You know how they're always crowing about "Information wants to be Free" and/or "Knowledge wants to be Free"?

Wouldn't we consider the identity of the top administrators of Wikipedia part of the class of "Information" or "Knowledge"?

Isn't it curious, then, how the Wikipediots work so hard to keep Unfree that particular class of Information or Knowledge?




No need to make a big hoo-hah about this post. Just wanted to point it out as a "Thought of the Day".

Greg

Amazing. I hadnt an idea that information had feelings about its identity.

Another layer of Wiki-lusion revealed.

(goes back into ZEN trance)

Yet another example, in the long saga of "we are going to redefine words, so that we can steal the positive connotations and apply them to a different concept!" A hundred years from now, people are going to either find it very funny or very disturbing that anyone actually got away with that.

Unless they ultimately get their way, in which case words will just mean whatever anyone who happens to be around at the time wants them to mean to fit whatever's pertinent to the particular situation in place at the time.

The whole reason "information wants to be free" is because of the peculiar combination of human curiosity and human vanity. People want to know things, which is usually good, and people also want to be recognized for knowing things, which is occasionally bad, but mostly good. It becomes a simple question of supply and demand, to some extent... The problems arise when other people decide they're going to be the "gatekeepers," and start making the decisions regarding what things people should know, and who's going to be praised - or vilified, as the case may be - for knowing them. (Or, in some cases, not knowing them.)

That, in a nutshell, is what attracts people to the Wikipedia community - the desire to be a gatekeeper without necessarily having any qualifications for being one. And if you don't have those qualifications, the last thing you want is to have people know who you are, right?

Ultimately, Wikipedia is about protectionism and control. It's about the centralization of information resources - to the detriment of everyone, since centralization is nearly always done in the name of "efficiency," "ease of management," and increasing the ability of the gatekeepers to manipulate those resources to their own ends. If they really cared about information being "free," they'd break Wikipedia up into smaller pieces, and disband the power-centralizing priesthood they've built up around it.

Not likely to happen, of course...

A couple of generations ago, Marshall McLuhan observed that "the medium is the message."

Behind the mainspace articles at Wikipedia there is the medium of the process in the talk pages, in the policy pages, and in the noticeboard pages.

To my mind, the product is less significant than the process. After all, Wikipedia is hardly the only source of encyclopedic information. But it's one of the best sources of the otherwise hidden processes.

The process is a political one, often erratic, at times contentious and corrosive. For some of us, the process is disappointing, dispiriting, and alienating.

But the saddest part of all is that the manifest dysfunctionality also appears to be hopelessly irremediable.

I'm sorry, Somey; I don't agree with this last part at all. I don't understand how breaking Wikipedia into smaller pieces would cause the information to be free, and there are several parts of Wikipedia which already operate pretty much independently of the rest of the encyclopedia, without a "power-centralizing priesthood" in place.

I dunno, Greg, I thought it had a certain ring to it —
or was that just an echo?

Jonny

I know what you are saying Ronchester, but I do see a trend (perhaps imagined) with the growth of Wikipedia. There seems to be a need to reign everything in, streamline, and centralize it. An immediate example would be BADSITES and what it has spawned. In the early days, I do not think anyone would be concerned with such a thing, but with the perceived threats WP is facing, many need rules and laws as an opiate.

Without a doubt, Wikipedia is more and more "mainstream" and part of culture. The people joining now are envisioning, and are being encouraged to create, some sort of proper encyclopedia that is simply unattainable with this model. Perhaps this is due to people having to validate the amount of time they spend working there. I feel these people have no frame of reference for the founding of Wikipedia, which as I understand it, was pretty much founded on a half hazard approach. In fact, I often think that if WP hadn't grown the way it did, and as a result attracted the types of people it did, I would be its number one fan.

And on the merits of WP breaking up into those smaller pieces, I agree that it may churn out better content, with communities creating less drama, the majority of which would actually be interested in content and not climbing a social hierarchy. When the blog first started here, I wrote some about this but never put it up, because it occurred to me that such a course of action was already thought of. It's probably not that original of a thought anyway.

So really what you have here is a "free information empire" which is surely out to cover up future Fugazi reunions, massacres that occur at ports, and POV warriors hell bent on pushing bike helmet propaganda.

I always find it interesting that the people who say things like that are never those who create (writers, musicians, film makers etc) but are almost always those who profit from other people's work, of which Wikipedia is certainly a shining example.

Creators just want to get paid....

But girls just wanna have fun....

I suppose that the thing about Wikipedia is that you get what you pay for.

Blather, Rinse, Repeat …

Jon

And of course what's the easiest way to have fun? Take off all your clothes and get your boyfriend to photograph you. Then after you break up he can post those photos on Commons. Better still, he can post them on Flickr. He can then copy them across so nobody will query the licence or whether there's subject consent.

Freedom's just another word
For nothing left to hide

That's funny I thought it was the registered trademark of Harley-Davidson/Mel Gibson/George BuggerYou Bush etc ... or is that "Freedom!!!®".

Freedom's just another word
For a way of life that is worth nothing

Freedom's just another word
For another form of conformism

Freedom's just another word
For doing what the hell we want and screw anyone else

Freedom's just another word
For screwing over other people's cultures with ours

Freedom's just a longer word
For DNGAF

Freedom's just another word
For our consumer brand

Freedom's just another word
For our brand of mental slavery

Freedom's just another word
For the right to have too much stuff

What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now! How do we want it?

200lbs overweight, with a Jumbo sized six pack and All-the-World's copyright material attached!


I suppose deep down somewhere in this debate, there is a classical Aristolean argument about something being happiest being what it wants to be ... or perhaps not ... but just because it is "free" does not mean it is arranged in the right order nor given appropriate importance. Not everything that is free is important, or even worth much.

Talking of Aristole, a nice relative quote here from The Art of Phwoar

This was priceless.

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2039

An Aristotelian analysis of the form of internet porn.

* Hubris - A misunderstanding of the hero's position in the world [The hero has an enormous penis and is going to insert it into a woman]
* Hamartia - The hero misses the target in some way, as a result of his hubris [The hero inserts his penis into a woman]
* Peripateteia - what the hero thought was a tide flowing in his favour turns out to be leading him to destruction [the hero bangs away like a gypsy on a tambourine]
* Anagnorisis - the hero recognises that he is heading for destruction [the hero grunts a lot while banging away]
* Nemesis - the hero's house falls [the hero ejaculates on the woman]
* Katharsis - the audience experiences pity and terror and is purged of those emotions [the woman goes oh oh yes fuck yes. The audience swabs under its desk, zips up and leaves an insulting comment on the web page]

The Internet is for porn

It's astonishing how the lowest grade of Internet porn can be fitted into the drama model of Aristotle's Poetics.

Boy meets girl
Girl gets boy into pickle
Boy gets pickle into girl


Good old Aristotle. Comedy arising from the improvisatory beginning of a phallic procession. By george I think he's got it.