRC+SecretMailingLists+WhoWitsWhat system as a "wiki" at all. There is chamber upon chamber and storey upon storey of smoke-filled rooms that no faint body of researchers will ever be able to bring to light in a decade of digging and probing. Jon Awbrey -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From sethf at sethf.com Thu Jun 3 15:04:25 2010 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 09:04:25 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult Message-ID: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> > nathaniel tkacz > i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult > is a useful one. what is there to add by calling it a cult? Demystification. I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including in some columns I wrote for the _Guardian_ newspaper, for example: "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop" http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia "One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." The point is a very concise way (four words) of conveying an alternate explanation for Wikipedia's functioning, against the immense marketing of it as a mystery created by magical technology ("wikis" and "The Internet"). I get a lot of flack from describing Wikipedia as a cult. One common response is a strawman argument, something like: Cults are by definition extreme apocalyptic, murderous, or suicidal, organizations. Wikipedia does not fit that definition. Therefore Wikipedia is not a cult. But I'd say such a definition would be drawn too narrowly. Extreme cults tends to be self-limiting, precisely because they are too dysfunctional to survive (mass suicide is not good for organizational continuity). Then sometimes people want me to give an extensive theory, which will handle all cases and examples they can imagine. That's very tedious. The basic point is that "cult" is a extremely illuminating way of analyzing how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), in terms of social dynamics. Especially in the face of much pressure to view it as some sort of unique technological entity which should not be connected to many well-known aspects of group psychology. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf at sethf.com http://sethf.com See _Guardian_ columns at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfinkelstein From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com Thu Jun 3 16:19:03 2010 From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 00:19:03 +1000 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> Message-ID: seth, if the term "cult" is too attractive to be left aside, i think it would be useful to pose the question: how does wikipedia transform the notion of cult? one thing about cults historically, for example, is that almost everyone who isn't in the cult thinks the cult is crazy. with wikipedia this isn't that case. only a very small minority of people are critical of wikipedia and most think it's great (regardless of what you or i think). this kind of thought experiment seems more interesting for me. regarding your description of wikipedia as exploitative and akin to sweatshop labour, i have to strongly disagree. the realities of sweatshop labour are a million miles from wikipedia. last time i checked people weren't committing suicide on a weekly basis after contributing to wikipedia, as is the case in the ifactories. people who contribute to wikipedia aren't in free trade zones, or living in cramped dorms on company grounds. even if these comments were merely stylistic, think these kinds of claims are way over the top and disrespectful to actual factory workers. it seems to me that thinking about the work/contribution/labour process of wikipedia should begin with the debates around playbour. is anyone writing about work in wikipedia on this list? what is clear is that modern, industrial paradigms that clearly demarcate between work and leisure no longer apply. best Nate Tkacz Research Fellow, RMIT University Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__ Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/ On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Seth Finkelstein wrote: > > nathaniel tkacz > > i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult > > is a useful one. what is there to add by calling it a cult? > > Demystification. > > I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including > in some columns I wrote for the _Guardian_ newspaper, for example: > > "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop" > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia > > "One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an > eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate > effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to > Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a > glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an > exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." > > The point is a very concise way (four words) of conveying an > alternate explanation for Wikipedia's functioning, against the immense > marketing of it as a mystery created by magical technology ("wikis" > and "The Internet"). > > I get a lot of flack from describing Wikipedia as a cult. One > common response is a strawman argument, something like: Cults are by > definition extreme apocalyptic, murderous, or suicidal, organizations. > Wikipedia does not fit that definition. Therefore Wikipedia is not a cult. > > But I'd say such a definition would be drawn too narrowly. > Extreme cults tends to be self-limiting, precisely because they > are too dysfunctional to survive (mass suicide is not good for > organizational continuity). > > Then sometimes people want me to give an extensive theory, > which will handle all cases and examples they can imagine. That's > very tedious. > > The basic point is that "cult" is a extremely illuminating way > of analyzing how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), in terms of social dynamics. > Especially in the face of much pressure to view it as some sort of > unique technological entity which should not be connected to many > well-known aspects of group psychology. > > -- > Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf at sethf.com http://sethf.com > See _Guardian_ columns at: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfinkelstein > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk Thu Jun 3 16:30:25 2010 From: T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk (T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 15:30:25 +0100 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> Message-ID: > > nathaniel tkacz > > i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult > > is a useful one. what is there to add by calling it a cult? > > Demystification. > > I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including > in some columns I wrote for the _Guardian_ newspaper, for example: The term "cult" might be popular in the press, but it has not caught on in the social sciences, for very good reasons. The best definition I have come across is by William Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, who define cults as groups with novel belief systems (as opposed to sects, which are splinter groups from larger religions). Other definitions include a tension with wider society. Neither is true of Wikipedia, nor is it (for most people, maybe the inner circle of 500-1000 Wikip/media regulars) an ideology that permeates all aspects of life. You can't "demystify" something with a fairly mysterious concept, such as a cult. Thomas From jawbrey at att.net Thu Jun 3 17:05:10 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:05:10 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> Message-ID: <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> Ye Who Would Be C In Thy POV, Wikipedia's cabalism, cultishness, groupthinkitude, whatever you want to call it, is very real, and Vaknin's article describes it quite accurately. I frankly wish we could be discussing the future of knowledge work on the Web, relative to which Wikipedia furnishes a wealth of data about how badly a naive idea can can wrong, but other people keep bringing it up, so those who know are forced to say what they know. This is of course a hoary old topic at The Wikipedia Review. I once began a "meta-thread" in the Meta-Discussion Forum to collect various reflections on the subject. It appears to be something of a dead horse over there, but here it is, FWIW: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=17187&view=findpost&p=90830 I am slightly incited to resuscitate the jockey if not the horse. Jon Awbrey NT = Nathaniel Tkacz SF = Seth Finkelstein NT: i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult > is a useful one. what is there to add by calling it a cult? > SF: Demystification. > > I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including > in some columns I wrote for the _Guardian_ newspaper, for example: > > "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop" > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia > > "One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an > eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate > effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to > Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a > glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an > exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." > > The point is a very concise way (four words) of conveying an > alternate explanation for Wikipedia's functioning, against the immense > marketing of it as a mystery created by magical technology ("wikis" > and "The Internet"). > > I get a lot of flack from describing Wikipedia as a cult. One > common response is a strawman argument, something like: Cults are by > definition extreme apocalyptic, murderous, or suicidal, organizations. > Wikipedia does not fit that definition. Therefore Wikipedia is not a cult. > > But I'd say such a definition would be drawn too narrowly. > Extreme cults tends to be self-limiting, precisely because they > are too dysfunctional to survive (mass suicide is not good for > organizational continuity). > > Then sometimes people want me to give an extensive theory, > which will handle all cases and examples they can imagine. That's > very tedious. > > The basic point is that "cult" is a extremely illuminating way > of analyzing how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), in terms of social dynamics. > Especially in the face of much pressure to view it as some sort of > unique technological entity which should not be connected to many > well-known aspects of group psychology. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From juliana at networkcultures.org Thu Jun 3 17:22:34 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 17:22:34 +0200 (CEST) Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> Message-ID: <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> I believe that the word 'cult' works more as a catchy title than a real concept. What I find important in this discussion is that it all points out to a disfunction in the WP community, and this, I believe, is worth analyzing. Juliana > Ye Who Would Be C In Thy POV, > > Wikipedia's cabalism, cultishness, groupthinkitude, whatever you want to > call it, > is very real, and Vaknin's article describes it quite accurately. I > frankly wish > we could be discussing the future of knowledge work on the Web, relative > to which > Wikipedia furnishes a wealth of data about how badly a naive idea can can > wrong, > but other people keep bringing it up, so those who know are forced to say > what > they know. > > This is of course a hoary old topic at The Wikipedia Review. > I once began a "meta-thread" in the Meta-Discussion Forum to > collect various reflections on the subject. It appears to be > something of a dead horse over there, but here it is, FWIW: > > http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=17187&view=findpost&p=90830 > > I am slightly incited to resuscitate the jockey if not the horse. > > Jon Awbrey > > NT = Nathaniel Tkacz > SF = Seth Finkelstein > > NT: i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult >> is a useful one. what is there to add by calling it a cult? >> > SF: Demystification. >> >> I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including >> in some columns I wrote for the _Guardian_ newspaper, for example: >> >> "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop" >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia >> >> "One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an >> eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate >> effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to >> Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a >> glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an >> exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." >> >> The point is a very concise way (four words) of conveying an >> alternate explanation for Wikipedia's functioning, against the immense >> marketing of it as a mystery created by magical technology ("wikis" >> and "The Internet"). >> >> I get a lot of flack from describing Wikipedia as a cult. One >> common response is a strawman argument, something like: Cults are by >> definition extreme apocalyptic, murderous, or suicidal, organizations. >> Wikipedia does not fit that definition. Therefore Wikipedia is not a >> cult. >> >> But I'd say such a definition would be drawn too narrowly. >> Extreme cults tends to be self-limiting, precisely because they >> are too dysfunctional to survive (mass suicide is not good for >> organizational continuity). >> >> Then sometimes people want me to give an extensive theory, >> which will handle all cases and examples they can imagine. That's >> very tedious. >> >> The basic point is that "cult" is a extremely illuminating way >> of analyzing how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), in terms of social >> dynamics. >> Especially in the face of much pressure to view it as some sort of >> unique technological entity which should not be connected to many >> well-known aspects of group psychology. > > -- > > inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ > mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey > knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 > oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > From sethf at sethf.com Thu Jun 3 17:29:04 2010 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 11:29:04 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> Message-ID: <20100603152904.GA29592@sethf.com> On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 12:19:03AM +1000, nathaniel tkacz wrote: > seth, > > if the term "cult" is too attractive to be left aside, i think it would be > useful to pose the question: how does wikipedia transform the notion of cult? Easy - it's the first truly successful *online* cult. This is where there really is something interesting going on - not unknown in the abstract, but new implementations are possible due to the scaling and efficiencies from electronic communications. For example, where physical cults may create alienation and isolation by trying to control the person's environment, Wikipedia can work by funneling in those who are *already* alienated and isolated in their lives. Now, it's not that physical cults can't recruit. Of course they do. But physical recruitment is a labor-intensive effort (getting someone to stand in an airport or on a streetcorner all day is difficult). If you can "advertise", worldwide - suddenly new methods of getting pre-existing vulnerable people to come to *you* become cost-effective. This seems to me so much more helpful in analysis that the standard line of saying a cult is X, and X doesn't fit, therefore ... [Tedious note: I *did not* say "Every member is alienated and isolated"] > one thing about cults historically, for example, is that almost > everyone who isn't in the cult thinks the cult is crazy. I'd say that's somewhat begging the age-old question of the difference between "cult" and "acceptable religion". > with wikipedia this isn't that case. only a very small minority of > people are critical of wikipedia and most think it's great > (regardless of what you or i think). this kind of thought > experiment seems more interesting for me. Indeed, Wikipedia gets good press. So what? > regarding your description of wikipedia as exploitative and akin to > sweatshop labour, i have to strongly disagree. the realities of sweatshop > labour are a million miles from wikipedia. [... snip] Sigh. The sentence was "Whereas the reality *IS CLOSER TO* an exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." Not "is exactly and precisely and fits perfectly as". People really seems to dislike that sentence. If I wrote something along the lines of "The government of Freedonia is closer to a mafia gang run by a murderous thug, than a happy extended family presided over by a loving patriarch", I don't think I'd get reactions like "The realities of a mafia gang are so different from Freedonia". (though maybe I would, and there's a lesson there) > what is clear is that modern, industrial paradigms that clearly demarcate > between work and leisure no longer apply. No, there's now more money to be made trying to convince people to do free work. [combining replies] > T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk > The term "cult" might be popular in the press, but it has not caught > on in the social sciences, for very good reasons. I will provisionally accept your assertion that the term "cult" would be inappropriate in an academic social science paper. > You can't "demystify" something with a fairly mysterious concept, > such as a cult. However, here I must disagree, and I believe you are making the perfect the enemy of the good. In the context of opposing technological mystification, I find the imperfect but evocative phrasing of "Wikipedia is a cult" seems to work about as well as can be expected for a concise counter-argument. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf at sethf.com http://sethf.com See _Guardian_ columns at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfinkelstein From T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk Thu Jun 3 17:34:20 2010 From: T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk (T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 16:34:20 +0100 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: > I believe that the word 'cult' works more as a catchy title than a real > concept. What I find important in this discussion is that it all points > out to a disfunction in the WP community, and this, I believe, is worth > analyzing. In my view, the two single most important problems of Wikipedia are: (a): Path dependency and lack of diversity: Those people, who sit at the most important power positions tend to belong to a very distinct group of people, rather than a random sample of the population: people with affinities to computing technologies, men rather than women, white rather than minority, young rather than old, not the best educated, etc.: They sit there, plainly, because they came first, which ties neatly into (b): The iron law of oligarchy: There is a inner circle of people, who holds far too much power: Rather than keeping Wikipedia as a self-regulatory system with flat hierarchies, all sorts of rank distinctions, both informal and formal have been introduced. That doesn't even work with the original (far too simplistic) ideology dreamt up by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in the big shadow of Ayn Rand, who is hardly one of the most respected philosophers of science. What is worse, those people most interested in climbing up the Wikipedia hierarchy are to some extent the least qualified for it: These are the people, who usually could not climb up any hierarchies other than the Wikipedia ones. Now, we may thing the educational system works poorly, but frankly, not as poorly that being a drop-out from the system necessarily means, you did a good job. Thomas From mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au Thu Jun 3 18:05:20 2010 From: mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au (Mathieu ONeil) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:05:20 +0200 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <20100603152904.GA29592@sethf.com> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <20100603152904.GA29592@sethf.com> Message-ID: One way in which WP might be seen to operate as a cult is in fact common to other online projects (such as free software): it was explicitly set up against a certain way of producing code / culture, i.e. proprietary businesses, such as Britannica etc. So there are enemies which help negatively structure the project. The difference with WP (I think I wrote this a month ago on this very list, could be wrong) is that there anonymity leads to vandalism or manipulation leads to a siege mentality leads to heavy-handed policing leads to cases of injustice or abuses of authority by cliques etc leads to apostates (?) who leave and denounce the project. Plus, there is a charismatic leader who wields enormous power... At the same time I don't know that there is a really coherent belief system shared by members of the so-called Cabal other than to Protect the Project from Evildoers... so not sure if the term "cult" is appropriate as a coherent shared belief system would seem like a pretty necessary element of a cult... cheers Mathieu ----- Original Message ----- From: Seth Finkelstein Date: Thursday, June 3, 2010 5:28 pm Subject: Re: The Wikipedia Cult To: cpov at listcultures.org Cc: T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk > On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 12:19:03AM +1000, nathaniel tkacz wrote: > > seth, > > > > if the term "cult" is too attractive to be left aside, i think > it would be > > useful to pose the question: how does wikipedia transform the > notion of cult? > > Easy - it's the first truly successful *online* cult. This is > where there really is something interesting going on - not unknown > in the abstract, but new implementations are possible due to the > scaling and efficiencies from electronic communications. > > For example, where physical cults may create alienation and > isolation by trying to control the person's environment, > Wikipedia can > work by funneling in those who are *already* alienated and > isolated in > their lives. Now, it's not that physical cults can't recruit. Of > course they do. But physical recruitment is a labor-intensive effort > (getting someone to stand in an airport or on a streetcorner all day > is difficult). If you can "advertise", worldwide - suddenly new > methods of getting pre-existing vulnerable people to come to *you* > become cost-effective. > > This seems to me so much more helpful in analysis that the > standard line of saying a cult is X, and X doesn't fit, > therefore ... > > [Tedious note: I *did not* say "Every member is alienated and > isolated"] > > one thing about cults historically, for example, is that almost > > everyone who isn't in the cult thinks the cult is crazy. > > I'd say that's somewhat begging the age-old question of the > difference between "cult" and "acceptable religion". > > > with wikipedia this isn't that case. only a very small > minority of > > people are critical of wikipedia and most think it's great > > (regardless of what you or i think). this kind of thought > > experiment seems more interesting for me. > > Indeed, Wikipedia gets good press. So what? > > > regarding your description of wikipedia as exploitative and > akin to > > sweatshop labour, i have to strongly disagree. the realities > of sweatshop > > labour are a million miles from wikipedia. [... snip] > > Sigh. The sentence was "Whereas the reality *IS CLOSER TO* an > exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour." Not "is exactly and > precisely and fits perfectly as". > > People really seems to dislike that sentence. If I wrote > something along the lines of "The government of Freedonia is closer > to a mafia gang run by a murderous thug, than a happy extended family > presided over by a loving patriarch", I don't think I'd get reactions > like "The realities of a mafia gang are so different from Freedonia". > (though maybe I would, and there's a lesson there) > > > what is clear is that modern, industrial paradigms that > clearly demarcate > > between work and leisure no longer apply. > > No, there's now more money to be made trying to convince > people to do free work. > > [combining replies] > > T.Koenig at surrey.ac.uk > > The term "cult" might be popular in the press, but it has not caught > > on in the social sciences, for very good reasons. > > I will provisionally accept your assertion that the term > "cult" would be inappropriate in an academic social science paper. > > > You can't "demystify" something with a fairly mysterious concept, > > such as a cult. > > However, here I must disagree, and I believe you are making > the perfect the enemy of the good. In the context of opposing > technological mystification, I find the imperfect but evocative > phrasing of "Wikipedia is a cult" seems to work about as well as > can be expected for a concise counter-argument. > > -- > Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer > sethf at sethf.com http://sethf.com > See _Guardian_ columns at: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfinkelstein > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org **** Dr Mathieu O'Neil Adjunct Research Fellow Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute College of Arts and Social Science The Australian National University email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Thu Jun 3 18:15:01 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:15:01 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <4C07D505.6040502@att.net> Juliana & All, The topic of "dysfunction" is another one with a long record of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. The first thing to know about dysfunction is that it is relative to a function, that is, a goal, ideal, objective, purpose, or value. That brings us to the issue of "espoused values" versus "actual values", as emphasized, for instance, by systems thinkers like Argyris and Sch?n. One of the first questions to ask about a group project like Wikipedia is whthere the values that are "actually" actualized by it are consistent with the values that group members are constantly espousing. When we see a wide divergence between the two, as most long-term observe in Wikipedia, we have the task of explaining that difference. The complex of activities associated with Wikipedia may be perfectly functional with respect to certain goals -- the fact that these activities persist in spite of every attempt to modify them should give us a clue -- the question is, "What are those goals?" Jon Awbrey JA = Jon Awbrey JB = Juliana Brunello JB: I believe that the word 'cult' works more as a catchy title than a real > concept. What I find important in this discussion is that it all points > out to a disfunction in the WP community, and this, I believe, is worth > analyzing. JA: Ye Who Would Be C In Thy POV, >> >> Wikipedia's cabalism, cultishness, groupthinkitude, whatever you want to >> call it, is very real, and Vaknin's article describes it quite accurately. >> I frankly wish we could be discussing the future of knowledge work on the >> Web, relative to which Wikipedia furnishes a wealth of data about how badly >> a naive idea can can wrong, but other people keep bringing it up, so those >> who know are forced to say what they know. >> >> This is of course a hoary old topic at The Wikipedia Review. >> I once began a "meta-thread" in the Meta-Discussion Forum to >> collect various reflections on the subject. It appears to be >> something of a dead horse over there, but here it is, FWIW: >> >> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=17187&view=findpost&p=90830 >> >> I am slightly incited to resuscitate the jockey if not the horse. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From athina.k at gmail.com Thu Jun 3 18:21:19 2010 From: athina.k at gmail.com (Athina Karatzogianni) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 17:21:19 +0100 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <4C07D505.6040502@att.net> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <4C07C4A6.7010208@att.net> <1948.87.210.38.21.1275578554.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <4C07D505.6040502@att.net> Message-ID: Dear All Regarding the cabal, cult etc, I have used the term cryptohierarchies (like a true Greek) to describe leadership emergence of this style, in this article with George Michaelides Cyberconflict at the edge of chaos: Cryptohierarchies and self-organisation in the open-source movementIt is a strange paper admittedly, but if anyone is interested I can email you an electronic copy Cheers Athina On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote: > > Juliana & All, > > The topic of "dysfunction" is another one with a long record of > discussion at The Wikipedia Review. The first thing to know > about dysfunction is that it is relative to a function, > that is, a goal, ideal, objective, purpose, or value. > > That brings us to the issue of "espoused values" versus "actual values", > as emphasized, for instance, by systems thinkers like Argyris and Sch?n. > One of the first questions to ask about a group project like Wikipedia > is whthere the values that are "actually" actualized by it are consistent > with the values that group members are constantly espousing. When we see > a wide divergence between the two, as most long-term observe in Wikipedia, > we have the task of explaining that difference. The complex of activities > associated with Wikipedia may be perfectly functional with respect to > certain > goals -- the fact that these activities persist in spite of every attempt > to > modify them should give us a clue -- the question is, "What are those > goals?" > > Jon Awbrey > > JA = Jon Awbrey > JB = Juliana Brunello > > JB: I believe that the word 'cult' works more as a catchy title than a real > > concept. What I find important in this discussion is that it all points >> out to a disfunction in the WP community, and this, I believe, is worth >> analyzing. >> > > JA: Ye Who Would Be C In Thy POV, > > >>> Wikipedia's cabalism, cultishness, groupthinkitude, whatever you want to >>> call it, is very real, and Vaknin's article describes it quite >>> accurately. >>> I frankly wish we could be discussing the future of knowledge work on the >>> Web, relative to which Wikipedia furnishes a wealth of data about how >>> badly >>> a naive idea can can wrong, but other people keep bringing it up, so >>> those >>> who know are forced to say what they know. >>> >>> This is of course a hoary old topic at The Wikipedia Review. >>> I once began a "meta-thread" in the Meta-Discussion Forum to >>> collect various reflections on the subject. It appears to be >>> something of a dead horse over there, but here it is, FWIW: >>> >>> >>> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=17187&view=findpost&p=90830 >>> >>> I am slightly incited to resuscitate the jockey if not the horse. >>> >> > -- > > inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ > mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey > knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 > oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -- Dr Athina Karatzogianni Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Hull United Kingdom HU6 7RX T: ++44 (0) 1482 46 5790 F: ++44 (0) 1482 466107 http://www2.hull.ac.uk/FASS/humanities/media,_culture_and_society/staff/karatzogianni,_dr_athina.aspx Check out Athina's work http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AAthina%20Karatzogianni&page=1 China-Google article: http://www.e-ir.info/?p=3420 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thekohser at gmail.com Thu Jun 3 18:46:29 2010 From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:46:29 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult Message-ID: I disagree with the notion that "only a very small minority of people are critical of wikipedia and most think it's great (regardless of what you or i think)." This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY ...has nearly a million views on YouTube, not to mention how many views took place on the original CollegeHumor.com website and other cross-publishing sites and blogs. If the inanity of Wikipedia is so tangible and accessible for average people that a dramatic/humor production could take the time and effort to make what is obviously a popular meme actually FUNNY, then you know that society at large may think Wikipedia "is great", but simultaneously "laughable". The phrase "Professor Wikipedia" returns over 60,000 results on Google. The phrase "Wikipedia is a joke" returns over 41,000 hits; meanwhile, "Wikipedia is reliable" garners fewer than 4,000 results. A 2-to-1 ratio favors "Wikipedia is wrong" versus "Wikipedia is right" on Google. I think most people have a viewpoint on Scientology that it is a rather laughable institution and/or belief system. However, they gladly support (with money!) and "think great" the movies and musical output of famous Scientologists (John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Rob Thomas, Beck, etc.). I think Wikipedia is viewed in a similar light -- it's the butt of jokes, but if you set aside that you're not going to go to Wikipedia for final guidance on heart surgery or for instructions on how to build a house, it can be an amusing and engaging source of free information that (you know in your heart) probably has a 5% chance at any given moment of being quite wrong. As for it being a "cult"? Maybe so, maybe not... depending on your terms, and whether you're talking about the user, the author, the governing board, or the True Believers. Is this person a cultist or a humorist: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nojhan/1453862379/ Who knows? -- Gregory Kohs From Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de Thu Jun 3 19:22:17 2010 From: Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de (Alan Shapiro) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 19:22:17 +0200 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <58B7E20F2AE24DBAB5CD0ED2B7819924@AlanShapiroPC> i think that it's sad that so much of this discussion seems to come down to a binary opposition of either one is critical of Wikipedia or one thinks that it's great. Why is it so difficult to have a balanced view? My view is both critical and enthusiastic. There's a lot to criticize and also a lot of valuable work that has been done there. I know some very intelligent people who are contributing to Wikipedia articles. Alan From jawbrey at att.net Thu Jun 3 19:38:28 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:38:28 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <58B7E20F2AE24DBAB5CD0ED2B7819924@AlanShapiroPC> References: <58B7E20F2AE24DBAB5CD0ED2B7819924@AlanShapiroPC> Message-ID: <4C07E894.2070702@att.net> Alan & All, What binary opposition? I know some very intelligent people who contributed excellent content to Wikipedia articles, and some of them are still ''trying'' to do so, and yet they are many of the strongest critics of Wikipedian practices. I think the purpose of criticism is a bit more nuanced than that, and it has more to do with the system of practices that is being inculcated in impressionable minds than the mere content of pages. Jon Awbrey Alan Shapiro wrote: > I think that it's sad that so much of this discussion seems to come down > to a binary opposition of either one is critical of Wikipedia or one > thinks that it's great. Why is it so difficult to have a balanced view? > My view is both critical and enthusiastic. There's a lot to criticize > and also a lot of valuable work that has been done there. I know some > very intelligent people who are contributing to Wikipedia articles. > > Alan -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de Thu Jun 3 19:50:04 2010 From: Alan.Shapiro at gmx.de (Alan Shapiro) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:50:04 +0200 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <4C07E894.2070702@att.net> References: <58B7E20F2AE24DBAB5CD0ED2B7819924@AlanShapiroPC> <4C07E894.2070702@att.net> Message-ID: <20100603175004.145430@gmx.net> 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 -------- Original-Nachricht -------- > Datum: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:38:28 -0400 > Von: Jon Awbrey > An: Alan Shapiro > CC: Gregory Kohs , CPOV > Betreff: Re: The Wikipedia Cult > Alan & All, > > What binary opposition? > > I know some very intelligent people who contributed excellent content > to Wikipedia articles, and some of them are still ''trying'' to do so, > and yet they are many of the strongest critics of Wikipedian practices. > > I think the purpose of criticism is a bit more nuanced than that, > and it has more to do with the system of practices that is being > inculcated in impressionable minds than the mere content of pages. > > Jon Awbrey > > Alan Shapiro wrote: > > I think that it's sad that so much of this discussion seems to come down > > to a binary opposition of either one is critical of Wikipedia or one > > thinks that it's great. Why is it so difficult to have a balanced view? > > My view is both critical and enthusiastic. There's a lot to criticize > > and also a lot of valuable work that has been done there. I know some > > very intelligent people who are contributing to Wikipedia articles. > > > > Alan > > -- > > inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ > mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey > knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 > oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey -- GRATIS f?r alle GMX-Mitglieder: Die maxdome Movie-FLAT! Jetzt freischalten unter http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/maxdome01 From jawbrey at att.net Thu Jun 3 21:06:26 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:06:26 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult -- Focal Problem : Banning Message-ID: <4C07FD32.1080409@att.net> 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 -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From jawbrey at att.net Sat Jun 5 05:12:15 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:12:15 -0400 Subject: The Wikipedia Cult In-Reply-To: <20100603152904.GA29592@sethf.com> References: <20100603130425.GA27825@sethf.com> <20100603152904.GA29592@sethf.com> Message-ID: <4C09C08F.4000003@att.net> CPOVers, Seth's remarks about "pre-existing vulnerable people" ties in with another one of those much-discussed topics at The Wikipedia Review. Many observers have noticed the commonalities that connect 3 types of "usual susceptibles": (1) the predisposition to become addicted to online role-playing games, (2) the psychological profile of the typical mark in a confidence game, (3) the susceptibility to sudden belief system conversion, as in cults. The engine that that drives the game forward in all of these cases is an unbridled expectation buried in the psyche of the exploited person, an irrational drive that the exploiter uses to rein and ride the mark. Jon Awbrey NT = Nathaniel Tkacz SF = Seth Finkelstein NT: if the term "cult" is too attractive to be left aside, i think it would be > useful to pose the question: how does wikipedia transform the notion of cult? > SF: Easy - it's the first truly successful *online* cult. > This is where there really is something interesting going on - > not unknown in the abstract, but new implementations are possible > due to thescaling and efficiencies from electronic communications. > > For example, where physical cults may create alienation and isolation > by trying to control the person's environment, Wikipedia can work > by funneling in those who are *already* alienated and isolated in > their lives. Now, it's not that physical cults can't recruit. > Of course they do. But physical recruitment is a labor-intensive effort > (getting someone to stand in an airport or on a streetcorner all day > is difficult). If you can "advertise", worldwide - suddenly new > methods of getting pre-existing vulnerable people to come to *you* > become cost-effective. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com Sun Jun 6 02:52:30 2010 From: andreas.erich.kemper at googlemail.com (Andreas Kemper) Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 02:52:30 +0200 Subject: Personal Attacks in Real Life Message-ID: Hi My name is Andreas Kemper and I'm writing in German-Speaking Wikipedia since 2005. My subject in Wikipedia is 'discrimination': articles about discrimination but also is my subject 'discrimination in Wikipedia'. I saw a lot of personal attacks in this field and I know there is some research about personal attacks in Wikipedia. But there are also attacks against Wikipeida-Authors in their real life. I would like to know if there is any research about personal attacks against Wikipedia-Authors in the "real life"? Attacks like repression by police or triggered persecution by religious or political fanatics? Attacks like posting the real name and photos on websites, phone calls, harassments? And research about the impact of this attacks, and how Wikipedia-Authors defend themselves. Best Andreas http://www.klassismus.de http://knol.google.com/k/andreas-kemper/andreas-kemper/8bgikaqot3ts/0# -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From juliana at networkcultures.org Thu Jun 10 13:57:59 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:57:59 +0200 (CEST) Subject: why wp is not required anymore Message-ID: <1188.145.92.114.222.1276171079.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Dear list, I have just found a very silly text on the web called "why wikipedia is not required anymore". http://rudefox.com/why-wikipedia-is-not-required-anymore/comment-page-1/#comment-3551 I tried posting a comment just now, but it is awaiting moderation, so not sure if/when it will show up. Maybe some of you would also like to leave your comments there, or here, if you think it is worthy of your attention :) Best, Juliana Institute of Network Cultures HvA Interactive Media t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 www.networkcultures.org From juliana at networkcultures.org Mon Jun 14 14:39:46 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:39:46 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Ilmpedia Message-ID: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These are all Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia will be an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked below states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have more information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to form our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the opposite, one stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I wish for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 Juliana Institute of Network Cultures HvA Interactive Media t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 www.networkcultures.org From majava at ifi.uio.no Mon Jun 14 15:33:13 2010 From: majava at ifi.uio.no (Maja van der Velden) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:33:13 +0200 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: Hi Juliana, We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across systems or categories. Greetings, Maja On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These > are all > Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia > will be > an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked > below > states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of > Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this > separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have > more > information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to > form > our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the > opposite, one > stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I > wish > for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. > > http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 > > Juliana > > > > Institute of Network Cultures > HvA Interactive Media > t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 > f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 > www.networkcultures.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org From juliana at networkcultures.org Mon Jun 14 15:47:31 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:47:31 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Hi Maja, I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from a 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it was only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, but that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen and cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? Juliana > Hi Juliana, > > We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that > trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. > > About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the > world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. > > I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences > (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across > systems or categories. > > Greetings, > > Maja > > On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > >> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >> are all >> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >> will be >> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >> below >> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >> more >> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >> form >> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >> opposite, one >> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >> wish >> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >> >> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >> >> Juliana >> >> >> >> Institute of Network Cultures >> HvA Interactive Media >> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >> www.networkcultures.org >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > From paolo at gnuband.org Mon Jun 14 15:58:33 2010 From: paolo at gnuband.org (paolo massa) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:58:33 +0200 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: Well, I know everyone here knows about http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Main_Page http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page Wikipedia with precise starting POVs... About fragmentation of society due to extreme tech-enabled personalization, I suggest you to read "Republic.com" by Cass Sunstein http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html Will we arrive to Mepedia.org (A wikipedia containing just MY personal views, my own no-need-to-be-negotiated truth)? P. On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > Hi Maja, > > I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from a > 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it was > only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, but > that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese > encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one > another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen and > cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? > > Juliana > >> Hi Juliana, >> >> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >> >> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >> >> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >> systems or categories. >> >> Greetings, >> >> Maja >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>> are all >>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>> will be >>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>> below >>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>> more >>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>> form >>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>> opposite, one >>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>> wish >>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>> >>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>> >>> Juliana >>> >>> >>> >>> Institute of Network Cultures >>> HvA Interactive Media >>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>> www.networkcultures.org >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> >> >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -- -- Paolo Massa Email: paolo AT gnuband DOT org Blog: http://gnuband.org From majava at ifi.uio.no Mon Jun 14 16:04:26 2010 From: majava at ifi.uio.no (Maja van der Velden) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:04:26 +0200 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> Hi Juliana, I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i misunderstand, but i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as different from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are christian websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. http://www.ubuntuce.com/) etc. that target people with Christian religious beliefs. In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. I know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in your article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made invisible may do more harm. Greetings, Maja On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > Hi Maja, > > I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but > from a > 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and > it was > only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise > diversity, but > that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese > encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one > another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be > strengthen and > cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? > > Juliana > >> Hi Juliana, >> >> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >> >> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of >> the >> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >> >> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >> systems or categories. >> >> Greetings, >> >> Maja >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>> are all >>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>> will be >>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>> below >>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of >>> this >>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>> more >>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>> form >>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>> opposite, one >>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>> wish >>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>> >>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>> >>> Juliana >>> >>> >>> >>> Institute of Network Cultures >>> HvA Interactive Media >>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>> www.networkcultures.org >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> >> >> > > From niesyto at fk615.uni-siegen.de Mon Jun 14 16:08:39 2010 From: niesyto at fk615.uni-siegen.de (Niesyto, Johanna) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:08:39 +0200 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl>, Message-ID: <4109080A6B8F554E9C8EFDCA3DE7500FC77275E6A1@MAIL40.uni-siegen.de> hi all this discussion just reminds me of a distinction richard rogers made in one of his presentations, which i think is important to start with: 1. Web as Cyberspace (1994-2000) Virtual in the sense of distinct from the real. 2. Web as Virtual Society? (2000-2007) Virtual is part of the real. Need the offline. 3. Web as Virtual? Society (2007- ) Virtual as indication of the real. Need the online. 4. Now claims about society may be 'digitally grounded' (understanding society with the web) we may first try to comparatively deconstruct 'the global', the 'western' etc by using these four different 'research claims'... grz johanna ________________________________________ Von: cpov-bounces at listcultures.org [cpov-bounces at listcultures.org] im Auftrag von paolo massa [paolo at gnuband.org] Gesendet: Montag, 14. Juni 2010 15:58 An: Juliana Brunello Cc: cpov at listcultures.org Betreff: Re: Ilmpedia Well, I know everyone here knows about http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Main_Page http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page Wikipedia with precise starting POVs... About fragmentation of society due to extreme tech-enabled personalization, I suggest you to read "Republic.com" by Cass Sunstein http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html Will we arrive to Mepedia.org (A wikipedia containing just MY personal views, my own no-need-to-be-negotiated truth)? P. On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > Hi Maja, > > I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from a > 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it was > only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, but > that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese > encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one > another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen and > cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? > > Juliana > >> Hi Juliana, >> >> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >> >> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >> >> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >> systems or categories. >> >> Greetings, >> >> Maja >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>> are all >>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>> will be >>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>> below >>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>> more >>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>> form >>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>> opposite, one >>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>> wish >>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>> >>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>> >>> Juliana >>> >>> >>> >>> Institute of Network Cultures >>> HvA Interactive Media >>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>> www.networkcultures.org >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> >> >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -- -- Paolo Massa Email: paolo AT gnuband DOT org Blog: http://gnuband.org _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org From jawbrey at att.net Mon Jun 14 16:08:39 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:08:39 -0400 Subject: Myopedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <4C1637E7.6010206@att.net> As opposed, of course, to "Denial Of Point Of View" -- http://wikipedia.org/ (DOPOV) Jon ;) paolo massa wrote: > Well, I know everyone here knows about > http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Main_Page > http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page > Wikipedia with precise starting POVs... > > About fragmentation of society due to extreme tech-enabled personalization, > I suggest you to read "Republic.com" by Cass Sunstein > http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html > Will we arrive to Mepedia.org (A wikipedia containing just > MY personal views, my own no-need-to-be-negotiated truth)? > > P. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From juliana at networkcultures.org Mon Jun 14 16:19:09 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:19:09 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <1974.145.92.114.222.1276525149.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> > About fragmentation of society due to extreme tech-enabled > personalization, I suggest you to read "Republic.com" by Cass Sunstein > http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html > Will we arrive to Mepedia.org (A wikipedia containing just MY personal > views, my own no-need-to-be-negotiated truth)? > > P. Wow, this book sounds really good,thx for the link! will order it. This is what I was talking about (though maybe not so clear... sorry about that). I took the Ilmpedia as an example because it is something coming up now, but conservapedia or metapedia are examples of it too (however I believe they are very extreme and Ilmpedia has not shown its face yet). We could also cite Hudong, a chinese 'wikipedia'. The point is, fragmentation (what I called separatism before, maybe a bad choice of words) suppresses dialog among people with different concepts. It does not serve diversity in a good sense. There will be diversity on the web, but if this diversity does not interact, then it is an issue of concern. Juliana > Well, I know everyone here knows about > http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Main_Page > http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page > Wikipedia with precise starting POVs... > > About fragmentation of society due to extreme tech-enabled > personalization, I suggest you to read "Republic.com" by Cass Sunstein > http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html > Will we arrive to Mepedia.org (A wikipedia containing just MY personal > views, my own no-need-to-be-negotiated truth)? > > P. > > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello > wrote: >> Hi Maja, >> >> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from >> a >> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it >> was >> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, >> but >> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese >> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one >> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen >> and >> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? >> >> Juliana >> >>> Hi Juliana, >>> >>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >>> >>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >>> >>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >>> systems or categories. >>> >>> Greetings, >>> >>> Maja >>> >>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >>> >>>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>>> are all >>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>>> will be >>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>>> below >>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>>> more >>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>>> form >>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>>> opposite, one >>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>>> wish >>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>>> >>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>>> >>>> Juliana >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Institute of Network Cultures >>>> HvA Interactive Media >>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>>> www.networkcultures.org >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> > > > > -- > -- > Paolo Massa > Email: paolo AT gnuband DOT org > Blog: http://gnuband.org > > > From elad at wieder.co.il Mon Jun 14 16:53:10 2010 From: elad at wieder.co.il (Elad Wieder) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:53:10 +0300 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> Message-ID: One of the very apparent deficiencies of Wikipedia, inherent to choosing wiki as the platform for building and encyclopedia, is that is does not serve as a "market" for opinions or for PoVs; rather it is being used as a battlefield for getting one's PoV to prevail: only one version of a document/term is presented to the general public at each point in time. One may say that ideally the version presented in Wikipedia should be pluralistic so to represent different PoVs for each term/subject, but this way of thinking by itself is very much a liberal PoV, biased by itself; it can be argued on behalf of any dogmatic PoV (be it any of the religions or dogmas like political stands etc.) that in order to "do justice" with its arguments, the public should be able to observe its definitions (or encyclopedic entries) in a holistic manner, not being digested and compared to other ideas on a "by paragraph" basis. Because Wikipedia does not enable the presentation of parallel dogmatic PoVs to the general public in the same time, those who support other PoVs (essentially, less pluralistic/liberal) are driven to come up with separated encyclopedias. The outcome, IMHO, is that dominant sectors would get tired from the "battlefield" and thus from the dialog; the "pluralistic" Wikipedia will either (1) be hijacked by a certain dogma, or (2) lack the contribution of the "enthusiasts" who in turn will go to present their ideas on a separate, more supportive, stage. Elad On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 17:04, Maja van der Velden wrote: > Hi Juliana, > > I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting > topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i misunderstand, but > i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as different > from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are christian > websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. > http://www.ubuntuce.com/) etc. that target people with Christian religious > beliefs. > > In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. I > know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in your > article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made > invisible may do more harm. > > Greetings, > > Maja > > > On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > > Hi Maja, >> >> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from a >> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it was >> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, but >> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese >> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one >> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen and >> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? >> >> Juliana >> >> Hi Juliana, >>> >>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >>> >>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >>> >>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >>> systems or categories. >>> >>> Greetings, >>> >>> Maja >>> >>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >>> >>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>>> are all >>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>>> will be >>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>>> below >>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>>> more >>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>>> form >>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>>> opposite, one >>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>>> wish >>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>>> >>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>>> >>>> Juliana >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Institute of Network Cultures >>>> HvA Interactive Media >>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>>> www.networkcultures.org >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From juliana at networkcultures.org Mon Jun 14 17:25:17 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:25:17 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> Message-ID: <2424.145.92.114.222.1276529117.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Hi Elad, this is so very true! But what can be done to stop 'fragmentation'? Should the content of several encyclopedias with different povs be interlinked? would that work? Juliana > One of the very apparent deficiencies of Wikipedia, inherent to choosing > wiki as the platform for building and encyclopedia, is that is does not > serve as a "market" for opinions or for PoVs; rather it is being used as a > battlefield for getting one's PoV to prevail: only one version of a > document/term is presented to the general public at each point in time. > > One may say that ideally the version presented in Wikipedia should be > pluralistic so to represent different PoVs for each term/subject, but this > way of thinking by itself is very much a liberal PoV, biased by itself; it > can be argued on behalf of any dogmatic PoV (be it any of the religions or > dogmas like political stands etc.) that in order to "do justice" with its > arguments, the public should be able to observe its definitions (or > encyclopedic entries) in a holistic manner, not being digested and > compared > to other ideas on a "by paragraph" basis. > > Because Wikipedia does not enable the presentation of parallel dogmatic > PoVs > to the general public in the same time, those who support other PoVs > (essentially, less pluralistic/liberal) are driven to come up with > separated encyclopedias. > > The outcome, IMHO, is that dominant sectors would get tired from the > "battlefield" and thus from the dialog; the "pluralistic" Wikipedia will > either (1) be hijacked by a certain dogma, or (2) lack the contribution of > the "enthusiasts" who in turn will go to present their ideas on a > separate, > more supportive, stage. > > > > Elad > > > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 17:04, Maja van der Velden > wrote: > >> Hi Juliana, >> >> I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting >> topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i misunderstand, >> but >> i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as >> different >> from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are christian >> websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. >> http://www.ubuntuce.com/) etc. that target people with Christian >> religious >> beliefs. >> >> In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. >> I >> know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in your >> article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made >> invisible may do more harm. >> >> Greetings, >> >> Maja >> >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >> Hi Maja, >>> >>> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from >>> a >>> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it >>> was >>> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, >>> but >>> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese >>> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one >>> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen >>> and >>> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? >>> >>> Juliana >>> >>> Hi Juliana, >>>> >>>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >>>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >>>> >>>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >>>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >>>> >>>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >>>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >>>> systems or categories. >>>> >>>> Greetings, >>>> >>>> Maja >>>> >>>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >>>> >>>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>>>> are all >>>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>>>> will be >>>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>>>> below >>>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>>>> more >>>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>>>> form >>>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>>>> opposite, one >>>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>>>> wish >>>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>>>> >>>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>>>> >>>>> Juliana >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Institute of Network Cultures >>>>> HvA Interactive Media >>>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>>>> www.networkcultures.org >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> > From elad at wieder.co.il Mon Jun 14 18:33:02 2010 From: elad at wieder.co.il (Elad Wieder) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:33:02 +0300 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <2424.145.92.114.222.1276529117.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> <2424.145.92.114.222.1276529117.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: I doubt if merely interlinking several encyclopedias would do the job; I believe that the solution that evolved for offering the general public with different goods is a Market; in our case - a market for Points of View. Every market has fallacies and failures, and the design of a marketplace that will be both inviting for all kinds of ideas and approaches, while keeping balances and allowing all of them to co-exist is a very complicated challenge. Having that said, I would argue that the wiki platform is not suitable nor intended to serve as a marketplace; it is a tool for building content as a community, while people of different dogmatic PoVs we discussed can hardly be considered to be a community (they don't share essential common values, interest and goals - but competing ones). A more appropriate platform for a marketplace would allow each community to collaborate and build its content, while enabling and facilitating the public to compare and choose between such competeing PoVs of the different communities. Of course, a sophisticated marketplace would also allow the discourse and interlinking between such communities. Elad On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 18:25, Juliana Brunello wrote: > Hi Elad, > > this is so very true! But what can be done to stop 'fragmentation'? Should > the content of several encyclopedias with different povs be interlinked? > would that work? > > Juliana > > > One of the very apparent deficiencies of Wikipedia, inherent to choosing > > wiki as the platform for building and encyclopedia, is that is does not > > serve as a "market" for opinions or for PoVs; rather it is being used as > a > > battlefield for getting one's PoV to prevail: only one version of a > > document/term is presented to the general public at each point in time. > > > > One may say that ideally the version presented in Wikipedia should be > > pluralistic so to represent different PoVs for each term/subject, but > this > > way of thinking by itself is very much a liberal PoV, biased by itself; > it > > can be argued on behalf of any dogmatic PoV (be it any of the religions > or > > dogmas like political stands etc.) that in order to "do justice" with its > > arguments, the public should be able to observe its definitions (or > > encyclopedic entries) in a holistic manner, not being digested and > > compared > > to other ideas on a "by paragraph" basis. > > > > Because Wikipedia does not enable the presentation of parallel dogmatic > > PoVs > > to the general public in the same time, those who support other PoVs > > (essentially, less pluralistic/liberal) are driven to come up with > > separated encyclopedias. > > > > The outcome, IMHO, is that dominant sectors would get tired from the > > "battlefield" and thus from the dialog; the "pluralistic" Wikipedia will > > either (1) be hijacked by a certain dogma, or (2) lack the contribution > of > > the "enthusiasts" who in turn will go to present their ideas on a > > separate, > > more supportive, stage. > > > > > > > > Elad > > > > > > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 17:04, Maja van der Velden > > wrote: > > > >> Hi Juliana, > >> > >> I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting > >> topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i misunderstand, > >> but > >> i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as > >> different > >> from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are christian > >> websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. > >> http://www.ubuntuce.com/) etc. that target people with Christian > >> religious > >> beliefs. > >> > >> In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. > >> I > >> know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in your > >> article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made > >> invisible may do more harm. > >> > >> Greetings, > >> > >> Maja > >> > >> > >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > >> > >> Hi Maja, > >>> > >>> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from > >>> a > >>> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it > >>> was > >>> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, > >>> but > >>> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese > >>> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one > >>> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen > >>> and > >>> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? > >>> > >>> Juliana > >>> > >>> Hi Juliana, > >>>> > >>>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that > >>>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. > >>>> > >>>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the > >>>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. > >>>> > >>>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences > >>>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across > >>>> systems or categories. > >>>> > >>>> Greetings, > >>>> > >>>> Maja > >>>> > >>>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These > >>>>> are all > >>>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia > >>>>> will be > >>>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked > >>>>> below > >>>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of > >>>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this > >>>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have > >>>>> more > >>>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to > >>>>> form > >>>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the > >>>>> opposite, one > >>>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I > >>>>> wish > >>>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. > >>>>> > >>>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 > >>>>> > >>>>> Juliana > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> Institute of Network Cultures > >>>>> HvA Interactive Media > >>>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 > >>>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 > >>>>> www.networkcultures.org > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > >>>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > >>>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>> > >>> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > >> > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu Mon Jun 14 19:17:09 2010 From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:17:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <1299719573.1431621276535539314.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Several points of interest to this thread: 1. It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about fragmentation. 2. The other concern, the silencing/marginalization of alternate Points of View by the presence of large, singular sites of content creation and distribution like Wikipedia, I agree is an important one. However, the history of Wikipedia and Wikipedia like projects shows a long list of failures to implement a "marketplace of ideas" model. GNUpedia, an attempt by the FSF to build its own encyclopedia in 2001, imploded after selecting a technologically ambitious plan to build a repository of texts users could filter by their own criteria. You can see its ambitious goals on its sad, dead homepage here: http://gne.sourceforge.net/eng/index.html Wikipedia users batted around plans to build similar "multiple stable versions" in the fall of 2001/spring 2002. None were ever implemented. 3. The above suggests, to me, that the basic metaphor of the "marketplace of ideas," which assumes that individuals are capable of, or even interested in, acting on some intrinsic set of desires to select or build an individual "truth" based on multiple, competing texts is badly flawed. Instead, I believe that we see actors existing in communities, using cues from shared experiences and shared resources to resolve difficult problems of truth for them. In this sense, "battlefields" might be preferable to "marketplaces" as battlefields allow space for competing collectives to maneuver, clash, and sometimes even negotiate! What we might want to do is try to teach and spread the art of reading the battlefield. Wikipedia, especially, preserves a deep record of archeological evidence of the battles fought on its terrain... though it takes considerable skill to read this record. Just my thoughts. - Andy -- -- Andrew Famiglietti Brittain Fellow School of Literature, Communication, and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elad Wieder" To: "Juliana Brunello" Cc: cpov at listcultures.org Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:33:02 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: Ilmpedia I doubt if merely interlinking several encyclopedias would do the job; I believe that the solution that evolved for offering the general public with different goods is a Market; in our case - a market for Points of View. Every market has fallacies and failures, and the design of a marketplace that will be both inviting for all kinds of ideas and approaches, while keeping balances and allowing all of them to co-exist is a very complicated challenge. Having that said, I would argue that the wiki platform is not suitable nor intended to serve as a marketplace; it is a tool for building content as a community, while people of different dogmatic PoVs we discussed can hardly be considered to be a community (they don't share essential common values, interest and goals - but competing ones). A more appropriate platform for a marketplace would allow each community to collaborate and build its content, while enabling and facilitating the public to compare and choose between such competeing PoVs of the different communities. Of course, a sophisticated marketplace would also allow the discourse and interlinking between such communities. Elad On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 18:25, Juliana Brunello < juliana at networkcultures.org > wrote: Hi Elad, this is so very true! But what can be done to stop 'fragmentation'? Should the content of several encyclopedias with different povs be interlinked? would that work? Juliana > One of the very apparent deficiencies of Wikipedia, inherent to choosing > wiki as the platform for building and encyclopedia, is that is does not > serve as a "market" for opinions or for PoVs; rather it is being used as a > battlefield for getting one's PoV to prevail: only one version of a > document/term is presented to the general public at each point in time. > > One may say that ideally the version presented in Wikipedia should be > pluralistic so to represent different PoVs for each term/subject, but this > way of thinking by itself is very much a liberal PoV, biased by itself; it > can be argued on behalf of any dogmatic PoV (be it any of the religions or > dogmas like political stands etc.) that in order to "do justice" with its > arguments, the public should be able to observe its definitions (or > encyclopedic entries) in a holistic manner, not being digested and > compared > to other ideas on a "by paragraph" basis. > > Because Wikipedia does not enable the presentation of parallel dogmatic > PoVs > to the general public in the same time, those who support other PoVs > (essentially, less pluralistic/liberal) are driven to come up with > separated encyclopedias. > > The outcome, IMHO, is that dominant sectors would get tired from the > "battlefield" and thus from the dialog; the "pluralistic" Wikipedia will > either (1) be hijacked by a certain dogma, or (2) lack the contribution of > the "enthusiasts" who in turn will go to present their ideas on a > separate, > more supportive, stage. > > > > Elad > > > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 17:04, Maja van der Velden > < majava at ifi.uio.no >wrote: > >> Hi Juliana, >> >> I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting >> topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i misunderstand, >> but >> i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as >> different >> from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are christian >> websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. >> http://www.ubuntuce.com/ ) etc. that target people with Christian >> religious >> beliefs. >> >> In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. >> I >> know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in your >> article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made >> invisible may do more harm. >> >> Greetings, >> >> Maja >> >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >> Hi Maja, >>> >>> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but from >>> a >>> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it >>> was >>> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, >>> but >>> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese >>> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one >>> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen >>> and >>> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? >>> >>> Juliana >>> >>> Hi Juliana, >>>> >>>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >>>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >>>> >>>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of the >>>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >>>> >>>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >>>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >>>> systems or categories. >>>> >>>> Greetings, >>>> >>>> Maja >>>> >>>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >>>> >>>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >>>>> are all >>>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >>>>> will be >>>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >>>>> below >>>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >>>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of this >>>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >>>>> more >>>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >>>>> form >>>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >>>>> opposite, one >>>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >>>>> wish >>>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >>>>> >>>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >>>>> >>>>> Juliana >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Institute of Network Cultures >>>>> HvA Interactive Media >>>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >>>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >>>>> www.networkcultures.org >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >>>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> > _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Mon Jun 14 19:34:12 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:34:12 -0400 Subject: Casualty Numero Uno In-Reply-To: <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> References: <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <4C166814.4000800@att.net> Andy, You make a number of good points, but let us not forget that every war has dealers who, win-or-lose, gain hand-over-fist from selling the weapons of "neutralization" to combatants on every side. Jon Awbrey andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu wrote: > Several points of interest to this thread: > > 1. It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about fragmentation. > > 2. The other concern, the silencing/marginalization of alternate Points of View by the presence of large, singular sites of content creation and distribution like Wikipedia, I agree is an important one. However, the history of Wikipedia and Wikipedia like projects shows a long list of failures to implement a "marketplace of ideas" model. GNUpedia, an attempt by the FSF to build its own encyclopedia in 2001, imploded after selecting a technologically ambitious plan to build a repository of texts users could filter by their own criteria. You can see its ambitious goals on its sad, dead homepage here: http://gne.sourceforge.net/eng/index.html Wikipedia users batted around plans to build similar "multiple stable versions" in the fall of 2001/spring 2002. None were ever implemented. > > 3. The above suggests, to me, that the basic metaphor of the "marketplace of ideas," which assumes that individuals are capable of, or even interested in, acting on some intrinsic set of desires to select or build an individual "truth" based on multiple, competing texts is badly flawed. Instead, I believe that we see actors existing in communities, using cues from shared experiences and shared resources to resolve difficult problems of truth for them. In this sense, "battlefields" might be preferable to "marketplaces" as battlefields allow space for competing collectives to maneuver, clash, and sometimes even negotiate! What we might want to do is try to teach and spread the art of reading the battlefield. Wikipedia, especially, preserves a deep record of archeological evidence of the battles fought on its terrain... though it takes considerable skill to read this record. > > Just my thoughts. > > - Andy -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From nathanieltkacz at gmail.com Tue Jun 15 01:06:23 2010 From: nathanieltkacz at gmail.com (nathaniel tkacz) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:06:23 +1000 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> References: <1299719573.1431621276535539314.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: hi all - some fast and loose thoughts... i don't think a marketplace and a battlefield are necessarily so far apart! players in market are involved in battles of sorts and also sometimes negotiate! there are terms in basic economics that gesture toward these different scenarios, like ideal markets and oligopolies. let's not also forget the wales himself describes the process of article creation as likened to a market. the wiki ideology of article creation resonates with a market theory in at least two ways: - both claim that ideas come together and the best ones rise to the top and become successful, - both claim that there is no overarching, absolute body who determines the criteria of success, (once again, these are produced 'by the market'), it is this kind of thinking that connects wales to hayek and was also discussed by florian cramer. florian made the claim that npov is hayek's market theory translated into encyclopaedic policy. i do think that wikipedia functions in ways that often resonate with a "real" market, because i don't believe that real markets function like the ones described and taught in economic theory (that is something marx did a good job of critiquing). instead, like real markets, there is a gap between how markets are explained and how they operate. to think alongside a famous passage in Capital, what we need to do is leave the domain of policy (of rights, freedom and bentham) and look closely and critically at how things actually get made (that is, we need to enter the factory). thinking wikipedia through the frame of markets and political economy more generally might be very productive, especially if we look both at the theory of markets and the practice of markets. best Nate Tkacz Research Fellow, RMIT University Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__ Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/ On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:17 AM, wrote: > Several points of interest to this thread: > > 1. It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract > significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly well-established > parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as the 48,837th most > visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website. Enciclopedia > Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous Spanish Fork of 2002, was > outstripped in article production by the Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. > Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited websites in Mexico, Colombia, and > Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa listings for the top 100 most visited > Websites for these countries. Without traffic, a volunteer based project > cannot attract volunteer labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I > wouldn't worry about fragmentation. > > 2. The other concern, the silencing/marginalization of alternate Points of > View by the presence of large, singular sites of content creation and > distribution like Wikipedia, I agree is an important one. However, the > history of Wikipedia and Wikipedia like projects shows a long list of > failures to implement a "marketplace of ideas" model. GNUpedia, an attempt > by the FSF to build its own encyclopedia in 2001, imploded after selecting a > technologically ambitious plan to build a repository of texts users could > filter by their own criteria. You can see its ambitious goals on its sad, > dead homepage here: http://gne.sourceforge.net/eng/index.html Wikipedia > users batted around plans to build similar "multiple stable versions" in the > fall of 2001/spring 2002. None were ever implemented. > > 3. The above suggests, to me, that the basic metaphor of the "marketplace > of ideas," which assumes that individuals are capable of, or even interested > in, acting on some intrinsic set of desires to select or build an individual > "truth" based on multiple, competing texts is badly flawed. Instead, I > believe that we see actors existing in communities, using cues from shared > experiences and shared resources to resolve difficult problems of truth for > them. In this sense, "battlefields" might be preferable to "marketplaces" as > battlefields allow space for competing collectives to maneuver, clash, and > sometimes even negotiate! What we might want to do is try to teach and > spread the art of reading the battlefield. Wikipedia, especially, preserves > a deep record of archeological evidence of the battles fought on its > terrain... though it takes considerable skill to read this record. > > Just my thoughts. > > - Andy > > -- > -- > Andrew Famiglietti > Brittain Fellow > School of Literature, Communication, and Culture > Georgia Institute of Technology > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Elad Wieder" > To: "Juliana Brunello" > Cc: cpov at listcultures.org > Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:33:02 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern > Subject: Re: Ilmpedia > > I doubt if merely interlinking several encyclopedias would do the job; I > believe that the solution that evolved for offering the general public with > different goods is a Market; in our case - a market for Points of View. > > Every market has fallacies and failures, and the design of a marketplace > that will be both inviting for all kinds of ideas and approaches, while > keeping balances and allowing all of them to co-exist is a very > complicated challenge. > > Having that said, I would argue that the wiki platform is not suitable nor > intended to serve as a marketplace; it is a tool for building content as a > community, while people of different dogmatic PoVs we discussed can hardly > be considered to be a community (they don't share essential common values, > interest and goals - but competing ones). > > A more appropriate platform for a marketplace would allow each community to > collaborate and build its content, while enabling and facilitating the > public to compare and choose between such competeing PoVs of the different > communities. Of course, a sophisticated marketplace would also allow the > discourse and interlinking between such communities. > > Elad > > > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 18:25, Juliana Brunello < > juliana at networkcultures.org> wrote: > >> Hi Elad, >> >> this is so very true! But what can be done to stop 'fragmentation'? Should >> the content of several encyclopedias with different povs be interlinked? >> would that work? >> >> Juliana >> >> > One of the very apparent deficiencies of Wikipedia, inherent to choosing >> > wiki as the platform for building and encyclopedia, is that is does not >> > serve as a "market" for opinions or for PoVs; rather it is being used as >> a >> > battlefield for getting one's PoV to prevail: only one version of a >> > document/term is presented to the general public at each point in time. >> > >> > One may say that ideally the version presented in Wikipedia should be >> > pluralistic so to represent different PoVs for each term/subject, but >> this >> > way of thinking by itself is very much a liberal PoV, biased by itself; >> it >> > can be argued on behalf of any dogmatic PoV (be it any of the religions >> or >> > dogmas like political stands etc.) that in order to "do justice" with >> its >> > arguments, the public should be able to observe its definitions (or >> > encyclopedic entries) in a holistic manner, not being digested and >> > compared >> > to other ideas on a "by paragraph" basis. >> > >> > Because Wikipedia does not enable the presentation of parallel dogmatic >> > PoVs >> > to the general public in the same time, those who support other PoVs >> > (essentially, less pluralistic/liberal) are driven to come up with >> > separated encyclopedias. >> > >> > The outcome, IMHO, is that dominant sectors would get tired from the >> > "battlefield" and thus from the dialog; the "pluralistic" Wikipedia will >> > either (1) be hijacked by a certain dogma, or (2) lack the contribution >> of >> > the "enthusiasts" who in turn will go to present their ideas on a >> > separate, >> > more supportive, stage. >> > >> > >> > >> > Elad >> > >> > >> > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 17:04, Maja van der Velden >> > wrote: >> > >> >> Hi Juliana, >> >> >> >> I am traveling and i don't have much time. I find this an interesting >> >> topic. I am sorry i have to be brief in my reply. Maybe i >> misunderstand, >> >> but >> >> i understand in this context 'christianization' and 'western' as >> >> different >> >> from each other. I based my comment on the fact that there are >> christian >> >> websites, christian search engines, christian software releases (e.g. >> >> http://www.ubuntuce.com/) etc. that target people with Christian >> >> religious >> >> beliefs. >> >> >> >> In my CPOV presentation i proposed the idea of a distributed Wikipedia. >> >> I >> >> know that is understood as something else as the sites mentioned in >> your >> >> article. But i think we already have many POVs. Having your POV made >> >> invisible may do more harm. >> >> >> >> Greetings, >> >> >> >> Maja >> >> >> >> >> >> On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:47 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >> >> >> Hi Maja, >> >>> >> >>> I don't believe we can speak of 'christianization of the web', but >> from >> >>> a >> >>> 'westernization'. Basically, the internet was born in the west and it >> >>> was >> >>> only natural for it to represent western views. I do praise diversity, >> >>> but >> >>> that was not my point. The question is, if separating povs - a chinese >> >>> encyclopedia, a muslim, a 'western' - that do not communicate with one >> >>> another. Will the definitions of reality of each nation be strengthen >> >>> and >> >>> cooperation and understanding among them be weakened? >> >>> >> >>> Juliana >> >>> >> >>> Hi Juliana, >> >>>> >> >>>> We can also speak of the 'christianization on the web' - but that >> >>>> trend does not seem to attract the same media coverage. >> >>>> >> >>>> About 'separatism': If 'western' is perceived as representative of >> the >> >>>> world, then, I guess you can call the move away 'separatism'. >> >>>> >> >>>> I find it sometimes more productive to look for the differences >> >>>> (diversity) within a system or category and the similarities across >> >>>> systems or categories. >> >>>> >> >>>> Greetings, >> >>>> >> >>>> Maja >> >>>> >> >>>> On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Juliana Brunello wrote: >> >>>> >> >>>> Islamicfacebook.com, NaqaTube, imhalal.com and now Ilmpedia. These >> >>>>> are all >> >>>>> Muslim sites based on well known 'western' social sites. Ilmpedia >> >>>>> will be >> >>>>> an encyclopedia based mostly on Islamic sources. The article linked >> >>>>> below >> >>>>> states that "websites like these are part of a growing trend of >> >>>>> Islamisation on the web". I ask myself, what the consequences of >> this >> >>>>> separatism from the 'western' websites are going to be. Will we have >> >>>>> more >> >>>>> information sources with different povs, so that we will be able to >> >>>>> form >> >>>>> our own opinions in a more balanced way; or will we have the >> >>>>> opposite, one >> >>>>> stream fighting the other and strengthening biased povs even more? I >> >>>>> wish >> >>>>> for the first, but I am not all too positive about it. >> >>>>> >> >>>>> http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=244958 >> >>>>> >> >>>>> Juliana >> >>>>> >> >>>>> >> >>>>> >> >>>>> Institute of Network Cultures >> >>>>> HvA Interactive Media >> >>>>> t: +31 (0)20 595 18 66 >> >>>>> f: +31 (0)20 595 18 40 >> >>>>> www.networkcultures.org >> >>>>> >> >>>>> >> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >> >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> >>>>> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> >>>>> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> >>>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> >>>> >> >>> >> >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list >> >> Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com >> >> http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org >> >> >> > >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org > mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Tue Jun 15 04:37:00 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:37:00 -0400 Subject: Wars Of Fortune In-Reply-To: References: <1299719573.1431621276535539314.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> <398269076.1433251276535829317.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <4C16E74C.5050203@att.net> Pursuing the analogy, the market analogue of an arms merchant -- the "Third Man" who hedges his bets profiting off the naivete of the duelistic thinkers behind both barrels -- would likely be the hedge fund manager or even the outright confidence man. For every Bernie Madoff who eventually gets caught a thousand more will make off with the marginal loot to nice retirements on their island catbird seats in the Canaries or the Caribbean. Jon Awbrey nathaniel tkacz wrote: > hi all - some fast and loose thoughts... > > i don't think a marketplace and a battlefield are necessarily so far apart! > players in market are involved in battles of sorts and also sometimes > negotiate! there are terms in basic economics that gesture toward these > different scenarios, like ideal markets and oligopolies. > > let's not also forget the wales himself describes the process of article > creation as likened to a market. the wiki ideology of article creation > resonates with a market theory in at least two ways: > > - both claim that ideas come together and the best ones rise to the top and > become successful, > - both claim that there is no overarching, absolute body who determines the > criteria of success, (once again, these are produced 'by the market'), > > it is this kind of thinking that connects wales to hayek and was also > discussed by florian cramer. florian made the claim that npov is hayek's > market theory translated into encyclopaedic policy. > > i do think that wikipedia functions in ways that often resonate with a > "real" market, because i don't believe that real markets function like the > ones described and taught in economic theory (that is something marx did a > good job of critiquing). instead, like real markets, there is a gap between > how markets are explained and how they operate. to think alongside a famous > passage in Capital, what we need to do is leave the domain of policy (of > rights, freedom and bentham) and look closely and critically at how things > actually get made (that is, we need to enter the factory). > > thinking wikipedia through the frame of markets and political economy more > generally might be very productive, especially if we look both at the theory > of markets and the practice of markets. > > best > > Nate Tkacz > > Research Fellow, > RMIT University > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__ > Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net > Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/ -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From thekohser at gmail.com Tue Jun 15 05:09:54 2010 From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:09:54 -0400 Subject: The notion that Wikipedia will always be top dog Message-ID: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu said: It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about fragmentation. +++++++ Back when I was done with graduate school and beginning to land my first $50,000 marketing research projects, I remember when 90% of online search was dominated by three sites. No, not Google and Yahoo and Bing. Sites called AltaVista and WebCrawler and Lycos. Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? Greg From dqamir at bezeqint.net Tue Jun 15 10:34:51 2010 From: dqamir at bezeqint.net (Dror Kamir) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:34:51 +0300 Subject: Ilmpedia In-Reply-To: References: <1714.145.92.114.222.1276519186.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <1876.145.92.114.222.1276523251.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> <6E6233B0-7C87-48C3-A0DE-25B9187AF2C2@ifi.uio.no> <2424.145.92.114.222.1276529117.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: <4C173B2B.5080205@bezeqint.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From juliana at networkcultures.org Tue Jun 15 11:14:13 2010 From: juliana at networkcultures.org (Juliana Brunello) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:14:13 +0200 (CEST) Subject: The notion that Wikipedia will always be top dog In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1243.145.92.114.222.1276593253.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? Important point. Specially in the case of Ilmpedia, where there is a huge amount of people with the same belief and therefore a large amount of possible contributors to the project. I don't think it will be a minor encyclopedia fork like citizendium or the spanish fork. It actually has great potential. Imagine all arab countries, which have a lot of their culture in common and conflicting povs with the 'western' countries... this could be just the beginning of a major separatist movement, not only in the internet. Am I being too dramatic? Juliana > andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu said: > > It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract > significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly > well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as > the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited > website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous > Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the > Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited > websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa > listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. > Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer > labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about > fragmentation. > > +++++++ > > Back when I was done with graduate school and beginning to land my > first $50,000 marketing research projects, I remember when 90% of > online search was dominated by three sites. No, not Google and Yahoo > and Bing. Sites called AltaVista and WebCrawler and Lycos. > > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? > > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > From elad at wieder.co.il Tue Jun 15 11:29:19 2010 From: elad at wieder.co.il (Elad Wieder) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:29:19 +0300 Subject: The notion that Wikipedia will always be top dog In-Reply-To: <1243.145.92.114.222.1276593253.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> References: <1243.145.92.114.222.1276593253.squirrel@webmail.sonologic.nl> Message-ID: Putting aside any possible drama, my concern is about the break in the discourse caused by such separatism; the damage is double-sided: each of the communities keep "convincing the convinced", deepening the arguments but not broadening the discussion. This, in turn, might cause greater misunderstandings re the other PoV and further frustration from trying to present one's views to people with other views. Elad On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 12:14, Juliana Brunello wrote: > > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? > > Important point. Specially in the case of Ilmpedia, where there is a huge > amount of people with the same belief and therefore a large amount of > possible contributors to the project. I don't think it will be a minor > encyclopedia fork like citizendium or the spanish fork. It actually has > great potential. Imagine all arab countries, which have a lot of their > culture in common and conflicting povs with the 'western' countries... > this could be just the beginning of a major separatist movement, not only > in the internet. Am I being too dramatic? > > Juliana > > > > andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu said: > > > > It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract > > significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly > > well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as > > the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited > > website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous > > Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the > > Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited > > websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa > > listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. > > Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer > > labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about > > fragmentation. > > > > +++++++ > > > > Back when I was done with graduate school and beginning to land my > > first $50,000 marketing research projects, I remember when 90% of > > online search was dominated by three sites. No, not Google and Yahoo > > and Bing. Sites called AltaVista and WebCrawler and Lycos. > > > > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? > > > > Greg > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Tue Jun 15 15:00:06 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:00:06 -0400 Subject: What's Up the Sleeve of the Invisible Hand? Message-ID: <4C177956.7000005@att.net> CPOVers, Let me pick up another "fast and loose" thread in Nate's last post. It's a natural human tendency, when faced with overwhelming complexity, to wish it all away with some radically simplifying belief or mythology. That would be my guess as to why the Myth of the Invisible Hand is every bit as popular on the Internet today as Jolly Old Saint Nick and visions of sugar-plums are in the fantasies of pre-critical children. That is probably why variations on the theme of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" are such frequent topics of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. Against that backdrop I personally find that the best resource for trying to understand the conversion of ethical motives into economic motors lies in the work of Max Weber, beginning with his analysis in ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism''. Here's one more or less recent thread at WR: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=23108 Jon Awbrey Nathaniel Tkacz wrote: > > hi all - some fast and loose thoughts... > > i don't think a marketplace and a battlefield are necessarily so far apart! > players in market are involved in battles of sorts and also sometimes > negotiate! there are terms in basic economics that gesture toward these > different scenarios, like ideal markets and oligopolies. > > let's not also forget the wales himself describes the process of article > creation as likened to a market. the wiki ideology of article creation > resonates with a market theory in at least two ways: > > - both claim that ideas come together and the best ones rise to the top and > become successful, > - both claim that there is no overarching, absolute body who determines the > criteria of success, (once again, these are produced 'by the market'), > > it is this kind of thinking that connects wales to hayek and was also > discussed by florian cramer. florian made the claim that npov is hayek's > market theory translated into encyclopaedic policy. > > i do think that wikipedia functions in ways that often resonate with a > "real" market, because i don't believe that real markets function like the > ones described and taught in economic theory (that is something marx did a > good job of critiquing). instead, like real markets, there is a gap between > how markets are explained and how they operate. to think alongside a famous > passage in Capital, what we need to do is leave the domain of policy (of > rights, freedom and bentham) and look closely and critically at how things > actually get made (that is, we need to enter the factory). > > thinking wikipedia through the frame of markets and political economy more > generally might be very productive, especially if we look both at the theory > of markets and the practice of markets. > > best > > Nate Tkacz > > Research Fellow, > RMIT University > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__ > Homepage: www.nathanieltkacz.net > Current project: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/about-2/ -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu Tue Jun 15 16:34:38 2010 From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (Famiglietti, Andrew F) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:34:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The notion that Wikipedia will always be top dog In-Reply-To: <797183662.57691276612442827.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <562983016.57921276612478863.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Everyone, It is, of course, difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. It isn't impossible that a new project could garner serious attention and unseat the Wikipedia juggernaut. Certainly it is true that the Internet landscape has seen some radical changes in the past. I actually have a notion that we may have entered a relatively more stable period in which big players will remain big over relatively long spans of time. I can't prove that, though, just a hunch (mostly based on the seeming stability of Google over the last 10 years). All that said, I don't think things look good for Ilmpedia. They've decided to start their project in both English and Arabic, so they will be confronting the goliath of the English Wikipedia directly (an Arabic-only fork would only directly challenge the less established Arabic Wikipedia and, like the Spanish Fork before it, might gain some traction). A previous ideological fork of the English Wikipedia, Conservapedia, which had the benefits of a relatively privileged community of interest, the involvement of high-profile activist Andrew Schafly and the attendant free media attention that entailed remains a marginal (very low google visibility and traffic), but active project. As of right now, the Ilmpedia project's wiki page does indeed list about 100 registered users, but many of these users haven't even completed user pages, and a check of a few random contributor logs shows that many have no edits at all. Some pages show clear and unreverted link-spam, a bad sign for the health of a wiki. It is still very early, of course, and all that will probably change and improve as the project gets organized. The press release said they would be available in July, after all. I suspect Ilmpedia will, like Conservapedia before it, go on to become a successful but marginal project. I'm not dismissing these projects, the margins are important! However, I do think this suggests that the alleged "fragmentation" of the media space Sunstein et. al. fretted about is not, in fact, under way. Instead we see a pattern of very large, central sites of information production and distribution surrounded by marginal media, just as we did in the mass media era (Xerox produced Zines anyone?). - Andy PS: Dror, I have to ask, was your Wikipedia user id DrorK? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Juliana Brunello" To: "Gregory Kohs" Cc: cpov at listcultures.org Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 5:14:13 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: The notion that Wikipedia will always be top dog > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? Important point. Specially in the case of Ilmpedia, where there is a huge amount of people with the same belief and therefore a large amount of possible contributors to the project. I don't think it will be a minor encyclopedia fork like citizendium or the spanish fork. It actually has great potential. Imagine all arab countries, which have a lot of their culture in common and conflicting povs with the 'western' countries... this could be just the beginning of a major separatist movement, not only in the internet. Am I being too dramatic? Juliana > andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu said: > > It is unlikely that these forks of Wikipedia will ever attract > significant traffic. Larry Sanger's Citizendium, a fairly > well-established parallel encyclopedia project, is ranked by Alexa as > the 48,837th most visited website. Wikipedia is the 6th most visited > website. Enciclopedia Libre Universal (EL), the product of the famous > Spanish Fork of 2002, was outstripped in article production by the > Spanish Wikipedia as of 2004. Wikipedia is in the top ten most visited > websites in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. EL does not appear in Alexa > listings for the top 100 most visited Websites for these countries. > Without traffic, a volunteer based project cannot attract volunteer > labor, and thus cannot add and revise content. I wouldn't worry about > fragmentation. > > +++++++ > > Back when I was done with graduate school and beginning to land my > first $50,000 marketing research projects, I remember when 90% of > online search was dominated by three sites. No, not Google and Yahoo > and Bing. Sites called AltaVista and WebCrawler and Lycos. > > Are you certain, absolutely certain, that Wikipedia will rule the > Internet encyclopedia biz in 10 years' time? > > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list > Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com > http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org > > > _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org -- -- Andrew Famiglietti Brittain Fellow School of Literature, Communication, and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology -- -- Andrew Famiglietti Brittain Fellow School of Literature, Communication, and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology From jfelipe at libresoft.es Tue Jun 15 17:45:31 2010 From: jfelipe at libresoft.es (Felipe Ortega) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:45:31 +0200 Subject: Wikipedia coverage in mass media Message-ID: <1276616731.2068.226.camel@bluethunder> Hello, all. My apologies for the extension of this message. Sometimes, I feel that, like D. Knuth, "I've never learnt how to be brief". Somehow anticipating part of my contribution for CPoV reader, I'd like to comment on some of my annotations over the past months, regarding the coverage of Wikipedia-related news in mass media (Spain and worldwide). The first example case is the notorious coverage in Fox News of the Wikimedia Commons images, and its aftermath [1], [2], [3], last April. Since then, it has been suggested by some media that there is a clear campaign from several big news corporations to undermine Wikipedia and WMF credibility, specially since these corporations opted for a closed model for accessing their content online [4]. This model has received strong critics [5], and I concur with the opinion that it doesn't fit at all with the new business model imposed by eletronic media, collaborative online communities and the Internet. This won't go beyond a classic media war for influence control, unless for its side-effects regarding scientific studies and results. I already mentioned how the original press release from my thesis was turned upside down, with no more that changing "edit trends in Wikipedia remain stable" for "Wikipedia stagnates" or "Wikipedia stalls" in the headlines. The same can be said for the WSJ article summarizing some results from different scientific studies, including mine [6]. The article was published in late Novembre 2009, colliding with the start of WMF fundraising campaign (coincidence?). The decision of aggregating the figures in the tail of the graph to compose the final version of the headlines was made without consulting any of us. The most recent case has been a study just published by the "Colegio Libre de Emeritos" in Spain, entitled "Wikipedia: un estudio comparado" ("Wikipedia: a comparative study"). The 50-page document (sorry, only available in Spanish) peforms a very informal and subjective comparison of several articles taken from the English, German and Spanish Wikipedias (IMHO, with a notable lack of any kind of scientific method for either the selection of articles or the evaluation itself). The most important headline extracted from the study is: "The Spanish Wikipedia is the worst Wikipedia available today", fundamented on some dubious conclusions and comparison criteria (for each example offered, we can also find several counter-examples showing the opposite). Some newspapers, well-known in Spain for showing a draconian support of payment models for accessing news and content, have used this result to make the headline: "Wikipedia collapses" (extrapolating to all Wikipedias in all languages, and clearly showing, from their point of view, that this model is not valid or even useful). Besides, still on others you can find "Spanish Wikipedia is the worst in Europe" or "Spanish Wikipedia, the worst in the world" (despite the fact that the study only covers 3 versions, EN, DE, ES, and there exist many more European Wikipedias). I wonder if some will go further, nominating Spanish Wikipedia for the "worst in the galaxy". Thus, to recap some of my conclusions: a) It is very positive to see such a broad interest and coverage of Wikipedia-related topics in mass media. b) However, we live in an networked world, in which information is the main asset for many business models. c) News corporations defending payment models for info access have identified strong competitors in Wikipedia and similar projects focusing on production of open knowledge and content. d) These closed models, however, are destined to fail as the preferential attachment process favors open content over closed sources, specially in search engines. e) Researchers must be aware of this general environment when they release or interpret any study covered in mass media. A final note. The last study also insist in the "suspicious trend of Wikipedia entries being favoured by Google search results". This is not a complot, but a well-known phenomenon already covered (though a bit informally) in some previous studies [8]. Again, this comment leaves out the natural explanation for this fact, the preferential attachment model governing the Internet and search engines, and the fact that people tend to find open resources more useful that closed sources behind payment access barriers. Unless mass media understand the new rules imposed by the cyberspace, and adapt themselves to profit from the benefits in this ecosystem, I'm afraid we will continue to witness this kind of paradox in the following years. Best, Felipe. [1]http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/ [2]http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/ [3]http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/28/wikimedia-foundation-responds-to-fox-news/ [4]http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites [5]http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/26/rupert-murdoch-pathetic-paywall [6]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html [7]http://www.colegiodeemeritos.es/DocumentosDelColegio/seccion=32&idioma=es_ES&activo=1&id=2010061411030001.do [8]http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/01/all_hail_the_in.php -- Jos? Felipe Ortega Soto | Project Manager Tel: (+34)-914 888 105 | Fax: (+34)-916 647 494 | GSyC/Libresoft - U. Rey Juan Carlos jfelipe _at_libresoft_dot_es | Edif. Departamental II - Office 106 http://libresoft.es/ | c/Tulip?n s/n 28933 M?stoles (Madrid) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From dqamir at bezeqint.net Fri Jun 18 12:57:33 2010 From: dqamir at bezeqint.net (Dror Kamir) Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:57:33 +0300 Subject: Wikipedia as an alternative United Nations-like forum Message-ID: <4C1B511D.10708@bezeqint.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WPvsUN.png Type: image/png Size: 1457813 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jawbrey at att.net Fri Jun 18 14:36:58 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:36:58 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <4C1B511D.10708@bezeqint.net> References: <4C1B511D.10708@bezeqint.net> Message-ID: <4C1B686A.7020402@att.net> Dror, Here's an experiment for everyone to try. Run through this list of English Wikipedia User Names (EW:UN): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=1000 One thousand at a time till you get to the end ... Then write a story about a prospective UN-Democracy populated by "entities" like that. That's Chicago! -- Vote Early Vote Often (VEVO) Jon Awbrey Dror Kamir wrote: > Hi, > > I have once made a comparison between the process of adopting a UN resolution > and negotiating terminology or phrasing on Wikipedia (see attached png file). > Maybe I even presented this comparison slide in Bangalore. Rereading it, I must > admit it is not accurate enough, but the point was to draw the line between two > essentially different decision-making systems that were meant to serve different > purposes. The UN is supposed to be a kind of international parliament, i.e. it > is a political body that reaches politically motivated decisions in a democratic > way. Its methods are far from being perfect, but that's idea. Wikipedia, on the > other hand, set its goal at providing information, hence democratically deciding > upon an article's phrasing is inadequate. Wikipedia, and similar projects, > should practice pluralism rather than democracy (the two concepts are similar > but not identical). > > Apparently, there is a trend on en-wp to move toward the UN-model. Take a look > here: > *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Israeli_settlements > *The issue is a political mind field. I have been following the contributions of > the editor who opened this discussion, and it is quite obvious that he is > politically motivated. It is therefore unsurprising that he pied-piped the rest > of the debaters into a UN-like discussion. He presented a statement and called a > vote. The voters in favor are mostly people who frequently cooperate with him. > Interestingly enough, the claim that this method of debating does not serve the > purpose of Wikipedia (whether the initiator of the discussion is right or wrong) > is left quite faint, not endorsed or even argued with by anyone. > > Dror K > > PS - Many people get tired of the ME conflict. I can't blame them, but it is > easier to talk about one's own toothache than about the dental problems of > people on another part of the world. If anyone wants to respond using a > different example from another geopolitical conflict or from a different field > altogether, please do. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu Fri Jun 18 18:31:32 2010 From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu) Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:31:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <1731203440.749971276878478716.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <778843979.750951276878692721.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Jon, Interesting. Are you implying that many Wikipedia accounts are not, in fact, representative of actual persons? Within Wikipedia, as I'm sure we're all well aware, the practice of a single individual creating multiple accounts is called "sock puppetry" and is considered a very serious form of fraud. In my research, I've often found it very difficult to establish the extent to which Wikipedia is successful at defending itself from Sock Puppets, since the data on the IP address identities of registered users is only available to those admins with access to the CheckUser tool. Obviously, this data cannot be freely handed out for privacy reasons. I've often thought about trying to talk to the Wikimedia Foundation about the possibility of getting IP data for a proper study of the issue, thought the hassles of IRB clearance, negotiating with them, and my own mediocre skills at quantitative methods have dissuaded me from doing so. However, my time in the community has left me with the impression that they take the matter very seriously, there may be no better way to piss a Wikipedian off than to call him or her a Sock Puppet! Anyway, what I'm getting at is, because this is such an interesting issue so clearly in need of more research, I'm very curious to know what data lead you to believe that identity fraud is rampant on Wikipedia. This is clearly an area where any new evidence could shed a lot of light on a confusing situation. - Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Awbrey" To: "Dror Kamir" Cc: cpov at listcultures.org Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 8:36:58 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum Dror, Here's an experiment for everyone to try. Run through this list of English Wikipedia User Names (EW:UN): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=1000 One thousand at a time till you get to the end ... Then write a story about a prospective UN-Democracy populated by "entities" like that. That's Chicago! -- Vote Early Vote Often (VEVO) Jon Awbrey Dror Kamir wrote: > Hi, > > I have once made a comparison between the process of adopting a UN resolution > and negotiating terminology or phrasing on Wikipedia (see attached png file). > Maybe I even presented this comparison slide in Bangalore. Rereading it, I must > admit it is not accurate enough, but the point was to draw the line between two > essentially different decision-making systems that were meant to serve different > purposes. The UN is supposed to be a kind of international parliament, i.e. it > is a political body that reaches politically motivated decisions in a democratic > way. Its methods are far from being perfect, but that's idea. Wikipedia, on the > other hand, set its goal at providing information, hence democratically deciding > upon an article's phrasing is inadequate. Wikipedia, and similar projects, > should practice pluralism rather than democracy (the two concepts are similar > but not identical). > > Apparently, there is a trend on en-wp to move toward the UN-model. Take a look > here: > *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Israeli_settlements > *The issue is a political mind field. I have been following the contributions of > the editor who opened this discussion, and it is quite obvious that he is > politically motivated. It is therefore unsurprising that he pied-piped the rest > of the debaters into a UN-like discussion. He presented a statement and called a > vote. The voters in favor are mostly people who frequently cooperate with him. > Interestingly enough, the claim that this method of debating does not serve the > purpose of Wikipedia (whether the initiator of the discussion is right or wrong) > is left quite faint, not endorsed or even argued with by anyone. > > Dror K > > PS - Many people get tired of the ME conflict. I can't blame them, but it is > easier to talk about one's own toothache than about the dental problems of > people on another part of the world. If anyone wants to respond using a > different example from another geopolitical conflict or from a different field > altogether, please do. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey _______________________________________________ Cpov_listcultures.org mailing list Cpov_listcultures.org at p10.alfaservers.com http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org -- -- Andrew Famiglietti Brittain Fellow School of Literature, Communication, and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology From jawbrey at att.net Fri Jun 18 19:28:45 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:28:45 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <778843979.750951276878692721.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> References: <778843979.750951276878692721.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <4C1BACCD.4030202@att.net> Andy, The situation is not quite as you say, since the use of multiple accounts by a single person is not strictly verboten as some people seem to think. This is probably one of the most frequent topics on The Wikipedia Review -- incidentally, WR staffer Herschel Krustofsky has just written an excellent white paper on the State of the Sockpuppet Issue, as the natives know it: http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20100614/the-duck-test/ It is an empirical fact that the mapping of persons (or corporate entities) to user accounts is both one-to-many and many-to-one (the latter being known as "public" or "shared" accounts), and Wikipedists have no way of controlling either with any degree of effectiveness, no matter how much blue smoke they may blow about the CheckUser mystique. If you follow the discussions at The Wikipedia Review, you will know that there has been a constant stream of investigations into flagrantly abusive and fraudulent exploitation of multiple accounts by onetime "trusted" administrators and their "pets", many of these investigations being conducted in ad hoc, if somewhat implausibly denied coordination between "Good Samaritan" WP users and the members of The Wikipedia Review. There is a wealth of data and a host of savvy informants there if anyone is really up to pursuing the truth about Wikipedian culture and practices. Jon Awbrey andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu wrote: > > Jon, > > Interesting. Are you implying that many Wikipedia accounts are not, in fact, > representative of actual persons? Within Wikipedia, as I'm sure we're all > well aware, the practice of a single individual creating multiple accounts > is called "sock puppetry" and is considered a very serious form of fraud. > In my research, I've often found it very difficult to establish the extent > to which Wikipedia is successful at defending itself from Sock Puppets, > since the data on the IP address identities of registered users is only > available to those admins with access to the CheckUser tool. Obviously, > this data cannot be freely handed out for privacy reasons. I've often > thought about trying to talk to the Wikimedia Foundation about the > possibility of getting IP data for a proper study of the issue, thought > the hassles of IRB clearance, negotiating with them, and my own mediocre > skills at quantitative methods have dissuaded me from doing so. However, > my time in the community has left me with the impression that they take > the matter very seriously, there may be no better way to piss a Wikipedian > off than to call him or her a Sock Puppet! Anyway, what I'm getting at is, > because this is such an interesting issue so clearly in need of more research, > I'm very curious to know what data lead you to believe that identity fraud is > rampant on Wikipedia. This is clearly an area where any new evidence could > shed a lot of light on a confusing situation. > > - Andy -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu Sat Jun 19 04:39:20 2010 From: andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu (andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu) Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:39:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <1676837855.851431276914788467.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <1494368383.851651276915160704.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> ----- "Jon Awbrey" wrote: > Andy, > > The situation is not quite as you say, since the use of multiple > accounts > by a single person is not strictly verboten as some people seem to > think. > This is probably one of the most frequent topics on The Wikipedia > Review -- > incidentally, WR staffer Herschel Krustofsky has just written an > excellent > white paper on the State of the Sockpuppet Issue, as the natives know > it: > > http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20100614/the-duck-test/ > This is indeed an interesting piece! I have encountered the sort of, ah, problematic, use of behavior profiling as sock-puppet indicator described here in my investigation. Of course, I'm a little concerned that the author of this Wikipedia Review piece seems to take what looks to me to be a satirical critique of the "duck test" as a defense of it. The important questions this raises for me are "how prevalent is this sort of activity on Wikipedia?" and "what are its consequences?" The author of the Wikipedia Review essay seems convinced that the behavior is widespread, and serves to disenfranchise some positions at the expense of others. I'd be curious to know which positions Wikipedia Review folks feel are systematically discriminated against within Wikipedia, since that might help us design a study to look at the editing activity on related articles in a systematic way. I don't, however, see any evidence here that contradicts my sense that Wikipedia editors are at least outwardly hostile to the practice of sockpuppetry. > It is an empirical fact that the mapping of persons (or corporate > entities) > to user accounts is both one-to-many and many-to-one (the latter being > known > as "public" or "shared" accounts), and Wikipedists have no way of > controlling > either with any degree of effectiveness, no matter how much blue smoke > they may > blow about the CheckUser mystique. > I don't disagree that Sock Puppets and public accounts certainly exist on Wikipedia. Perfectly policing such a practice in such a large, active community is almost certainly impossible. I suspect it is exactly this impossibility that leads to the wide-spread paranoia of Sock puppets that I've seen on-site. However, the presence of sock-puppets does not, in my opinion, mean that they are a substantial influence on editing activity. It certainly does not tell us what the nature of that influence, if it does exist, is. > If you follow the discussions at The Wikipedia Review, you will know > that there > has been a constant stream of investigations into flagrantly abusive > and fraudulent > exploitation of multiple accounts by onetime "trusted" administrators > and their "pets", > many of these investigations being conducted in ad hoc, if somewhat > implausibly denied > coordination between "Good Samaritan" WP users and the members of The > Wikipedia Review. I'll take a look at this, thanks! > There is a wealth of data and a host of savvy informants there if > anyone > is really up to pursuing the truth about Wikipedian culture and > practices. > > Jon Awbrey You've given me a lot to think on, Jon. Thanks for this. - Andy > andrew.famiglietti at lcc.gatech.edu wrote: > > > > Jon, > > > > Interesting. Are you implying that many Wikipedia accounts are not, > in fact, > > representative of actual persons? Within Wikipedia, as I'm sure > we're all > > well aware, the practice of a single individual creating multiple > accounts > > is called "sock puppetry" and is considered a very serious form of > fraud. > > In my research, I've often found it very difficult to establish the > extent > > to which Wikipedia is successful at defending itself from Sock > Puppets, > > since the data on the IP address identities of registered users is > only > > available to those admins with access to the CheckUser tool. > Obviously, > > this data cannot be freely handed out for privacy reasons. I've > often > > thought about trying to talk to the Wikimedia Foundation about the > > possibility of getting IP data for a proper study of the issue, > thought > > the hassles of IRB clearance, negotiating with them, and my own > mediocre > > skills at quantitative methods have dissuaded me from doing so. > However, > > my time in the community has left me with the impression that they > take > > the matter very seriously, there may be no better way to piss a > Wikipedian > > off than to call him or her a Sock Puppet! Anyway, what I'm > getting at is, > > because this is such an interesting issue so clearly in need of > more research, > > I'm very curious to know what data lead you to believe that > identity fraud is > > rampant on Wikipedia. This is clearly an area where any new > evidence could > > shed a lot of light on a confusing situation. > > > > - Andy > > -- > > inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ > mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey > knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 > oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From jawbrey at att.net Sat Jun 19 06:00:06 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:00:06 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <1494368383.851651276915160704.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> References: <1494368383.851651276915160704.JavaMail.root@mail6.gatech.edu> Message-ID: <4C1C40C6.5010604@att.net> Re: http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/2010-June/000217.html Andy & All, Short note only, as it's late and I have some work around the yard to do tomorrow. Yes, multiple accounts are officially inveighed against, but it's like every other "policy" or "guideline" on Wikipedia, you soon find that the "cops" break the very laws they pretend to enforce, and after you've seen that double standards are more the rule than the exception you begin to get a little satirical yourself -- for my part I gradually came to lose every last shred of respect for "Wikipedia's Finest". I'm probably not the one to interrogate about individual cases, as I try to keep my eyes on the Big Picture and the "whole system" view of things, but several participants in the WR forum excel in the investigative side of things and they could give you all the detail you want about the more notorious cases. Jon Awbrey -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From jorge at numcero.cl Sat Jun 19 18:54:32 2010 From: jorge at numcero.cl (Curatoria Forense) Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:54:32 -0700 Subject: CURATORIA FORENSE :: confirmacion de suscripcion lista de mails Message-ID: <20100619165432.9DBA6A2D60@coyote.dreamhost.com> Hola, gracias por inscribirte para recibir las novedades de CURATORIA FORENSE. como siguiente paso requerimos confirmar tu e-mail cpov at listcultures.org en la lista. Para realizar la confirmacion solo ingresa a la siguiente direccion: http://scripts.dreamhost.com/add_list.cgi?g=51bfcf443023738633135f71a8745335 Si no deseas inscribirte en esta lista solo ignora este mensaje. Jorge Sepulveda T. Curador Independiente http://www.curatoriaforense.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thekohser at gmail.com Sun Jun 20 05:28:20 2010 From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs) Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:28:20 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum Message-ID: > > > Andy & All, > > Short note only, as it's late and I have some work around the yard to do > tomorrow. > > Yes, multiple accounts are officially inveighed against, but it's like > every other > "policy" or "guideline" on Wikipedia, you soon find that the "cops" break > the very > laws they pretend to enforce, and after you've seen that double standards > are more > the rule than the exception you begin to get a little satirical yourself -- > for my > part I gradually came to lose every last shred of respect for "Wikipedia's > Finest". > > I'm probably not the one to interrogate about individual cases, as I try > to keep my eyes on the Big Picture and the "whole system" view of things, > but several participants in the WR forum excel in the investigative side > of things and they could give you all the detail you want about the more > notorious cases. > > Jon Awbrey > > As a practitioner in Wikipedia manipulation, I may represent one of those "individual cases" that Jon mentions. If you're interested in either a formal case study, or in just a chuckle, you might wish to peruse my "hall of shame" of sockpuppet accounts that I was compelled to disclose before I would be unblocked on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thekohser/2009#Thekohser_responds (click the "Show" link in the green box) After Wikipedia Arbitration Committee member decided that she liked Adam "Shoemaker's Holiday" Cuerden more than she liked me, I was nonetheless re-blocked again, and so I set about making more sockpuppets again. You see, I need an ample drawer of active socks, so that my individual clients can be promptly served, without giving away my entire slate of clients, nor compromising any specific IP addresses if the paid editing should ever be detected. I have presently 19 different socks at my disposal, undetected by the Wikipedia admin crew. No, I don't consider it "a very serious form of fraud", as Andy suggested. I tried to work with the Wikipedia community from the outset -- above board, in the disinfecting light of full disclosure. Jimmy Wales made clear to me that he disapproved of that method. Many people at high levels of Wikipedia participation warned Jimmy that his alternative would only drive underground the activity of paid editors, where it would be less-easily monitored. Jimmy ignored their guidance. And so, here I am today, still able to author Wikipedia articles for paying clients, and in about 90% of client cases, the work goes completely undetected by the very people who are dead-set against "POV" "shills" editing "their" encyclopedia. -- Gregory Kohs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jawbrey at att.net Sun Jun 20 07:00:08 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:00:08 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C1DA058.4040103@att.net> Andy, Greg, & All ... Actually, I wasn't thinking so much of people who use alternate accounts to carry out legitimate editing activities -- after all, one of the most highly touted maxims of the original wiki philosophy was often expressed as "Mind the Edits, Not the Editor", and Wikipedians still piously, if a bit Heapishly, echo those words even today. Nor was I thinking of folks who use their transient socks for nothing more serious than tweaking the noses of Wikipedian power-mongers -- after all, I know few people who so richly deserve to have their Wiki-Probosci rejointed. No, I was thinking of people who use massive sock drawers to conduct concerted, longterm campaigns of media distortion -- and what medium is so well-tailored for ease of distortion as Wikipedia? Few indeed. Cases like Gary Weiss, I guess. But there I am already out of my depth, as it takes a real forensic investigator to unravel socks of that order. Jon Awbrey Gregory Kohs wrote: > > As a practitioner in Wikipedia manipulation, I may represent one of those > "individual cases" that Jon mentions. If you're interested in either a > formal case study, or in just a chuckle, you might wish to peruse my "hall > of shame" of sockpuppet accounts that I was compelled to disclose before I > would be unblocked on Wikipedia: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thekohser/2009#Thekohser_responds > (click the "Show" link in the green box) > > After Wikipedia Arbitration Committee member decided that she liked Adam > "Shoemaker's Holiday" Cuerden more than she liked me, I was nonetheless > re-blocked again, and so I set about making more sockpuppets again. You > see, I need an ample drawer of active socks, so that my individual clients > can be promptly served, without giving away my entire slate of clients, nor > compromising any specific IP addresses if the paid editing should ever be > detected. I have presently 19 different socks at my disposal, undetected by > the Wikipedia admin crew. > > No, I don't consider it "a very serious form of fraud", as Andy suggested. > I tried to work with the Wikipedia community from the outset -- above > board, in the disinfecting light of full disclosure. Jimmy Wales made clear > to me that he disapproved of that method. Many people at high levels of > Wikipedia participation warned Jimmy that his alternative would only drive > underground the activity of paid editors, where it would be less-easily > monitored. Jimmy ignored their guidance. And so, here I am today, still > able to author Wikipedia articles for paying clients, and in about 90% of > client cases, the work goes completely undetected by the very people who are > dead-set against "POV" "shills" editing "their" encyclopedia. -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From jawbrey at att.net Sun Jun 20 07:12:29 2010 From: jawbrey at att.net (Jon Awbrey) Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:12:29 -0400 Subject: Wikipedia as an Alternative United Nations-Like Forum In-Reply-To: <4C1DA058.4040103@att.net> References: <4C1DA058.4040103@att.net> Message-ID: <4C1DA33D.8050401@att.net> CPOVers, Just by way of supplying a bit more concrete detail, here's what I got by searching the Wikipedia Review Op-Ed Blog on "Weiss": http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080215/what-wordbomb-wants/ http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080310/when-wikipedia-attacks/ JA Jon Awbrey wrote: > Andy, Greg, & All ... > > Actually, I wasn't thinking so much of people who use alternate accounts > to carry out legitimate editing activities -- after all, one of the most > highly touted maxims of the original wiki philosophy was often expressed > as "Mind the Edits, Not the Editor", and Wikipedians still piously, if a > bit Heapishly, echo those words even today. Nor was I thinking of folks > who use their transient socks for nothing more serious than tweaking the > noses of Wikipedian power-mongers -- after all, I know few people who so > richly deserve to have their Wiki-Probosci rejointed. > > No, I was thinking of people who use massive sock drawers to conduct > concerted, longterm campaigns of media distortion -- and what medium > is so well-tailored for ease of distortion as Wikipedia? Few indeed. > > Cases like Gary Weiss, I guess. But there I am already out of my depth, > as it takes a real forensic investigator to unravel socks of that order. > > Jon Awbrey -- inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey From thekohser at gmail.com Wed Jun 30 05:47:27 2010 From: thekohser at gmail.com (Gregory Kohs) Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:47:27 -0400 Subject: The World According to Jimmy Wales? In-Reply-To: <4BFB39B8.4080005@att.net> References: <4BFB39B8.4080005@att.net> Message-ID: It's clear that Nicole Ferraro of Internet Evolution is also "on to" this scam about technology and the Internet bringing about world peace: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=193695 Greg -- Gregory Kohs Founder, MyWikiBiz.com (search engine results for your content, but no world peace) Cell: 302.463.1354 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: