(This is a spinoff of the thread in WRR, at the request of the subject.)

The double standard in applying WP: COI has long been a subject of discussion here. There are instances, as in the case of Mr. Kohs, in which people who have clearly expressed their Conflict of Interest are crucified and others, such as Ms. Dunin, who are allowed to express their conflict of interest in their editing activities with the benediction, even the encouragement of the WPPTB.

Mr. Shankbone seems to be in the later category, even having his own category in Commons. Not only is his name all over these contributions, there are also numerous "contributions" which seem to concerned with documenting....David Shankbone himself :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Shankbone_2.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Al_Sharpton.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg (by the way, David, that black muscleshirt is at least two sizes too small....) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...00px-Self_2.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg

...just to point out a few conspicuous examples. It would seem that this type of activity has been attracting the attention of a particularly vicious stalker...and it would also seem that some Users are beginning to question the validity of the inclusion of many of these contributions.

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

It seems to me to be only a matter of time before Mr. Shankbone has his own article: indeed, this would seem to be the logical outcome of this entire process. Granted, he does seem to produce an awful lot of content, but to what aim?

It was suggested on another thread that editors seem to contribute in areas which are of interest to them: classical music, pokemon, grind films of the 1970s, uses for electric knives etc. It was also suggested that since Mr. Shankbone's principal interest is himself that it is only logical and indeed, in his way of thinking, "altruistic" to offer himself as the supreme gift to the project.

The only question I have at this point is whether 1. WP will get tired of this self-promotion and expel him from the system or 2. whether he gets to go for the Golden prize that Durova was trying for and become the official WP media liaison. At this point, either outcome seems possible.

At least at that point, he could then interview himself about how he felt about losing his hair, instead of having to use the pretext of interviewing somebody else to get that valuable information into Wikipedia.

Most people who contribute a lot of their photos to Commons have a self-category

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:User_galleries

and indeed it is encouraged.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:...licy#Categories

So we can't criticise Shankbone for that.

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

Edwaert Collier 1640-1707 a contemporary artist?

No, he removed another artist's name (leaving the image, however) :



and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

I suppose that the David Shankbone section on commons is SOP, but quite a few people are getting irked by seeing his bylines all over the place.

I guess he removed Edwaert Collier by mistake as he was clearly notable and I don't think he's up to much self promotion being dead for 300 years. The other artist is contemporary so removing the name was fair enough.


But artists hope to sell their work and AFAIK Mr Shankbone does not wish to sell his photographs?

Well, that's the question. What is Mr. Shankbone selling? And why is his name more notable than the artist that he removed?

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I wouldn't quite describe it as that. He's an egotistical spirit doing his own ego-boosting thing as witnessed by his words "I send the mainstream media to you" and his visit to Israel as an ambassador of wikipedia or whatever. And his constantly going on about the 20 hours a week I have contributed to wikipedia and the numerous pictures I have uploaded (which incidentally are often pictures of himself.)


On the other hand, his motivation towards praise etc. does mean he does a lot of 'work'.

Answers:

The self-promotion argument is so old, so tired, that I don't mind it because it is *so* easy to refute. It's been done time and again. Here's a conversation that I did *not* take part in. I can assure you, every time the self-promotion argument comes up, it goes a similar direction. Who cares if someone puts a name in the file name? I like to see how my work is used (if at all). For instance, my photo of a chest was used by an art class when they were learning figurative drawing. The site is now down, but they didn't credit me, they just uploaded the file from the Commons and it had my User name, so I found it.

It's very satisfying to be able to create something that other people want to use.

Is there a Conflict of Interest? This argument has also been discarded, such as here. If you look at that page there is a lot of heavy argumentation on my part, and I think I did not need to be so aggressive. I still have room to grow, although the discussion at Christian right is not an example (his arguments made no sense). I think what shows I have grown is that I have not taken part in any further Lower Manhattan arguments about one of my photos there (over which one person got blocked). It happens to be one of my favorite photographs, even though it's not of particularly high quality.

What I consider a Conflict of Interest?is what Robin Wong does. I'm not fucking off Robin here; she's a better photographer than I am. But that's just it: she's a professional. She has uploaded much needed photographs, with her name in the file name. But they are all essentially thumbnails, around 54KB. All of the image pages contain links to her photography site, where you can hire her or buy the better resolution versions of her work.

Fine, we don't have alternatives for her work. But you could argue this is more of an effort to "advertise" on Wikipedia than actually contribute to the project. I don't have a web site. I upload the largest size possible. I don't argue on behalf of photos I don't believe in. I thought the Sean Combs current lead was better than mine.

Is a COI to argue aggressively for my photographs? No, but it's not good form. That said, making arguments on behalf of my work is perfectly fine. As fine as someone arguing for a new section they wrote for an article, or a source they want to use. It would be insane to expect other Wikipedians to argue on my behalf every time someone makes a nonsensical argument, such as that guy on Christian right.

Do you know where your right, FieryAngel? The interviews *are* about me. They are about things I want to know. I have no responsibility to make sure I talk about one thing or another. Maybe Diane Sawyer's producer says, "You really should ask Whitney Houston about her drug use," but in the end it's up to Sawyer to decide. If she doesn't ask, people will wonder why not, because it was around the time there were photos of Whitney coming out of crack dens, etc. Why else would you have her on your show? She hadn't done anything recently.

The difference is, Diane Sawyer is paid and on broadcast television. I'm a volunteer who wants to get some recordings of their voices and I will ask what I want to ask. Even though you don't pay me, FieryAngel, like Sawyer's producer you can suggest I ask about certain topics. That's what happened when I interviewed the Dalai Lama's ambassador. Do you think I know the first thing about Shugden worship, or care about when the Dalai Lama is going to Latin America? No. They were questions people wanted me to ask.

Interviews are not easy, and I am empathetic to people. There is a lot of nuance in the world and a lot of things hit people out of left field, and they try to handle those things as best they can, given the circumstances. Sometimes, in hindsight, their best was not particularly good. Mistakes happen. It's part of life. I try to discuss current hot issues, but I'm not casting stones. I am not going to pillory someone when I really just want to have a conversation with them. One person on the talk page felt Senator Sam Brownback got away with a comment about Hugo Chavez that should have been challenged. I think I let him get away with not answering why God would have a problem with gay people. He started talking gay marriage. That's not what I was talking about, but fine, I let it slide. I thought it spoke for itself.

One last thing, FieryAngel, you spend time here complaining about how nobody on Wikipedia takes responsibility for their work, and how the anonymity makes it such an ethically flawed project, but what do you do when someone *does* take responsibility for their contributions? Self promotion and Conflict of Interest. Make up your mind what you are asking of people on WP: to take responsibility, or become part of the nameless, faceless Wikipedia Borg. Your arguments are all over the place.

I can agree with that generally. Nor do I entirely disagree with Fieryangel's assessment: everyone has motives to do the work they do, and a feeling of importance is a common one. Because Wikipedia is a volunteer project, this is one of the few rewards WP has to offer to most contributors. Even so, Shankbone comes across as peacocking and preening, and rather full of himself. But that's not misbehavior, per se.

It has long been consensus that body parts are photographed, and sex acts are illustrated. I can't point you to this, and maybe it's just a Wiki legend, but nobody has raised it again for clarification so it has stuck.

If you disagree with that consensus, then that's the question.

They aren't my body parts, and everyone else knows this except the occasional weirdo who sends me an e-mail complimenting my balls. We had a situation where every little "dude" and "bro" who starts working out thinks *their* bicep should illustrate what a bicep ought to look like. Or chest. Camera phone cock shots, every Brazilian waxing you can imagine. There's a site called WikiFilth that documents some of these uploads.

I have a friend who is a model, and I approached him if he would mind. That I would leave him unidentified. It was also an artistic effort on my part. It is just not often a person comes across an opportunity to do a nude photo shoot with a purpose. Or to photograph a professional BDSM dungeon, and the ladies spanking each other, etc.

I'm an experience junky. I don't know if I created a body of nude photos that could stand against the every-growing body of boobs and asses we get. I am curious, and sometimes I am surprised at the things I'm seeing. Yes, my photographs are the leads on Pornography, Pornographic film, and in many of the BDSM articles. I have around--this is a rough estimate--2,000 photographs on Wikipedia. Around 15-20 do people find objectionable. That really is not so bad.

Yes, I realized that only minutes after I'd posted, having intended to link to the thread where this was discussed, only to find that several posts down, Mr. Kohs had corrected the accusation. I apologize for having uncritically accepted it, and for having allowed it to influence my opinion of you.

It is a little odd that Wikipedia bows down to the demands of photographers to have their works signed, but does its best to degrade the efforts of its writers. Likewise a bit odd that photographers like yourself do not want to contribute to the effort anonymously, but think that others from a different media should.

I, too, BTW, am an experience junkie of a sort, so I find Wikipedia's claims that it's uncensored, except when it is, to be hilarious. There's always something censorable by somebody. Everybody has their taboo lines. My quote for that comes from my beloved professor Farnsworth on Futurama: "Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oooooh, suddenly you've gone too far..." And likewise everybody's always in favor of showing naked body parts, but when you show an erect penis with a Scarlet Macaw perched on it, ooohh, suddenly you've gone too far. Even though (whatever it might be) it's surely more art than pornography.

I have removed this comment, references to slavery by Shankbone is wrong, inappropriate, and untrue.

You're thinking of someone else, aren't you? Or else just making assumptions. The fieryangel hasn't generally been one of those people demanding personal accountability, or that everyone should use his/her real name... When s/he first joined us, the main issue s/he was into involved people like User:Makemi and User:Mindspillage, and how they've had a history of uploading audio files of themselves singing, playing the oboe, or whatever, as public-domain recordings that then become exemplars of the craft, almost by default. IOW, they could tell people, "if you want to hear a sample of my singing voice, just look up the word 'singer' on Wikipedia!" Which could be quite a calling-card for a musician, given the search-engine ubiquity factor.

I also vaguely recall TFA being rather unhappy with User:Moreschi and User:Folantin over their rather biased and heavy-handed ownership of opera-related articles, but of course, opera isn't exactly one of those "hot-button" topics. Moreschi actually turned out to be not so bad in the end... (though he could always be really horrible in the front...)

Anyway, there's a big difference between accepting responsibility for one's opinions, vs. engaging in a campaign of self-promotion. Though I should also say that I personally don't see this as such a big deal. Wikipedia needs photographers desperately, almost as much as it needs technical and scientific illustrators. If I were going to become a WP contributor, that's probably what I would do... except for the genitalia shots, of course. It just seems like overkill, considering how much of that is available elsewhere on the internet.

I heard the Macaw was furious about not getting his credit.

Contents removed at the request of Bluevictim. No worries. We all make mistakes.

The Brooklyn Rail just published their interview with me about what I do on Wikipedia. It may explain more, or give more to criticize.

I would like the quotes of my post to be removed by Kato and David Shankbone. David, thank you for explaining. I consider the accusations of slavery to be inappropriate, wrong, and untrue. Out of respect, can David Shankbone and Kato please remove these?

For what it's worth, SandyGeorgia has made some of these same arguments, and I happen to admire that editor. However, I think it's a philosophic difference. Some just want to make content, and some want to be lauded for making content--the end result is the same, and David's content isn't terrible.

David Shankbone thinks that naming rights are his entitlement, and he thinks that he should talk about his family in interviews that he links from Wikipedia. Yeah, looks a little bit like COI--and as I recall the community has actually resisted his linking interviews from third-party BLPs, which led to the absurd do-nothing controversy about how Wikipedia supposedly shits on Wikinews.

Whatever. At least he discloses his COI and has a name. If everyone was like that, many of Wikipedia's problems would vanish.

Incidentally--don't I remember you being a Randian fieryangel? It seems to me that a Randian could only contribute to Wikipedia in order to satisfy their ego, like David does.

A Randian??? Bite your tongue. I'm definitely not a follower of that nonsense.

You're all arguing in terms black verses white. My position is quite a bit more nuanced.

I think that WP's COI policy is not at all workable for the obvious reason that the more one knows about any given subject, the more likely it is that COI issues would be involved. Any academic who contributes to his or her field of expertise is going to have COI issues, due to career issues, books for sale, recordings of music, stakes in having certain theories or positions enter into the accepted canon of academic thought. Unfortunately for WP, these are the very people who should be writing encyclopedia articles about subject, simply because only they have the perspective and years of experience in discussing the subjects.

COI is used as a means of keeping these people out of the project, because they go against the unexpressed objectives of WP itself, which is to break the control that academics have over these subjects and to validate the idea that "what everybody thinks" is somehow more valuable than the position of those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject.

However, in the cases of enlightened amateurs such as our friend Mr. Shankbone, Elonka, Makemi (she's becoming a librarian anyway, so I think her "professional singing days are pretty much behind her..) and many others, the obvious issues of COI are not ever invoked. Why the double standard?

The answer seems to be quite obvious: they are not accused of having COI issues because their contributions serve to undermine this project's ultimate objectives of forcing this notion of "free culture" created by unpaid volunteers on Society as a whole. Their own self-promotion becomes acceptable since it furthers the objectives of WMF as a whole.

However, what image does this give about culture, about journalism, about knowledge? What does this ultimately say?

Policies such as COI and NPOV should be used to control this kind of manipulation of this medium in order to create true, encyclopaedic content. The interviews, the personal photos, the amateur recordings made from questionable sources (Josquin des Prez on....the Bassoon??? nice trick, since he died in 1521....and the baroque bassoon dates from the 18th century, dulcian not withstanding...sheez...) do not advance the idea of "creating an encyclopedia".

So, what remains: once again the "MMRPG" aspects which seem to be the prime objective of what happens on WP. The buzz which in turn generates buzz of Wikia...and our friend Mr. Shankbone is spending 20 hours a week working on this thing....for what?

That's the question: for what? Why would anyone do this, especially since the content is being used to generate profit for lots of third-parties who are even unconnected with the WMF/Wikia contingent.

How is that helpful, David?



How is this helpful?

I think you have this partially right. The idea behind Wikipedia is that "enlightened amateurs" can band together collectively and create something that one was the provenance of "those who have actually done the work to understand a certain subject." Who is to say 'those who have done the work'? When you watch a talking head on television, do you *really* know what gives them the credibility to be questioned by the news hosts to proffer opinions?

If you have a British accountant who is a train enthusiast, really gets into the subject, reads the books, does the research, goes to the museums, and maybe even does some light engineering research to understand trains better... why is this person's information less valid than a person who is *paid* to teach about trains? That's the idea behind Wikipedia. This man has information to offer, regardless of his paid job. Indeed, this man would be more willing to offer it: perhaps to "show off"; perhaps simply to share his knowledge. In the end, it doesn't matter why he is doing it, the unpaid amateur expert is more likely to "give away" the information than the paid expert at a university.




I think it's bizarre you take some photos that I have uploaded for my User page and discuss it as if these photographs are found on Wikipedia articles. Do you know how difficult it is to get high-profile people to talk to you? It's more difficult than it looks, and if I make it look easy, then that's great. Because it's not. You may see the people who say "yes" but what you don't see are the people who say "no" or don't respond. People whose images are their livelihood are hesitant to give an untested person a chance.

Without my User page, I could not do what I do. People are busy, and they want to make quick decisions. Today I'm interviewing punk pioneer Richard Hell. I send him to my Wikipedia User page where he can quickly glance at who else I have talked to. He can quickly scan the page to see examples of my work. Maybe he will take a look at an interview or photo gallery. He can see photos of me with these people (proving I actually met them). My User page is the reason I am able to get doors to open. It tells people: "No, I'm not that stalker who has been sending you and your publicist bizarre letters and I'm not using Wikipedia to get to you; I'm for real. Here is my track record."

If you don't like that track record, it's a different question.

You criticize my Augusten Burroughs interview (he was told by a friend it was his best). It's difficult to interview a memoirist whose bits and pieces of their life they themselves have not already written about, mostly have discussed with other interviewers. I came up with ideas of questions only to hear Terry Gross ask them. I tried to do something different with the interview, which was more a back-and-forth conversation. That dinner lasted four hours. Only 2.5 hours did I record. Only one hour did I end up publishing. Some people have written me saying they liked the way it was done; others have found it distracting and annoying.

What can I say? The same thing I told the Brooklyn Rail: It's a learning experience to figure out how to interview. I'm *not* a professional - I'm someone who just wants to ask some questions, and questions that mean something to me.

You may say that everything I do is part of a bigger problem with journalism and the media, and FieryAngel, you may have a point: but you are swatting at flies. Your ire is directed at the wrong level: amateurs.

Your complaints are akin to yelling at a six month old for messing their diapers, when your eighteen year old teenager is doing the same thing.



Because it is fun. Because it is satisfying. Because whether you like it or not, it *does* democratize information and the common person's ability to have a hand in it. I don't care if someone wants to use my photo in a collage they want to sell (a real example) or in a low budget movie about paraplegics (real) or my photo of Damon Dash on Bloomberg news. Or that novelist John Reed creates MySpace profiles for the characters in his new book using only my photographs (also real). Or if someone wants to make a calendar they try to sell to B&N. These things have made my otherwise droll and boring existence a bit more meaningful.

I think the MMRPG idea is an interesting way to look at Wikipedia, but it makes the work no less valid.

You seem to not want amateurs to have any chance to do anything that people want to read or reference--you sound like an elitist. And if the problem is that people give amateurs too much credibility, your ire is misdirected: it should be at the public. But you don't, because it's easier to blame "Wikipedia" than blame the people who blindly believe anything they read. It's easier to blame "lawyers" for the litigious nature of Americans, instead of Americans themselves who walk around saying things like, "I'm a lawsuit waiting to happen." Then you have the King of Tort Reform, Robert Bork, actually bring a slip and fall lawsuit against the Yale Club. Remember that? An expert, Ted Frank, thought that was something you didn't need to know about. An amateur, David Shankbone, thought it was an important nuance to not only the man, but the tort reform movement.

People never want to blame the audience, the society, they want to blame the visible things: broadcasters, lawyers, Wikipedia, et. al. A bunch of amateurs getting together to create a body of knowledge isn't the problem; it's the people who blindly believe everything they read.

Strawman. The fact is. the internet already enables "amateurs" to do anything - rounding up that capability into the homogenising corral of wikipedia is defusing its effectiveness.

Hey, I laughed. I would hope that dear Mr. Shankbone did too!

Don't you guys have any sense of humour?....Oh, yeah, I forgot....

No, SandyGeorgia took issue with one photo I tried to put on the Hugo Chavez article that she disagreed with. Since then, out of the rough estimate of 2,000 photos, SandyGeorgia thinks I add unnecessary images.

This is the photo I wanted to include on the Hugo Chavez article. I took this in 2006 during a Circus Amok performance. Circus Amok is the creative brainchild of the bearded lady, Jennifer Miller. It is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. It's a political circus that sings the praises of Socialism, and this was an homage to the crop of Socialist leaders that had recently been elected in South America (it was *not* making fun; it was a serious homage). Circus Amok has won major awards, and they receive a *lot* of support for the New York City creative community. This was not an insignificant event with puppets. My argument was that this showed how Chavez (and the other leaders) were affecting art, and how artists were depicting them. You may disagree with the argument, but it's not a sham - it's an argument I believe in.

SandyGeorgia and I disagree - that's all, but SandyGeorgia, completely contrary to WP:AGF, goes around talking about how I try to put on unnecessary photos. So she'll pop in arguments occasionally saying this, completely ignoring the body of my work.



I thought FieryAngel was funny - I laughed. I returned the joke. After all, a Harpy is also the giver of life, if Wikipedia is to be believed.



That's a statement that requires evidence, and I don't mean anecdotal, but real evidence. Do you have a study that shows Wikipedia is killing the effectiveness of amateurs on the Internet? That's really quite a claim.

What arrested me in the above colloquy is not the meat of the competing theses, but the practices of crafting a theory of mind about an adversary, and spinning that haphazard theory into an instance of character assassination.

This is the kind of unprofessional journalistic practice that transforms simple disagreements into protracted personal animosities.

Moulton, that's not correct. I'm not participating in this thread as a journalist, but explaining my work and defending it. There is no such thing as "unprofessional journalistic practice" when I'm here talking about me; this isn't for a story. You are taking one thing I said, when I have been more the pilloried on the WR in many threads. Saying someone sounds like an elitist is very, very tame compared with some of the things that have been written and said about me both by FieryAngel and other Wikipedia Reviewers (from I am "pathetic" to I don't have an intelligence above a 10 or 11 year old). So, let's keep a little perspective.

Yes, that's all very fine and well....but then why are you claiming "accreditation" on your user page, something which implies having been accepted as a "professional" which then accords the person "accredited" certain privileges? It seems to me that you're trying to have things both way, and at some point you can't. You can't interview people like Shimon Perez and then claim to be a "bumbling amateur". Have you considered what might have happened if you "screwed up" and asked the wrong question during your interview? Why do you think that it's so difficult to get a press card in most places in the World? Journalists have a responsibility not only to honestly and neutrally report the facts, but to respect the subjects that they are interviewing. It's called deontology and, wouldn't ya know it, there's a even a Wikipedia article on it! You might want to read that before you continue: think of it as intellectual toilet-training, to use your striking iimage.



Unfortunately, you've got this backwards. Wikipedia and the Cabal has simply tried to dictate the validity of their "project" simply on the basis of its popularity in a certain demographic. I don't believe that they have come even close to proving the validity of their aims and have even, through their actions, proven that their stated aims are not reflective of their real agenda.

So, the validity of the "work" has not been proven even by a long shot, in my perspective.



I do blame the audience, the society, the passive people who accept everything that comes out of their portable phones, their computer screens and their televisions. That does not make it morally right for people to pretend that a collection of "what white, middle-class, educated, male, first-world etc etc individuals think" is "the sum of all human knowledge. Anyone participating in this action is condoning this sham and also is responsible for what the distribution of this project will do to Society and Culture, especially to those famous "poor children in Africa" whose cultures are denied and degraded through this kind of pseudo-intellectual posturing.

That someone who self-identifies as part of a minority group would purposely buy into this whole exultation of cultural repression is another question entirely, but I have to wonder whether or not you've thought this through to its logical conclusion. From my point of view, you are participating in your own repression, much in the same way that "Log Cabin Republicans" validate those who are trying to repress them.

I spend quite a large percentage of my life in research libraries, piecing together portions of the past in my field of expertize (musicology) and 99% of the time, it's quite clear that what "everybody thinks" about whatever the subject may be is completely false when you finally get the facts out on the table. But then, given those facts, one has to make an assessment as what they might mean, even if that involves something as abstract as musical or mathematical symbols. One has to say "I believe that this is true..." and there goes NPOV. And then one has to defend one's position, and as a direct consequence, one generates one's own COI.

However, in order to get to this point, one has to spend months weeding through sources, analyzing other people's use of said sources and peeling back layer after layer of falsehood, deception and outright lies to get to...something which comes close to the truth.

What is WP doing? WP is glorifying all of those layers of junk that people learn and just accept--all of those layers that I have to spend months slowly, patiently, peeling away to try to get to what's real. We don't need any more of that and we certainly don't need a machine that generates this stuff.

WP is not telling people to look for the truth; it's saying "Golly, you were RIGHT after all! You did learn everything that you needed to know in the third grade!" And this creates another generation of people who cannot be bothered to question anything and who simply accept the stories of Newton and the Apple tree and Mozart telling fart jokes at parties.

It's junk. It's bad for Society and it's bad for culture. And it's what kids use for their homework.

And you're part of it. Shame on you!

Now, go interview Richard Hell. Do me a favor. Ask him to define the word "truth" for you.

He might just have something interesting to say about that.

Fair enough. It just seemed rather petty to me, and not particularly funny. (and not moving things forward) ... I think my sense of humor's pretty well intact, though perhaps not.

Excuse me, Mr. Shankbone, but I did not call you "pathetic". I'll called your actions pathetic. Here is the direct quote:



I don't find you "pathetic" personally. I do find your manipulation of the WP system to be so, however.



All of this discussion is serious by definition? And moving things forward? Forward to where? What things are we moving? Why are we moving them? And why does this necessarily have to be settled?

Why does there always have to be one, preferably nice, solution to every problem?

Okay, if you want to play like that, I can think of one, perfectly neat and simple way to solve all of this.

Pull the plug on Wikipedia's servers.

There ya go, problem solved!

....somehow it doesn't quite replace the current discussion, does it?

And show me where Fieryangel compares Shankbone's intelligence to that of an 11-year-old?

David, is "Shankbone" your real name?

David, the practice of forming haphazard theories of mind regarding one's adversary, and translating such ungrounded beliefs into acts of character assassination pervade our culture, and establish a regrettable cultural norm that infects more than just informal banter outside of one's professional activities.

I point it out here, not because you stand out as an egregious instance of the practice (your 'tame' example is almost surely below radar for almost everyone here). Nor do I deny that the practice is widespread around the table.

My point is that these practices do become so pervasive at all levels of intensity and gravity that they show up where they patently have no place, such as in crafting BLPs, journalistic stories, mainspace articles, RfCs, ArbCom cases, serious blogs, and op-ed pieces in professionally edited media.

It becomes such an embedded part of the culture that it becomes corrosive not just of individual casual relationships, but of the reputation and respectability of otherwise serious media enterprises.

Did Lar notice that the FieryAngel in David's signature links to Harpy? That is even less helpful. At least FieryAngel only links to David Shankbone in her signature.

That is a really brilliant summary of what is wrong with Wikipedia. Can a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, produce as good an article on a scientific topic as someone who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the topic? If someone is acknowledged by his peers as an expert, does it matter if a group of amateurs, a million amateurs without a BSc between them, do not *really* know what gives them the credibility?

Yes. Shankbone proves himself an articulate Wikipedia critic alongside Andrew Keen and others and....

Oh crap. He was saying these were a good thing.

David, begin your reading with Keen's

The Cult of the Amateur
How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy

Yes, and I've heard the opposite argued on Wikipedia. Strangely, though, they still have a tag for use on certain articles which reads: "This article is in need of review by an expert in the subject." One wonders why they have it.

One guy told me that anybody with a 9th grade education should be able to effectively edit any article. I'm sorry I didn't say the obvious, which is why 9th? Why not 6th?

But I shut him up by pointing him toward the wiki on "Lie group"s. What about their connection to modern physics? Gosh, could U(1), SO(2) and SO(3) all really be embedded in that giant "simple" E8 in a way that makes them consistent with experimental reality? Like the surfer-dude thinks? And what part of the rest is the QM version of GR?

I never heard back, so I guess he's still over there at the Wiki working on it.

Oh, any bright 9th grader (or year 10 pupil as we say in England, our children being a year more advanced than American children of the same age) could skim an article in some mathematical education journal and have a pot-shot at it. It's no harder than reading one tendentious article that alleges that Georg Cantor or Otto Lilienthal weren't Jewish and overruling half a dozen reliable sources.

A guy named Cantor was JEWISH? There's a shock. Maybe even for your year 10'ers.
-- Harry Potter

Oh, that was the stupidest thing I've ever seen in the Jewish lists arguments, which is saying something. I mean, he even used the Hebrew letter ?É as the symbol for infinity.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Have to have different classes of stupidty: א _0 , א _1

Fix'd, you can't use the letter for that due to directionality, there's a separate unicode char for the math symbol.

"King of Tort Reform"?

bluevictim, if you don't have the ability to find David Shankbone's name (which is contained in many threads on this very site), then I can't help you.

Here you go, FieryAngel: this is Richard Hell's response to "What is truth?" I don't think it was the answer you were looking for, this idea that there is a black and white idea of truth. We revisit the topic a few times during the interview (especially as it relates to writing memoirs and reality-based fiction), but this is the answer to your question, more or less, and what he thinks of Wikipedia.

How disappointing. Punk icon, Richard Hell, is a lazy bum. He doesn't really question the truth. He didn't even understand the question. He hasn't even asked himself these questions. How can he express anything without bothering to ask himself this essential question? What does it mean to be an American Punk Rock icon? Why does he bring Proust, of all people, into the discussion? Proust is the LAST person who would have understood, much less embraced, the punk rock aesthetic!

Hell's understanding of Proust is beside the point: Proust is about a specific cultural system which has absolutely nothing to do with Andy Warhol or aging (Proust died in his 40s, so he didn't have time to think about that....). It has to do with a specific time in French society, which most Americans simply do not understand. There's nothing wrong with that, but Proust was defining truth from the point of view of his society. Hell tries to define truth from the point of view of Proust...and so therefore "there is no truth". As Lévi-Strauss says, truth is only valid in a specific cultural system. Hell does not even see that he's part of a cultural system. He's more a victim than a protagonist. Too bad for him.

Too bad...but how predictable.

And how predictable that you are convinced that I am a "she"....not that I'm saying that I am or not...but look how connected you are to gender....what difference does it make??? What if I were a "he"? What would that change?

If I can pipe in here, I hope Lévi-Strauss wasn't a complete cultural relativist when it came to all branches of knowledge. After all, the airplane stays up and you stay up with it, no matter what culture you come from. Unless you do something to screw with aerodynamics, and then it comes down and you with it, and that happens also, no matter what culture you come from. It's the same way with a lot of technological truths, which in turn are based on natural science knowledge. And how can we know such knowledge is genuine? Because otherwise, the shear power of technology, which is independent of culture, would be something of a miracle!

Of course, if we're talking about "truths" (truthes?) that are outside the realm where technology holds sway, then all bets are off.

Did you read my Billy West interview? It's kind of the interview by which I judge other interviews. The connection was very satisfying. I really respect him.

And this was my interview with The Onion: "Almost every piece of hate mail starts with the line, 'Usually I love The Onion, but this time you’ve gone too far…' We responded to that with, 'Normally I love your pornographic website, but this time you’ve gone too far…' Someone will always be offended by something." - Chet Clem.

This is just ridiculous, FieryAngel. This is all your own point of view of what this project should be. You sound more like a petulant child that some strict vision of what Wikipedia should and should not be has not been followed. The creative ways that editors on the site effort to create a living, breathing modern encyclopedia at times is one of the best things about it. There is a creative, do-it-yourself experience, that inspires people to to go better. If people take a better photograph than I do, and release a high-enough quality version, then I am fine with them replacing my photograph. It happened on Catwalk; it happened on Hematoma. I don't argue in those cases.

But you want to say what is right and what is wrong. You sound like an utter control freak, and you're right--control freaks don't do well on Wikipedia. The world, to you, is so black and white. Wikipedia has its flaws, but people will solve anything that jeopardizes the prized position the project has. They always do. The site doesn't have validity because people consistently find it wholly unreliable.

Taking issue, though, with the creativity that goes into obtaining video, audio, photographic and graphic illustration is the most amazing part of Wikipedia, and I am consistently in awe of the quality. Your arguments are just pure derision, and it diminishes you to be so shrill. If you think you can do better; if you think you can compete then you should proffer your own work instead of grousing.

But unfortunately, the job of the critic is much easier than the job of the creative person who puts themselves out there. Who actually goes out there and *does* things. It's easy to criticize my interviews and my photographs when you don't attempt to do them yourself. Roger Ebert is a good movie critics because, you know, he was actually out there *involved* in the movie industry, writing screen plays and such. But when one criticizes just for the sake of criticizing, from their anonymous you-don't-even-know-my-gender perch, it's just sounds shrill. You should really give what you write to other people you trust, and just ask, "Do I sound shrill?" If they are a friend, they'll tell you yes, and that's unattractive. It diminishes you.

Show us all you can do better. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean the world must agree. People like you consistently end up pissed off that the world just won't see it your way. So it's better to criticize every little thing that other people attempt, and as you said, "pack it in" with such pathetic attempts, and know your place. And if you don't agree with how I see things, from my arrogant anonymous computer, you're a "lazy bum" person who most likely is far more accomplished than I will ever hope to be.

One has to wonder about the worldview of someone who writes some of the things you write. I know one thing: we certainly don't share it. When I was reading Richard Hell's interview with Adam Travis for Bookslut, I thought you could be Adam Travis he was talking to.

Best,
David

The worldview of FieryAngel is quite well explained in this excellent blog post by the Angel.

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20071212/w...d-raising-ploy/

and in this posting

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080114/v...of-the-project/

...it is quite similar to that of Andrew Keen and several other Wikipedia critics.

It differs from yours, David. That's because it is rooted in reality.