I'm beginning to wonder if JzG, Calton, Morven, and Jpgordon are all feeling so under the weather that they can't even muster the energy to revert this blasphemy.

Some asshole reverted it.

Whats that say in spanish?

It says "Sorry Mr Kohs, but I don't think this goes here"

But, Neil, I didn't put that there.

Okay, folks... that's just the first few points of the match. If this were tennis, it's 15-15 and the score in games is 0-0. Next time you're at an open IP hotspot, get me back in there, and on the similar Temple University who's who list. And let's try something other than "Internet personality".

Remember, the goal is to get the list protected, then we move on to another WR personality, with their alma maters.

Good luck!

Greg

Bring it on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(exclamation marks intended)

Mimesis or Meatpuppetry?

See, Greg has created a variety of game play where direct meat-puppetry is supplanted by anonymous mimesis, where the copycat action is performed by a random third party unknown to anyone. And what is also unknown is whether the independent mimetic edit is sincere and good faith (a la Krimpet on the Picard bio) or nefarious and insidious, as in <redacted>.

Odf course, there's the question of why it's OK to have a list of people associated with a lesser-known American university when it's not OK to have a list of say Jewish Nobel prize winners, but don't let me hijack the thread.

I was about to complain that the list itself is a blasphemy or at least an abomination, but then I see there is a comparable list for Oxford university.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unive...f_Oxford_people

I cannot believe anyone spent time actually compiling and sorting this. And then presumably someone might want to sort philosophers or historians as they went to Oxford or Cambridge and then ... madness.

[edit] I laugh, but then I see some busy person has indeed done this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unive...es#Philosophers

Making lists is an excuse for not having any kind of thoughts.

Emory University is "lesser-known"? Sure, less than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Duke... but...

Really?

It was tied for #17 in the US News "Best Colleges" of 2008 (National universities).

Now, if you're saying that Johns Hopkins, Rice, and Vanderbilt Universities are "lesser-known", then I can't argue.

Greg

Certainly less well-known in Britain, just as say Aston, a perfectly respectable university, is surely "lesser-known" than Oxford or Cambridge.

Aston is really a polytechnic, not a university.

Arguably these are not mutually exclusive as there exist institutions calling themselves "Polytechnic Universities". Aston University, as it happens, is not one of them.

<sigh> Absolutely wrong. You are mixing it up with Aston Polytechnic, or was that the former University of Central England, now Birmingham City University, or then again...

Aston University has been around a long time, well 1966. It was more or less on a par with UMIST and UWIST, Bradford and City of London University (thinking of the 5 universities that provided an Ophthalmic Optics course in the late 70s). I turned them down and ended up at UMIST before changing to University of Manchester - another city that has a baffling collection of higher education establishments that have merged and renamed themselves to pretend they are the real thing!

An Aston Polytechnic joke:

Interviewer to prospective student: "How many A-levels have you got?"
Interviewee: "27".
Interviewer: "You're joking!!!".
Interviewee: "Well, you started it".

Remember, the goal is to get the list protected, then we move on to another WR personality, with their alma maters.

Greg, as a fellow Tigers fan, clearly you can't be all bad but rather have some innate core of goodness.

I'm thinking I'm missing something here. Why do this? Just to be disruptive and waste people's time? To prove some point? What point?

Instead of inciting people to subtly vandalize (which is how I'd characterize this, it's a time waster just as much as inserting pictures of shankbones or other body parts on George Bush's page would be) why aren't you working on that BLP analysis you were talking about? That seems much more useful, and much more likely to bring about meaningful change if it reveals what I fear it might about quality levels, than this stunt.

This is just playing into the hands of your detractors, which won't help you articulate your message. And for those who think what one WRer proposes is something all of WR is behind, it doesn't help WR either I don't think. Hurt both sites at once. Brilliant.

Greg's stunts are often amusing and I am a great fan but, sadly, I have to agree. Greg, you have a great product and one I am prepared to help with when I have the time - why not focus on that. The dividends you will gain by improving your product will far outweigh anything you can hope to gain from damaging your supposed rival and competitor. Everyone in business knows that. Don't take this negatively, please.



Amen

Ah, but have you SEEN how the Tigers are playing lately? I'm "disgruntled"!

Lar, I hear every word you're saying. My original intent was to point out how fruitless it is to have an encyclopedia "anyone can edit" that also has administrators running around saying, "no, you can't edit it" on the basis of no discussion, no consensus.

I thought that my game would be an ultimately harmless way to point out the Sisyphian task that it is to stay on top of Wikipedia lists and keep them the way "you" want them to look. Personally, I think I'm just notable enough to be on Emory and Temple's list (I've been interviewed on national television, and a feature-length AP article about my business was reprinted in the Washington Post, USA Today, and Philadelphia Inquirer, following on an independent story that appeared in Die Welt in Germany). Apparently, other independent editors of Wikipedia feel the same way about my notability. There are some admins who have (without discussion or consensus) determined that I do not belong on these lists. That's the "wiki way" we hear so much about.

If you think it's really a pain in the butt to point out inherent problems with the open-editing model, as a Tigers fan, I can certainly relent. The "game" hasn't been as feverish as I'd hoped it would be, anyway. I would hope that it might inspire discussion, rather than the old rat-race of publish-revert-publish-revert-publish-revert.

And, don't you worry about that BLP project we're working on. It's going to be big. Really big.

Greg

P.S. It's not like I was advocating the wholesale harrassment of an entire class of administrators. I was advocating the insertion of one relatively harmless line of text into two Wikipedia lists. Imagine that!

One other thing, which I knew would happen...

Why did User:Neil decide that my entry on the list absolutely must go bye-bye, but he (apparently) overlooked this one?

My games are intended to instruct participants. I'm sorry if you're missing the instructional components of this particular event.

Extra for experts: What is taking shape in this article, related to Jason Goodman?

Greg, it probably does not do your bid for supremacy on the Foundation any good - it does undermine your credibility as someone having the best interests of the WMF at heart.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Good spot.

I can see the games are instructional, and I enjoy them immensely but ...

No "but", Peter! We don't do options, don't do nuances... I thought.



Haven't any of you ever poked an ant hill, at first intending just to mess up their world order for the heck of it, but then spend the next 10 or 20 minutes marveling about how these ants work so tirelessly, with such uniformity of purpose? Then you begin to wonder how they communicate with each other. Then you might muse about whether they have the brain complexity to feel something like "motivation". No ant that I know of has ever taken a "personal day" off from his work. How many Wikipedians actually cease their labor when they say they're going to take a break?

I may have poked the ant hill, sure. It's up to you all whether you elect to take the 15 minutes and ponder what it might all mean, and muse about ways we could make things better.

You'd all be wise to read the couple of posts by Anthony in that earlier thread I linked to, and maybe spending less time on how this teeny tiny game of mine might impact my Board seat bid.

I poked an ant hill once... turned out to be a fire ant hill.

Greg, I was tempted to leave it up, but I just had to take it away. Sorry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=2...oldid=213537965

Did you block 77.240.6.145?

Did you do anything about Jason Goodman in that list?

The score appears to be 30-30 in the first game of the match. Let's pick up the pace, people.

Greg

Not an admin.

Was I supposed to be taking this seriously?

I sure hope not; I wasn't.

I can remember as a kid watching one of those inane Saturday morning cartoons, in which the rivals were in some kind of steeplechase race.

Instead of just racing for the finish line independently of the other contestants, they did all kinds of zany stunts placing unexpected obstacles in the other guy's paths.

As I recall, none of them made it to the finish line.

But it was an amusing cartoon, for a 7-yr old kid to enjoy.

That would be the Dick Dastardly Paradox: that a competitor can always get ahead of the others in all situations, yet never realises that if they used the time for setting obstacles to simply travel onwards, they would always win.

I tried that between August and October 2006. Jimbo Dastardly and Guy Dastardly made damn sure that I couldn't win.

Sorry that you guys didn't take any larger lesson from my game. I guess the "Persons related to..." lists on Wikipedia will forever be open to anyone to enter any name they feel is appropriate, and any other editor or admin is open to remove whatever name they feel is inappropriate. And any deranged "adder" has the potential to harrass and stalk off the project any "subtracter". And you feel this is a more "efficient" way to win the race? Now I see why you're attracted to Wikipedia.

"Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

What's your point?

Greg, you make it sound like Wikipedia is primarily a Game of Narcissistic Wounding, neener, neener.

Is that about right?

If you are truly interested in my point (which I'm beginning to doubt you are), then you might want to read this post by jd turk.

And, if you still fail to comprehend what my point might be, then I would suggest this post of mine for further clarification.

If after reading that, you are still without a clue as to my intentions, then let me say this...

"You cannot build an encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

If you are still blind to my meaning and my point, let me try with one last statement of clarity:

"A wiki that anyone can edit does not produce an encyclopedia. It produces a hodgepodge data dump of a bit of sewage mixed with a lot of meaningful information. As a whole, it is not reliable, and it is not an encyclopedia."

And for my {{citation needed}}:

Schopenhauer's law of entropy might be described as: If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.

Now, back to your game, Sisyphus.

No, I am interested in your point.

Sisyphus is (according to, yes, Wikipedia) the guy who was condemned to eternally roll a boulder up a hill, over and over and over again (thanks to Wikipedia, I learned I would rather be Sisyphus than Ixion or Tantalus).

I believe, and please do correct me if I'm wrong, that your point is no matter how much we restore and repair yours and others' efforts - be it deliberately through malice and inadvertently through incompetence - to damage Wikipedia, the task is endless - there will always be more damage to fix (and that's just the damage we notice).

That doesn't bother me. Wikipedia will never be wholly accurate or wholly finished. No encyclopedia is, or ever has been. If encyclopedias were a "perfect and complete summary of information", Britannica would have stopped with their 1911 version. No encyclopedia is fully accurate. No encyclopedia is "finished" - how could they be?

You seem concerned about "finished". I am not concerned about that. I'm concerned about "responsible" and "reliable". How is my suggestion to close editing privileges to anonymous passers-by equivalent to saying "Wikipedia is complete"?

Now, could you point me to the version of Britannica that ever declared about Otto von Bismarck, "In the year of his marriage, Bismarck was raped over and over again"? That's what I read on Wikipedia just a couple of weeks ago.

We apparently agree it's not "finished". Could you explain to me how the anonymous (especially IP address-only) editors are helping to make Wikipedia more "responsible" and "reliable"? Do you still feel that the "anyone can edit" policy is still working to the benefit of the 100,000 most-viewed articles on the English Wikipedia?

P.S. Could you explain how adding "Gregory Kohs" to a list of persons associated with Emory University is "damaging" the Wikipedia project? How is the inclusion of persons like Ferrol A. Sams Jr., Vaidy Sunderam, Altan Yenicay, and Jason Goodman "helping" the Wikipedia project? I have brought attention several times now to Jason Goodman, especially, yet no Wikipedia participant has sought to remove his name from the list, but twice my name has been removed. Are we to assume that Goodman passes a certain level of notability that I do not?

Greg

Perhaps a more analytical way to look at the question is the direction of the entropy gradient.

If the entropy gradient is positive, that means the entropy is increasing over time, which means the system is becoming more disorderly, unstable, and erratic over time.

If the entropy gradient is negative, that means the entropy is decreasing over time, which means the system is becoming more orderly, stable and well-organized over time.

I haven't observed Wikipedia over a sufficiently long interval of time to be able say the direction and magnitude of the entropy gradient for Wikipedia.

It does look like it yo-yos a bit (hence the Sisyphean metaphor), and it's not clear what the ratio is for the oscillatory expenditure of effort to the minimum expenditure of effort for the net long-term trend.

Why is the Mediawiki software particularly better at building such a "not wholly accurate" and "not wholly finished" so-called encyclopedia than this software tool?

Your reaction is probably, "C'mon, Greg -- who in their right mind would try to build an accurate and finished encyclopedia product on that crappy platform?"

And that's what I'm asking you, regarding Mediawiki that is open to any non-verified drive-by editor.

In its current state, Wikipedia is wasting a lot of good (addicted) people's time, because it expects (and they expect) that much of their time should be devoted to cleaning up after the nonsense that the software is opened up to allow. You're too deep in the game to see it for what it is, apparently.

I'm going to go take a stick and write an encyclopedic article about Zachary Taylor on the wet sand on the beach. It's low tide right now, so we could get a lot of productive work done, Neil, if we work quickly together. Care to join me? Or, do you think I might be choosing a non-ideal communications platform for my work?

Is any of this lesson sinking in for you? Or, are you still convinced that you're working toward a responsible, reliable encyclopedia by making sure anyone can edit it?

Your problem, and Jimbo's problem, is that the purpose of the "project" was to construct a reliable, freely-licensed encyclopedia. You all got so caught up in how cool the wiki software was, it has become the new, prostituted purpose of the project. The purpose is now to keep constructing this mess on an imperfect platform -- to keep building an unreliable, freely-licensed thing that you pretend to call an encyclopedia, rather than staying on track and getting to a reliable, freely-licensed encyclopedia.

Phew! I'm pooped. I'll bet that you STILL don't get it, and we'll just have to leave it at that. I'm sure Jason Goodman appreciates your failure to see the problem.

I wonder how the Hoover Dam would have turned out if, instead of concrete, they had used super-cool latex balloons filled with lemon gelatin? Wouldn't that have been awesome?


No problem, Moulton. The University of Minnesota already did the work for you. This doesn't look like a "yo-yo" to me:

I was arrested by the name Jason Goodman. I was sure I had seen that name before.

And indeed I had. I've even corresponded with him, albeit a long time ago.

What I recall from my correspondence with Jason Goodman was his rigor in the application of evidence and reasoning. It's rare for me to find anyone who exceeds my normative level of rigor in the application of evidence and analytical reasoning. Jason was one of the few whose skeptical analysis was clearly superior to the one I had offered on the case we both had independently investigated at different times.

Are we talking about the same Jason Goodman?

This Jason Goodman.

"Your" Jason Goodman has nothing to do with Emory University, and therefore very little to do with this thread.

Speaking of "thread", what did you think of the "yo-yo" graphic I posted? If that intrigued you, I contend that the situation is even worse than what the University of Minnesota postulated.

I think one of the most important findings from the University of Minnesota study is this:

Figure 8 in the report shows that 20% of the "Damaged-Loose" content incidents in Wikipedia are viewed by at least 30 people before they get fixed. Ten percent of such mistakes are viewed by well over 100 people before repaired.

We keep hearing that the "vast majority" of mistakes and vandalisms are "quickly" fixed. I guess it depends on what your definitions of "vast majority" and "quickly" are. I feel that 10% of the mistakes being viewed by 100 people or more (without "sofixit"ing the mistake) is not something to be proud of in an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit".

It's especially interesting to me that an article about the namesake of a top WikiSleuth was damaged for so long. I estimate (with the Henrik-o-meter) that the Nadezhda Durova vandalism was page-viewed over 5,000 times before it was reverted.