The guideline that one should set out by assuming good faith is a good one. The more difficult question is how much evidence to the contrary is required before one suspends or sets aside the assumption.

It's not that difficult.

When one's antagonist goes shopping for a pretext upon which to trigger the harshest possible "Or Else" clause of some obscure and immaterial rule, that's good enough for me to conclude bad faith.

Perhaps you could enlighten us further regarding your views on the issue? When does tweaking someone's User page rise to the level of trolling?

Well, I would start by asking the tweaker the reason for the tweaking.

This is the true essence of the beast.

What's galling is that Wikipedia's model is touted by unwary outsiders as some kind of advancement of participatory democracy. When in fact, those of us who watched and witnessed the reality realized that the model represents a regression that strips away years of advancements in concepts like Accountability, Due Process and Fair Representation.

Where to begin????

Gawd help me...

... with a mutually agreed upon and enforceable social contract among the membership and a system of rules that are logically consistent, as well as a system of justice that has "precedent" as one of the aspects of it, so there is institutional memory ????

The wonder is that there is as much good stuff as there is now... all as output of an MMORPG.

Good point, and you described it well in your previous post. How would you change it or how would you start over if you were designing Wikipedia?

Too vague, so I'm not sure how these would address the problems. Could you be more detailed?

The usual ways are to reduce the amount of power in the enfranchised ruling elite, and/or to institute meaningful checks and balances. The former equates to admin (and checkuser, etc) term limits, the latter to real voting and structures implementing a separation of powers. Regrettably, my opinion is that the first is probably game-able, and the second too heavyweight for an online community. Someday people will realize that "consensus" just doesn't work in groups of more than about 20.

# Make sure it doesn't appear at the top of google for my kids, and other peoples' kids to discover each time they search on the internet?

# Ensure that journalists and people of influence realize this truth about Wikipedia instead of spinning the tired myth - before it is too late?

Basically, people should try to stop the Bad Meme spreading and sabotaging Knowledge Gathering for future generations. As for Wikipedia itself, I couldn't give a toss about redesigning it - I realized long ago it was a farce riddled with unfixable problems, and I don't go there anymore.

What truly saddens me about all this is that everything here is predictable. I, like many others with an interest in parliamentary law, have read a treatise known as "Robert's Rules". General Robert observed the same problems occurring in the organizations he was called to participate in, and devised his rules to moderate their worst tendencies, back in 1863. And his work is itself derivative of earlier manuals devised by people like Luther Cushing, Thomas Jefferson, George Petyt, and Thomas Smyth; I imagine few Wikipedians have heard of any of these folk save Jefferson. Now, Robert's Rules are not directly usable in Wikipedia's format, and would have to be adapted, but Wikipedia made no effort to look at how others had previously resolved the sorts of conflicts that are inherent in the human condition. Instead, Wikipedia made the conscious declaration that Wikipedia was sui generis, so unlike everything that had come before, that it had nothing to learn from those predecessor ventures, and that trying to learn from these would "cramp their style". It was declared (almost certainly by Jimmy Wales himself) that Wikipedia would have to forge its own path through the wilderness. In so doing, Wikipedia threw away over 400 years of progress.

I once compared Wikipedia's governance to that of the court of King Stephen. Stephen ruled from 1135 to 1154. It was not until 1583 before England had some effort at an organized body of parliamentary law. We can only hope that it takes Wikipedia somewhat less than 430 years to do the same.

The cabal lost an opportunity to whitewash this king's record, making your comparison incomprehensible.

Since I don't see any signs Wikipedia is going away -- in fact, it seems to have put Encarta out of business and could do the same with Encyclopedia Britannica -- it seems more useful to me to think about how it might be done better.

I came to a similar observation, except that by my reckoning, WP ignored 4000 years of progress in constructing a functional community regulatory mechanism.

Ask Moulton. He has expounded at length on many of these topics.

(that's why I said "gawd help me"...)

I haven't agreed with everything you've said, or perhaps even anything you've said thus far, but I certainly agree with this. I'd hoped that was the purpose of this forum?

There are (at least) two factions of participants here... those who agree that making it better is a good thing to do, and those who feel it's not salvageable and hastening its destruction is the more prudent course.

Surely you knew that already?

Hopes are often —ed

Jon

I was beginning to get that impression, yes.

It doesn't make much difference what contributors here intend.

The point is to highlight the problems Wikipedia causes.

If you've noticed that Wikipedia causes problems, then tell us about it here. That'll give people a clearer understanding of the truth about Wikipedia. Some of those problems may be serious enough, and explained clearly enough, to influence the wider thinking about Wikipedia.

Most of the time, the complaints here aren't serious enough and are very poorly explained. Which means that most of the time, this site fails to interact with the wider world. Occasionally though, a complaint or an observation seeps into the wider ether, and becomes an established cautionary tale which helps others better understand the reality of Wikipedia. We need counterpoints to the PR spin and delusional naivety which has so long dominated the debate about Wikipedia.

Here's one such example of Wikipedia PR spin which is fed to the media. This shows the discrepancy between Wikipedia myths and Wikipedia reality, which is what we are all trying to explore here:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=23166

Absolutely bang-on in every respect.

"Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty." - H. M. Robert

One of the most annoying people on Wikipedia are the MPOV (majority point of view) pushers: both science, such as the psuedoscience resistance; and social issues, such as racism. Something not the same as the Neutral point of view. For one, MPOV tends to polarise anything in the mPOV (minority) as more evil than the illegitemate love child of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler rather than just say it's an alternative viewpoint; and secondly, MPOV really means "American liberal pro-Semetic anti-religion POV". Not bad in itself, but the application of such is so extreme that it's ridiculous. And the fact that it's accepted on Wikipedia is worse.

So, basically, you're expecting a bunch of people to get together to create a new Web site, and while doing so, go out of their way to (1) reduce its search engine optimization to lower its traffic, and (2) make sure negative press about their site spreads in the media more effectively than positive press.

Maybe if this site were being created by some non-human species not handicapped with human nature, this would be possible...

Erm... What?

That's clearly not what I'm expecting. I'm expecting, or at least hoping, that the many tangible negatives of Wikipedia will be given a fair hearing in the court of public opinion, free from the hype and spin we've seen so much of. I'm hoping that the manipulation of Wikipedia's page rank be challenged. And I'm hoping that Educational Institutions wise up to the negative realities of Wikipedia and reject its very flawed model.

I think what Kato is (and many of the rest of us are) saying is "Maybe if Wikipedia were being created by responsible adults who were answerable for their actions, and had some knowledge of the ethics of scholarship and editorial journalism, this would be possible ...." That's something distinctly different.

I haven't seen much evidence of ethics in editorial journalism. It's true I've never met the team of "investigative journalists" who work specifically for the Washington Post, but I've met many journalists who work for various newpapers, and a sleazier bunch of people in terms of what they say, and then what they DO, you'll never find. If you've had journalists write about something you know, or have interviewed you much, you'll know exactly what I mean. If not, and all you're going by is Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward or something, your view of reality has been as seriously warped as if you spent all your time thinking real doctors are like House and his team, real cops are like T.J. Hooker, real lawyers are like Denny Crane, and real starship captains are like James T. Kirk. Okay, I may have lost it with that last one, but you get my drift.

Did you see William Shatner in "Judgement at Nuremburg"? That was when he was quite young, and had not yet developed that smug quality.

I have, and you're wrong. Journalists for reputable national news organizations, in my experience and on average, exhibit a high degree of professionalism. There is a substantial gap between the best and the worst, and local reporters, TV reporters, and web "citizen journalists" tend to cluster along the "worst" end of the spectrum, but good journalists possess a more thoroughly-considered and consistent ethical sense that the best of all possible Wikipedians.

No, but I saw him in that Twilight Zone with the gremlin on the wing, and that Outer Limits where he's been on Venus and seen the Monster and now can't warm up. Those Outer Limits monsters used to scare the hell out of me-- every episode had a great one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT5M-3U-_kg

Shatner, when young, was a much better actor than Redford, who was on one Twilight Zone playing Death as a sort of "Joe Black" (Brad Pitt, who looks like a young Redford, did a better job many years later). Redford was oh-my-god bad. But he improved. Shatner, as you've noted, got more egotistical. But it hardly affected his acting, as he just started playing egotists.

It's not really about "ethics"... I was just finding it unlikely that anybody setting out to create a Web site would want to intentionally cause it to get worse Google search position, or get negative press.