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Jonny Cache
I think we need something like a «Paradigm, Policy, Protocol» board devoted the critique of, what else, paradigms, policies, and protocols in the world of wiki media sites, whether it be a genuine, an ostensible, or a pseudo-exemplar of its species.

By way of looking past the Frabjous Day when the Jimbowik is certifiably dead, I have formulated the board proposal in generic terms, but of course in the mean time, the very mean time indeed, it will probably be occupied with examples from Wikipedia.

As it stands, I can never figure out whether to needle a thread about a specific policy on the General Discursion or the Burrocrap board. Either way, there's the usual tendency for the discussion to degenerate into focusing on the character flaws of the individual Admins involved rather than the self-contradictions built into the policy base itself.

Anyway, here's the Daily Hypocrisy that brought this all flooding back to mind —

WP:Administrafers' Not Nice Board/Indecents#Severe Volition Of WP:CANDIASS

Those of you who have been the victims of Bak.Room and IRC.∑ Admin canvassing will know what a Cruel Addition Of Insult To Injury this latest hypocrisy really is.

Jonny cool.gif
Moulton
Some policies, practices, and protocols are well designed and carefully crafted to prevent, neutralize, ameliorate, or remediate the harmful effects of a haphazard misadventure.

In the worst case, some policies, practices, and protocols are iatrogenic, meaning they exacerbate the ailment and spread it to others.

Consider the disease now known as Tuberculosis. It has other names including Consumption, Wasting Disease, White Plague, Phthisis, Scrofula, King's Evil, Miliary TB, Tabes Mesenterica, Lupus Vulgaris and Prosector's Wart.

Wikipedia seems to be consuming itself with its own idiosyncratic paradigm of Chronic Wasting Disease which we might also call Prosecutor's Wart. The dysfunctional paradigm on Wikipedia is the antithesis of a self-correcting, self-healing paradigm. The dysfunctional paradigm on Wikipedia is a transparent example of an iatrogenic process that consumptively disects, castigates, indicts, prosecutes, excoriates, convicts, sanctions, ostracizes, stigmatizes, and demonizes participants in an orgiastic crescendo descendo of internal self-destruction.

I model the pathological paradigm of Wikipolitics in term of the Gravitas Model...

Gravitas

Ex-Communication Technology
↓
Community Unraveling
↓
Alienation and Disgust


Jonny Cache
Pedantic Scholiasm. The way I remember the word iatrogenic — Geek for «caused by iatollahs» — being used in psychiatry, it simply meant "caused by the healer", and so you have to say "iatrogenic disease" if you mean a bad thing caused by the healer (more generally, a teacher or a practitioner of any kind).

Jonny cool.gif
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 16th November 2007, 12:00pm) *

Some policies, practices, and protocols are well designed and carefully crafted to prevent, neutralize, ameliorate, or remediate the harmful effects of a haphazard misadventure.

In the worst case, some policies, practices, and protocols are iatrogenic, meaning they exacerbate the ailment and spread it to others.

Consider the disease now known as Tuberculosis. It has other names including Consumption, Wasting Disease, White Plague, Phthisis, Scrofula, King's Evil, Miliary TB, Tabes Mesenterica, Lupus Vulgaris and Prosector's Wart.

Wikipedia seems to be consuming itself with its own idiosyncratic paradigm of Chronic Wasting Disease which we might also call Prosecutor's Wart. The dysfunctional paradigm on Wikipedia is the antithesis of a self-correcting, self-healing paradigm. The dysfunctional paradigm on Wikipedia is a transparent example of an iatrogenic process that consumptively disects, castigates, indicts, prosecutes, excoriates, convicts, sanctions, ostracizes, stigmatizes, and demonizes participants in an orgiastic crescendo descendo of internal self-destruction.

I model the pathological paradigm of Wikipolitics in term of the Gravitas Model...

Gravitas

Ex-Communication Technology
↓
Community Unraveling
↓
Alienation and Disgust



I will have to go x-cavating for a mime of my first brouillon projet toward an Electronic Community Of Inquiry (ECOI), but here is the Usual Wikipediot Form Of Critique (UWFOC) of my last projet, dubbed «Joy Of Learning, Inquiry, Exploration (JOLIE)».

No doubt those WP:KILLJOYS thought I was e-personating a celebrity.

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
QUOTE
20:41, 6 September 2006 KillerChihuahua (Talk | contribs) deleted "Wikipedia:WikiProject Joy Of Learning, Inquiry, Exploration" ‎ (Nonsense, disruption. User has started at least five projects in the last week.)


KillerChihuaha is quite the character, eh?

I have the distinct impression she finds the learning process more painful than pleasurable.

Pity.
Jonny Cache
By way of background for the discussion of Ruliness and Unruliness, it may help to peruse the Main Page and Talk Page for one of the last Wikipedia Projects that I worked on, charged with writing up a Simplified Ruleset —

WikiPedia:Simplified Ruleset

WikiTedia:Simplified Ruleset

Shortly after joining the project, I suggested changing the name to Precepts or maybe WikiPrecepts, drawing on language going back to Hippocrates that is still common in medical schools, where adjunct faculty who supervise practical internships in the community are often called Preceptors.

Much Hilarity Ensued …

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
Looks like the Preceptors were overtaken by the Interceptors.
The Joy
Rather off-topic: I can't believe that Kim Bruning was insisting that Jonny copy and paste. I figured out not too long ago that doing that goes against the GFDL license by disconnecting the contributions from the contributors. To think that maniac Kim ran for the Board at one point and he didn't know the legal and ethical implications of copying and pasting? Sorry for the off-topicness. As you were gentleman and ladies.
GlassBeadGame
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 16th November 2007, 11:12am) *

Pedantic Scholiasm. The way I remember the word iatrogenic — Geek for «caused by iatollahs» — being used in psychiatry, it simply meant "caused by the healer", and so you have to say "iatrogenic disease" if you mean a bad thing caused by the healer (more generally, a teacher or a practitioner of any kind).

Jonny cool.gif


This seems to suggest Illich's writings from the 60s and 70s. I have been thinking about what Tools for Conviviality might have to say about wikis in general and WP specifically. Does this ever come up in your Inquiry discussions?

QUOTE(The Joy @ Fri 16th November 2007, 5:30pm) *

Rather off-topic: I can't believe that Kim Bruning was insisting that Jonny copy and paste. I figured out not too long ago that doing that goes against the GFDL license by disconnecting the contributions from the contributors. To think that maniac Kim ran for the Board at one point and he didn't know the legal and ethical implications of copying and pasting? Sorry for the off-topicness. As you were gentleman and ladies.


Jeez. Perhaps Burning can't conceive of someone forming their own thoughts.
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 16th November 2007, 6:22pm) *

Looks like the Preceptors were overtaken by the Interceptors.


More like «Raptors Of The Dip» —
Probably caused by coming↑for err too fast.

Jonny cool.gif
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(The Joy @ Fri 16th November 2007, 6:30pm) *

Rather off-topic: I can't believe that Kim Bruning was insisting that Jonny copy and paste. I figured out not too long ago that doing that goes against the GFDL license by disconnecting the contributions from the contributors. To think that maniac Kim ran for the Board at one point and he didn't know the legal and ethical implications of copying and pasting? Sorry for the off-topicness. As you were gentleman and ladies.


Actually, my encounter with Kim Bruning does provide a hint of coming strange distractors, since he was the one who introduced me to the WP:EC (Escape Clauses) of WP:NIB (Nothing Is Binding) and WP:IARDEE IAR IAR by virtue or maybe by vice of the fact that he habitually invoked them — most notoriously during our run-ins at WP:NOR, WP:SIMP, and WP:VAIN — whenever he found himself cornered by some Hoary Whispered Geist Of A Rool and needed to WP:BvM (Baron von Münchhausen) himself out of its sφear of inφluence.

Jon Awbrey
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Fri 16th November 2007, 6:44pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 16th November 2007, 11:12am) *

Pedantic Scholiasm. The way I remember the word iatrogenic — Geek for «caused by iatollahs» — being used in psychiatry, it simply meant "caused by the healer", and so you have to say "iatrogenic disease" if you mean a bad thing caused by the healer (more generally, a teacher or a practitioner of any kind).


This seems to suggest Illich's writings from the 60s and 70s. I have been thinking about what Tools for Conviviality might have to say about wikis in general and WP specifically. Does this ever come up in your Inquiry discussions?


I have been digging up some of my old books from the 60's and 70's. I started out in Math and Physics but eventually went on the Grand Tour through Communications, Psychology, and Philosophy, finally ending up in an Experimental Liberal Arts College that we called our «Rad-Lib Arts College», Just 'n' Moral. This had been founded on principles of Integrative Cross-Cultural Education borrowed from all over — Dewey, Freire, Illich, Jung, Laing, Perls — but I remember especially the Lit-Film-Writing course called «Inquiry and Expression», the «Integrative Studies in Philosophy», and a year long immersion in the origins, manifestations, structures, and re-evaluations of mythic beliefs called «The Waking of Myth».

Jon Awbrey
Jonny Cache
Before I wander too far afield down memory lane, I will try to remember that one of our outstanding tasks on several threads is to clarify the actual meaning in practice of that gagabyte tattoo of WP:RULES that your dyed and blue Wikipediot e-blazons on its slim excuse for a Person and e-brandishes like a flaming, er, sword on every ritual occasion. (On afterthought, given its evident delibility, maybe it's really more like a collection of those washable cartoon transfers that we used to get with bubble gum when I was a kid — Yikes! a bridge too far down Rue Temps Perdu …)

Where was I ???

Right — the function and meaning of WP:RULE as she is spoke in actual operation.

My Thesis. Wikipedia Policy Pages, in their Con∑ate Acronymaniac Majesty, are far less often used as Anticipatory Planning Templates (APT's) than mentioned as Post Hoc Excuses And Rationalizations (PHEAR's).

And Dat's Da Truth !!!

Anyone who doubts this thesis is hereby assigned the homework exercise of visiting the Wikienlist for November, making a histogram of all the times when JzG uses the termsofart «ban», «drama», «play nice», «troll» — and any other items of Wikipediot Baby Babble that come to mind as you run throught the exercise — and assessing what percentage of the time he uses those words solely as argument stoppers, as rhetorical punctuations for actions that he took first and cooked up the reasons for later.

That'll teach ya …

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
That's similar to the thesis I put forward last August...

QUOTE(Op-Ed Article)
Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Back in August, I was being generous in characterizing the WP:HodgePodge as WP:Rules, since they aren't particularly well-defined, uniformly applied, or self-consistent.
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sat 17th November 2007, 10:49am) *

That's similar to the thesis I put forward last August …

QUOTE(Op-Ed Article)

Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.


Back in August, I was being generous in characterizing the WP:HodgePodge as WP:Rules, since they aren't particularly well-defined, uniformly applied, or self-consistent.


Look, Alice, words are elastic in their semantics, and if you want to call playing croquet with pink flamingoes for mallets a rule-driven system, then warn us ahead of time and we'll all know how much Spandexâ„¢ you need to cover your Lex-ipodâ„¢.

Otherwise, something is bound to ¤Snap¤Crackle¤Pop¤™

Jonny cool.gif
Jonny Cache
I would like to repeat my suggestion that we have a separate forum for discussing specific policy issues. Not having a forum specifically dedicated to policy issues is one of the reasons that every discussion of policy tends to veer off into a discussion of personalities. I realize that personality, and the question of whether Wikipediots have any, is far more thrilling a topic than policy, and the question of whether Wikipedia has any, but someone's gotta do the duller jobs around here, so I guess I'm self-nominated.

Jonny cool.gif
D.A.F.
While I agree with your descriptions, I disagree with your analogy with chess. In chess the rules are absolute, no interpretations no way of ignoring them, twisting them (I mean in the professional level, but even amateurs)...

On Wikipedia on the other hand, pieces are changed in the middle of the game in an unrully way, rules on the possible position permitted for each pieces are reinterpreted etc.

QUOTE(Moulton @ Sat 17th November 2007, 9:49am) *

That's similar to the thesis I put forward last August...

QUOTE(Op-Ed Article)
Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.

Back in August, I was being generous in characterizing the WP:HodgePodge as WP:Rules, since they aren't particularly well-defined, uniformly applied, or self-consistent.

Jonny Cache
I think it's clear that Wikipedia has no principles or policies in any proper sense of those words — what it has are pretenses of principles and pretenses of policies. The practices that we see there are worlds apart from what those pretenders would have us believe.

Viewed in historical perspective, the principles and policies that Wikipedians pretend to honor arose from the engagement of several different paradigms, philosophies, and purposes — some of them joining their concordant motives in concerted performance and others gnashing more than meshing their disparate drives.

On the one hand we find the Free Software Movement (FSM), the Open Source Ideal (OSI), and the Wiki Software Paradigm (WSP).

On the other hand we have the arrant array of projects co-foundered by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.

The collision of these two worlds, so much at odds with each other in their fundamental aims and means, has not been a pretty sight for all of those who have so long cherished the first set of values.

The trajectory of destruction cannot be halted at this point, but we may be able to learn something from observing the ongoing, all too fascinating train wreck of Wikipedia that will help us to engineer better conveyances of knowledge in the future.

Doing that depends on answering the question — you guessed it — «How did it come to this?»

Jon Awbrey
Jonny Cache
Avoiding the same mistakes the next time depends on doing an adequate post mortem on Wikipedia.

What are the peculiar features of the Wikipedia belief system that are leading to its spectacular demise?

One of the things that I notice a lot is a peculiar form of dysfunction that arises from the psychological mechanisms of denial and repression. Various schools of psychology tell us in their sundry vocabularies that denying a truth — whether a truth about ourselves, a fact of human nature, or a force of nature — never comes to a good end. The truth will out, and all the more forcefully for being denied.

For example, take the espoused doctrine of Wikipedism that is constantly invoked as a justification for anonymity, to wit, the idea that «the value of a contribution lies in the contribution itself and not in the identity of the contributor».

Can anyone seriously believe that Wikipediots truly believe this?

The «wouldn't it be luverly» attractions of the doctrine are impossible to deny, and yet look around at the sorts of things that are currently eating up the lion's share of Wikipediot energies.

The loudest defenders of anonymous immunity from responsibility — for themselves — are the most relentless banshees when it comes to tracking down the identities of contributors who somehow or other got on their WP:BADSIDE. Nor can they see any contradiction with their own espoused doctrine if they summarily purge the others' contributions from the database, without even glancing at the putative value of the contributions themselves.

This is a clear case of what various schools of psychology call enantiodromia or the return of the repressed.

And it all comes about because some people pretend to believe something that they clearly do not really believe.

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
There is a concept in psychology and discovery learning which may variously be called dawning of awareness, awakening, realization, or epiphany.

Some discoveries come easily. Some are long-delayed.

What's fascinating about Wikipedia is the chaotic process by which myths, misconceptions, and other erratic beliefs come under the limelight.

In the annals of education, there is the legendary, if dangerous, role of midwifing the epiphany. It's one thing to play that role while mentoring an adolescent who is in the throes of Bildungsroman. It's quite another thing to play that role when the subject is an institutionalized collective of players laboring under a tragic misconception.

WR is something like the Greek Chorus -- playing the role of an engaged audience that's actually part of the play.

The WP Cabal is the main protagonist in this modern reprise of a classical Greek Tragedy -- an arrogant and hubristic figure who expects to play the role of Hero, but predictably stumbles and falls, and ends up being the Goat.

I wonder how many apologetic Dithyrambs must be crooned before the awakening process runs its course.
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 23rd November 2007, 11:41am) *

There is a concept in psychology and discovery learning which may variously be called dawning of awareness, awakening, realization, or epiphany.

Some discoveries come easily. Some are long-delayed.

What's fascinating about Wikipedia is the chaotic process by which myths, misconceptions, and other erratic beliefs come under the limelight.

In the annals of education, there is the legendary, if dangerous, role of midwifing the epiphany. It's one thing to play that role while mentoring an adolescent who is in the throes of Bildungsroman. It's quite another thing to play that role when the subject is an institutionalized collective of players laboring under a tragic misconception.

WR is something like the Greek Chorus — playing the role of an engaged audience that's actually part of the play.

The WP Cabal is the main protagonist in this modern reprise of a classical Greek Tragedy — an arrogant and hubristic figure who expects to play the role of Hero, but predictably stumbles and falls, and ends up being the Goat.

I wonder how many apologetic Dithyrambs must be crooned before the awakening process runs its course.


Let me 2nd that e-motion, that there is much to be learned from dramatic representation, but one of the things that I personally take away from the theatre when the lights go up is that life is not doomed to follow the trajectory of the righteous Greek tragedy. Analysis can be worthwhile and the Theatre did not die with the Greeks, the Romans, the Medieval Mystery Plays, the Elizabethan Jacobean Days, the Faustean, the Moderns, or the Never-Quite-Getting-To-The-Point-Stories of the Post*Moderns.

So now that we see the Fin Again in the Road↑Ahead, I ask that we ask —

«What can we learn from this experience, this experiment, this Play in the Will of Humane Nature?»

'Tis a far, far better thing we do than our quietus make with boorish bumpkins, as if we'd willingly, ¬nillingly acquiesce to the blandishments offerred up on a glist'ring plate by the will of bland fate.

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
Fast forwarding to the age of the realistic novel, we have the caricature of a dysfunctional body politic as portrayed by the likes of Dostoevsky.

Not being a student of the Humanities, I am obliged to rely on the scholarship of Rene Girard to map out the dramatic structure for me.

Girard obliges me with a compact five-point model...
1. Mimetic Desire

2. Mimetic Rivalry

3. Temptation and Skandalon

4. Alienation and Scapegoating

5. Authorized, Sanctioned, and Sacred Kiboshing
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 23rd November 2007, 3:11pm) *

Fast forwarding to the age of the realistic novel, we have the caricature of a dysfunctional body politic as portrayed by the likes of Dostoevsky.

Not being a student of the Humanities, I am obliged to rely on the scholarship of Rene Girard to map out the dramatic structure for me.

Girard obliges me with a compact five-point model …
  1. Mimetic Desire
  2. Mimetic Rivalry
  3. Temptation and Skandalon
  4. Alienation and Scapegoating
  5. Authorized, Sanctioned, and Sacred Kiboshing

If we think of Notes From Underground and The Doppelgänger, the two that made the deepest impressions on me personally, we can call them realistic in the sense that they give a realistic portrayal of deep forces in the human psyche. But in another sense it is impossible for a work of fiction to portray those forces except in projective symbolic form through the various dreamworks of plastic representation that were enumerated most notably by Freud.

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
It is said that art imitates life. If so, the best artists are in some ways the best system modelers.

Girard starts his dramatic analysis by positing characters who are motivated by competing desires.

One can turn to Freud and Jung to ask where desires come from in the first place. One model suggests that our most desirable values are conceived as the inverse of our deepest dreads. Mapping out a storybook character that exemplifies that model, we might come up with something along these lines...

1. Innermost Fears (Amygdala and Hippocampus)

2. Burbling Emotions (Limbic System)

3. Undisclosed Backstory (Long-Term Memory)

4. Burning Issues (Identify Fiend or Foof)

5. Sacred Beliefs (Neocortex)

6. Derivative Practices (Cerebellum)

7. Heart's Desires (HeartMind)

8. Avowed Intentions (Throat)

9. Foolish Actions & Reactions (Muscles)

10. Dreadful Drama (Shreklisch Life Story)
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(Plato @ Alcibiades, 135A)

Again, in a ship, if a man were at liberty to do what he chose, but were devoid of mind and excellence in navigation (αρετης κυβερνητικης), do you perceive what must happen to him and his fellow sailors? (Plato, Alcibiades, 135A).


QUOTE(Moulton @ Fri 23rd November 2007, 11:41am) *

There is a concept in psychology and discovery learning which may variously be called dawning of awareness, awakening, realization, or epiphany.

Some discoveries come easily. Some are long-delayed.

What's fascinating about Wikipedia is the chaotic process by which myths, misconceptions, and other erratic beliefs come under the limelight.

In the annals of education, there is the legendary, if dangerous, role of midwifing the epiphany. It's one thing to play that role while mentoring an adolescent who is in the throes of Bildungsroman. It's quite another thing to play that role when the subject is an institutionalized collective of players laboring under a tragic misconception.

WR is something like the Greek Chorus — playing the role of an engaged audience that's actually part of the play.

The WP Cabal is the main protagonist in this modern reprise of a classical Greek Tragedy — an arrogant and hubristic figure who expects to play the role of Hero, but predictably stumbles and falls, and ends up being the Goat.

I wonder how many apologetic Dithyrambs must be crooned before the awakening process runs its course.


Many plays are driven by a lack of self-knowledge on the part of the Protagonist that must be remedied one way or another before the play is done. In the case of Oedipus, twists of fate and feet have hidden the truth of the Hero's being from himself. This has tragic consequences as the discovery unravels, always too late for him to anticipate the next revelation and thus to steer his ship of fate on another course than the prevailing winds are waylaying on him.

But the Greeks had other myths to live by than those that we find in the tragic mold. Especially apt from a cybernetic point of view are the stories of epic oarsmen and heroic pilots like Odysseus, who learn, however waywardly, to adjust the arrogance of their overweening ways and to correct the errors of their overshooting stars, and who, some say, wised up at last.

Jon Awbrey
Moulton
Somehow or other, I don't think The Wikipedia Story is gonna have a Hollywood Ending.
The Joy
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sat 24th November 2007, 1:26am) *

Somehow or other, I don't think The Wikipedia Story is gonna have a Hollywood Ending.


You mean a writers' strike? smile.gif

Actually, that's not a bad idea... Wikipedians forming a union!
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(The Joy @ Sat 24th November 2007, 4:50am) *

QUOTE(Moulton @ Sat 24th November 2007, 1:26am) *

Somehow or other, I don't think The Wikipedia Story is gonna have a Hollywood Ending.


You mean a writers' strike? smile.gif

Actually, that's not a bad idea … Wikipedians forming a union!


Yes, I'm glad I thought of it.

The strike has already been called.

The only thing that stands in the way of the Wikers casting off their chains appears to be their own self-mystification — that and their apparent inability to pull their heads out of their Geeks Forever Dear Lord (GFDL) navel lint traps.

Jon Awbrey
Jonny Cache
Copying yet another mini-manifesto to a place where I can find it again —

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 28th December 2007, 3:08pm) *

The way I understand it, «Review» means «Critique» and «Critique» is a «Consideration» that addresses its object not in absolute terms — neither as a thing in itself nor as a thing in isolation from everything else — but as a thing that is actualized within a context of possible alternatives.

In other words, criticism is comparative judgment — it evaluates its object within a context of practical alternatives and theoretical ideals.

I guess I just always assumed that The Wikipedia Review was supposed to serve as a forum for literary, philosophical, and social critique that takes off from the object example provided by Wikipedia, but that it would be bound to degenerate into uselessness as a critique if Wikipedia were all that it could ever talk about.

Jon Awbrey

Joseph100
This is my favorate WikiRule....
GlassBeadGame
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 1st January 2008, 12:24pm) *

Copying yet another mini-manifesto to a place where I can find it again —

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 28th December 2007, 3:08pm) *

The way I understand it, «Review» means «Critique» and «Critique» is a «Consideration» that addresses its object not in absolute terms — neither as a thing in itself nor as a thing in isolation from everything else — but as a thing that is actualized within a context of possible alternatives.

In other words, criticism is comparative judgment — it evaluates its object within a context of practical alternatives and theoretical ideals.

I guess I just always assumed that The Wikipedia Review was supposed to serve as a forum for literary, philosophical, and social critique that takes off from the object example provided by Wikipedia, but that it would be bound to degenerate into uselessness as a critique if Wikipedia were all that it could ever talk about.

Jon Awbrey




Well, at the risk of being told that you're on to something else altogether, I agree that examining WP in terms of it's own processes, personalities and dramas without reference wider outside context will result in the kind of deterioration you describe. So WP should be critiqued in comparison to other collaborative projects, other encyclopedias, other communities, other MMORPGs, other non-profit organizations, other con games, other websites...and so on. From a more academic orientation you may be concerned about the more rarefied theoretic constructs that have been used explain the workings of these entities.

I would think the ultimate end of the road for the failure to ground a critique upon this type of context would be a non-ending discussion of who is a naughty Wikipedian and who is a nice Wikipedian.
Jonny Cache
QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Tue 1st January 2008, 1:21pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 28th December 2007, 3:08pm) *

The way I understand it, «Review» means «Critique» and «Critique» is a «Consideration» that addresses its object not in absolute terms — neither as a thing in itself nor as a thing in isolation from everything else — but as a thing that is actualized within a context of possible alternatives.

In other words, criticism is comparative judgment — it evaluates its object within a context of practical alternatives and theoretical ideals.

I guess I just always assumed that The Wikipedia Review was supposed to serve as a forum for literary, philosophical, and social critique that takes off from the object example provided by Wikipedia, but that it would be bound to degenerate into uselessness as a critique if Wikipedia were all that it could ever talk about.

Jon Awbrey


Well, at the risk of being told that you're on to something else altogether, I agree that examining WP in terms of it's own processes, personalities, and dramas without reference wider outside context will result in the kind of deterioration you describe. So WP should be critiqued in comparison to other collaborative projects, other encyclopedias, other communities, other MMORPGs, other non-profit organizations, other con games, other websites … and so on. From a more academic orientation you may be concerned about the more rarefied theoretic constructs that have been used explain the workings of these entities.

I would think the ultimate end of the road for the failure to ground a critique upon this type of context would be a non-ending discussion of who is a naughty Wikipedian and who is a nice Wikipedian.


The way I see it, Wikipedia is the past. It's an experiment that failed — failed to actualize its initial promise, failed to develop an environment for true collaboration, failed to realize the potential of the wiki paradigm.

There's nothing wrong with trying something that doesn't work — you can learn a lot from doing that.

People who live the life of experiment, from artists to scientists, would have admitted the failure, performed the post mortem, recognized the harm to the public that comes from continuing the experiment past its expiration date, and moved on to the next experiment.

That's what responsible experimenters would have done. That's what people who are capable of learning from experience would have done. Wikipedia As A Hole (WAAH) is another story, as we well know.

So it's up to us to draw the lessons for the future.

Jon Awbrey
GlassBeadGame
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Tue 1st January 2008, 2:15pm) *

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Tue 1st January 2008, 1:21pm) *

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Fri 28th December 2007, 3:08pm) *

The way I understand it, «Review» means «Critique» and «Critique» is a «Consideration» that addresses its object not in absolute terms — neither as a thing in itself nor as a thing in isolation from everything else — but as a thing that is actualized within a context of possible alternatives.

In other words, criticism is comparative judgment — it evaluates its object within a context of practical alternatives and theoretical ideals.

I guess I just always assumed that The Wikipedia Review was supposed to serve as a forum for literary, philosophical, and social critique that takes off from the object example provided by Wikipedia, but that it would be bound to degenerate into uselessness as a critique if Wikipedia were all that it could ever talk about.

Jon Awbrey


Well, at the risk of being told that you're on to something else altogether, I agree that examining WP in terms of it's own processes, personalities, and dramas without reference wider outside context will result in the kind of deterioration you describe. So WP should be critiqued in comparison to other collaborative projects, other encyclopedias, other communities, other MMORPGs, other non-profit organizations, other con games, other websites … and so on. From a more academic orientation you may be concerned about the more rarefied theoretic constructs that have been used explain the workings of these entities.

I would think the ultimate end of the road for the failure to ground a critique upon this type of context would be a non-ending discussion of who is a naughty Wikipedian and who is a nice Wikipedian.


The way I see it, Wikipedia is the past. It's an experiment that failed — failed to actualize its initial promise, failed to develop an environment for true collaboration, failed to realize the potential of the wiki paradigm.

There's nothing wrong with trying something that doesn't work — you can learn a lot from doing that.

People who live the life of experiment, from artists to scientists, would have admitted the failure, performed the post mortem, recognized the harm to the public that comes from continuing the experiment past its expiration date, and moved on to the next experiment.

That's what responsible experimenters would have done. That's what people who are capable of learning from experience would have done. Wikipedia As A Hole (WAAH) is another story, as we well know.

So it's up to us to draw the lessons for the future.

Jon Awbrey


So what is required is Forensic Analysis Targeting Wikipedia's Anomalies (FATWA)?
Jon Awbrey
Sounds like there's an echo in here …

Jon scream.gif
Moulton
OK, so we did the forensic analysis (about a year ago).

WP was diagnosed as a feudalistic culture with elements of tribalism dating back to before the dawn of civilization.

And, we noted the irony of it.

Now what?
Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Moulton @ Thu 17th June 2010, 7:18am) *

OK, so we did the forensic analysis (about a year ago).

WP was diagnosed as a feudalistic culture with elements of tribalism dating back to before the dawn of civilization.

And, we noted the irony of it.

Now what?


Uh, comic opera?

Jon dry.gif
Moulton
QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 17th June 2010, 9:34am) *
QUOTE(Moulton @ Thu 17th June 2010, 7:18am) *
OK, so we did the forensic analysis (about a year ago).

WP was diagnosed as a feudalistic culture with elements of tribalism dating back to before the dawn of civilization.

And, we noted the irony of it.

Now what?
Uh, comic opera?

Jon dry.gif

That works for me.
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