Reading AN/I I was struck by how much time was spent constructing arguments why X doesn't get along with Y and Admin Z was in league with X, and then neutral observer Q says that R and S have also had problems with Y and... and...

What an incredible waste of energy and people's lifespans!

As if, even in 3 months time, anyone would care because there would be more fights involving a cabal C here interacting with editor E....

And then there's the endless discussions over the Wikirules, then the Meta discussions, then the findings of "community consensus" or whether someone should vote in the Board elections...

Incredible wastes of time.

I'm writing down a list of principles for collating encyclopedias but one is:

"Cut down the interactions between authors because they'll spend far more time fighting each other than actually producing useful work"

...and I mean reeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy cut down the interactions.

Really nobody could care less about your squabbles, but I swear someone will pick a fight with someone else in the next 10 seconds and they'll go 10,000 rounds of "you said/no I didn't, I meant"

Its the thermodynamics of Wikipedia. Most of the energy is converted into disorder and very little actually does useful work.

So no collaboration, then?

Of course not! The first person to get their opinion down on paper should have it kept. Any other reaction would be a dispute or an edit war

My experience has been that there is little collaboration on articles. Either the editors ignore each other or the editors fight with each other.

Sadly, this is fairly accurate. When I started on Wikipedia, one of the things I envisioned was that, as the site grew and improved, article talk pages, even for relatively arcane subjects, would be filled with constructive discussion and collaboration, which would in turn foster more article development. But unfortunately most of what goes on article talk pages (aside from the meaningless Wikiproject branding templates) are innocuous but unhelpful questions and comments, alongside occasional complaints and disputes between editors. Most quality work is still done by individuals, and meaningful collaboration is nowhere near as common as it should be. There are many shining examples to the contrary, of course, but it's depressing that Wikipedia can be so massively popular while collaboration between editors remains essentially quite limited. People talk a lot, sure, but not so much on article talk pages and not nearly enough about what they really should be talking about, like factual accuracy and referencing. When people do talk along those lines, it's all too often just part of some obnoxious POV dispute.

Concur with everything.

When you find a great article on Wikipedia, it's almost invariably because one good editor wrote it. More likely than not, the article is now worse than when it was last touched by that editor. When you find an article filled with inconsistencies and waffling, it's the product of writing by consensus.

I think Wikipedia has succeeded not because of the wiki software, but because of it's great ambition. It draws people who want to share something with the world. Hobbyists, fans.

everyking is actually a really good example of this. I don't give a shit about his pets, but some people do. All things considered, the universe would have been better if he was free to tend his articles, and if a half-dozen wikicops hadn't sunken their time into prosecuting his case. It was an utter waste, emblematic of the site's pissy overhead.

People just want to share knowledge, and the sites non-management gets in the way. I've no doubt that an equally ambitious project like Knol could overtake Wikipedia's content within a short amount of time.

That's something that dawned on me a while back, and actually led me here. Let's say I have a disagreement with User:A.Dirtbag. He violates one of Wikipedia's million vague rules. I'll spend five minutes posting to WP:AN about it, he'll respond and tick me off further. Then, I spend another ten to fifteen minutes looking up diffs and sources and putting the report together. He returns the favor, and we go around again.

Next thing you know, I've spent a whole night arguing with a stranger on the internet on the finer points of civility, when what I should have done is simply type "screw you, you troglodytic homonculous" and move on.

You're right, it makes no sense once you're outside of the bubble.

And the real danger is, once brought to ANI, a mob of trollers starts to form, old peccadilloes are thrown on the flames for good measure. Then the mob turns into a pack of baying wolves, and all that will satisfy them is blood. At this stage no one can stop it, even progressive admins run away from the inferno, and then we see Wikipedia at its most vile. Many a good editor has been blocked by this method, and eventually left the mob to pursue new game. If the public only knew the truth about Wikipedia and Jimbos "hell-fire-club", they'd surely find whole affair quite distasteful.

Very wise words. I would advise two of our longest-serving members, numbers 23 and 50, to act on them.

You've obviously taken the blue pill.

For the rest of us, "collaboration" wiki-style is an enormous waste of energy and time.

I remember long ago reading a really very good article of the day on Colley Cibber, which was written in the main by two people in collaboration (could have been more, but I remember it as two). G-d knows what it looks like today, but at the time of the RFA, in between the regular blankings and vandalism of the morons, I read an article that was comprehensive, insightful and actually fun to read.

I don't think that co-operation between two or more authors who take time to get to know each other, marshall all of the research, synthesize it into a good article, is a bad thing at all. Collaboration would actually be a good thing, and if I could work out a way of encouraging it on Wikipedia and discouraging people boldly editing articles they have no clue about then I'd share it. But Wikipedia isn't structured for collaboration - it's structured for attrition, running battles and all stations to Grand Opera.

But ad hoc chopping and changing of text, trying to defend your edits while removing someone else's is guaranteed to produce a running battle whose only effect is to hand over the article to the lowest common denominator - the person with most time on their hands. Eventually the person with most knowledge gives up, exhausted by the running battle to maintain an article in the face of insuperable hordes of ignoramuses, perverts, drama queens and the clinically obsessive or even insane.

As I say, the efficiency of the Wikipedia engine is very small - it produces far more heat than light.

Certainly, and why is that? I would say that it is because the Wiki is a good tool for data gathering (not necessarily information gathering). The tool has then been extended beyond its appropriate limits.

The original concept, gathering of views, sources, snippets, and even fully worked articles is sound. It is the step into publishing which has been brushed over.

I suppose this is a bit of an unfair accusation, but isn't everyone commenting here (including me) guilty of talking about doing things rather than doing them? While I think it would be great if we didn't ever talk and argue about things like this, it is a bit difficult to stop all the unnecessary chatter that can be found. Places like Wikipedia Review are guilty of much talk of "bad editors", "how to fix/save Wikipedia", and "this policy/guideline/opinion is bad" as well. In fact, Wikipedia Review and other sites whose purpose is to comment on Wikipedia produce basically no article improvement for their talking. This is creating the highest amount of entropy for the lowest amount of work done. Once again, I will admit that this is a bit of an unfair accusation as Wikipedia Review cannot write articles at its site. What I am trying to say is that we all are guilty of talking when we should be helping.

Somebody has to do the politiking for change, and it's practically impossible to do actually ON WP. There's not due process there, and there's really no free interchange of ideas and criticism there. It's fascist. Criticise the wrong people and you're muzzled, then tossed out. If you have any cred, it takes a Salem/McCarthy witchhunt and trial first, but you get the Joan of Arc treatment eventually, anyway.

Do we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to package things? Sure. "Knowledge must be adorned. It must have luster as well as weight, lest it be mistaken for lead instead of gold." Ah, Lord Acton. The "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" guy. Gotta love him.




Not all of us are banned editors. I've got another screen open on WP quite often. A great many articles there still have large swatches of my prose (as you get to know me, you might even recognize it). I do what I can, and when I get stuck, I come here and vent.

What I don't do is WP shitwork which could have long ago been fixed by fixing policies (I gave up fighting vandals who have been endlessly coddled per policy). That's tended to throw me into some very technical articles which don't have too many vandals because the average vandal cannot even spell or define that article's subject, so never sees it. There's a whole different Wikipedia down there, in the tech stuff where only math nerds and cell culture guys go. You should take a look sometime. But, uh, please don't tell the hoi polloi. You know, those folks who would not recognize `οἱ πολλοί . Keep it between just us.

Sorry about that. I didn't intend to say that people here are all banned and are using this for the plots of revenge or anything like that. What I intended to say is that contributors to Wikipedia (such as myself) who post here are doing so instead of editing Wikipedia. On the other hand, just about everyone needs a diversion every once in a while. Although posts made here are very unlikely to affect anything on Wikipedia, I guess that there is really no harm in posting on other sites such as this one.

Also: I know enough to stay away from WP:AN, WP:AN/I, WP:RFC, WP:ARBCOM and so on.

Helping to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic? No thanks. WP:BTDTBTTS.

My fundamental position is that the managers of Wikipedia, which I understand to be the WMF, are the ones for the deck chairs, but more importantly, we have asked them to go into the nether regions of the vessel and inspect the structural integrity. They have steadfastly refused to do so, even though they know they are sailing through icebergs. If rearranging the deckchairs is the task distracting them from the important work, then they should stop, or get someone else to do it. Deckchairs make you look busy.

It is not an unreasonable position to be a lobby for change. You know, Greg is standing for a seat on the foundation, and the ideas he is presenting there are not entirely his own, they have been informed by long term discussions here which have hopefully refined and focused the thinking.

This venue does provide a place for discussion, not perfect, but it is conducive to discussing what things might be fixable. While I cannot place a concern about policy on the policy pages of Wikipedia and not have it shouted down, not on the basis of rational discussion, but due to Not Invented Here, What We Have is Perfect, and WP:STABILITY, this place has a useful role - to Wikipedians too.

I'm not a banned editor on WP although David Gerard threw his toys out of the pram once with an IP address I used to criticize Mantanmoreland.

I used to edit little bits here and there.

I once defeated William Connelley with a now deleted troll article called "The Science is Settled" by regularly adding sourced material which falsified his thesis until he gave up.

But other than that, I've given up trying to pick sewage out of the sewer (now there's an image I didn't need in my head).

Now I simply warn people that its very like a drug to be able to alter history instantly. And like a drug, its addicts claim that the world is a better place when they're under the influence.

Until they crash.

I've had a great deal of help via WR in sorting out stupidities injected into my articles. I won't name names of course in case a few admins get desysopped for meatpuppetry.

I repeat my periodic call for a special Nøøbs Forum where nøøbs can be quarantined, er, sequestered until they have a chance to:

1. Discover how φreekin' identical all of their initial Wikipediot Manifestos are.
2. Read enough previous threads to have a φreekin clue what We'Re about here.

It's Xcelerating the Heat Death of the Whoniverse way too much trying to deal with such Cookie Cutter Brains on a re*curring basis and it only inflames their narcissism to treat these Devo Utter Hivetudes (DUH's) As If they were the genuine individuals they just ain't become yet, As If they ever will.

Jon

I won't support any such forum until you stop trying to bore people to death with stupid punctuation and spelling games.

I've been talking about doing Education on the Internet for twenty years, and I've also been doing Education on the Internet for twenty years. As far as I know, there are no omniscient Earthlings, and everybody, no matter how young or how old, is poised to learn something at all times.

What are you most ready to learn right now?

Let's learn that.

Jes dune wot I kin to convoy da malady o' da text …

Jon

We're all enroute to best practices.

Some of us are just taking different routes than others.

We'll all meet at the asymptote, someday.

There's more than one asymptote to this equation.

Chuck your spiel chucker, I think that's Beast Practices …

Jon

Asymptotes only meet at infinity.

Tell that to Heisenberg. I'm not certain he would carry the pure mathematical abstraction quite that far, in the case of Homo Schleppians..

Homo shleppians. Ah, the race of drag queens! I know of them: very finicky, and bad breeders.

Seriously, I once saw a Rolex watch advertisement in the New York Times, a paper which I read now and again just to remind myself of how values are perverted in big cities. If you have to ask the price you are not the type to buy a Rolex, but it's roughly 15 K for a gold men's mechanical watch. The ad gig was Show her you're not a schlepper.

Which I thought was sooooooo NYC.

You tell Heisenberg to check the etymology.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=asymptote

I would have doubted that they meet at infinity - but then again, I was thinking of graphs and whatever those lines are that go straight up. I suppose it is by definition. Long time since I got my maths A level.

There was a version of Zeno's Paradox applied to one of those old-fashioned school dances in the gym, where the boys line up on one side, and the girls line up on the opposite wall.

The way it works is that, when the music starts, the boys first walk halfway across the gym to where the girls are sitting.

Then they walk half the remaining distance.

Then they meander half of that remaining distance, and so on.

So the music starts, and some boys just sit there, never going at all. Others arise and embark on the Xenodic journey.

A newcomer asks a non-starter why he just sits there.

"I'm a math major," he replies, "so I know I'll never get there. Hence why bother to go at all?"

The newcomer next turns to a boy who is enroute to the other side.

"The math major says you will never get to where the girls are, so why are you even trying?"

The peripatetic youth replies, "I'm an engineering student, so I believe I can get close enough for all practical purposes."