QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 15th September 2007, 5:47am)
Actually, I'm not disputing what Firsfron says above - the internet very much did suck, and I might even go so far as to say it still does, though obviously less than it did.
There are several governmental entities which maintain
great databases of information on-line. As you probably already know, the state of Iowa has awesome collections of population records, maps, historic photographs, etc, going back to 1900. It is really impressive, and it is free to anyone with internet access.
This is the sort of thing I was hoping for when I first went on-line in 1997: these on-line databases of free, easily-accessed information. It took a decade of suckitude, though, for it to happen, and only a few government entities, in my experience, offer the amount of information that Iowa provides. And even Iowa doesn't maintain on-line information on unincorporated and disincorporated communities, etc.
So, like you Somey, I think the situation is slowly improving. I'm not sure how much Wikipedia can be given credit for this change (if it can be at all!), but it's clear people were tired of searching for information and coming up with absolute junk. "Wikipedia: we're better than
GeoShitties!" is hardly a ringing endorsement...
QUOTE
The issue with Jimbo and Co. is, quite simply, hubris. Hubris leads to arrogance, which leads to insularity, which leads to cultish behavior...
[/Yoda]
QUOTE
If you start with the idea that your solution to a problem is the one that will work, and you can then produce metrics (in this case, Alexa rankings and hit-count) to prove that it does, in fact, work - then the process towards insularity is completely predictable. And yet, most of WP's supporters (if not most people in general) would say this is almost absurd, given the near-total openness of the content-generation model.
It's an interesting problem - explaining to an outsider how a website that "anyone can edit" can actually be moving in the direction of a closed-loop, hierarchical authority structure isn't easy. I think they used to call it "top-down management," but even that isn't easily demonstrable anymore, given Jimbo's increasing distance from day-to-day operations and decisionmaking.
So you can only really describe it in terms like "hive-mind" and "cultishness" and such... You have to look at patterns and tendencies among groups, and that takes time and effort, which most people don't have the patience for. And so the worst ones, those who deliberately operate in a manipulative fashion, mostly get away with it.
I should come up with an analogy for this...
Don't listen to Johnny, Somey!
Analogies are good! Let's hear it...
(edited to fix the quotes)