And BP is a private company. Discuss.

BP is a public limited company and accountable to (extremely vocal) shareholders. The WMF is a US charity and accountable only to its trustees and to the relevant regulatory bodies in California & Florida. Completely different setups; if you had the cash, you could buy a controlling interest in BP tomorrow regardless of whether their board approved the deal, but under trust law you couldn't take over Wikipedia unless it was deemed in the best interest of the charity's objects. (Conversely, the states of Florida & California or the IRS could force a takeover of the WMF if they deemed the board to be acting inappropriately, but couldn't do the same to BP.) The two aren't comparable.

When I woke up this morning, goo was on my mind.

But I was also thinking about Thomas Jefferson's edit to the draft of the Declaration of Independence, when he changed the notable list of goals from "Life, Liberty, and Property" to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

And then I was also thinking about that other gooey mess, the smutty smegma of Wikipedia Commons, where people are wantonly displaying their private parts in the Communal Public Garden

And so it comes down to the Problem of Public Privates.

In the Book of Genesis, Homo Schleppians grabbed a fig leaf to hide their privates, presumably because they woke up and found it too embarrassing to have their private parts on public display for all the world to see. After all, Eden was envisioned as a Public Garden, not a Pubic Garden.

The issue of privacy is one of "Don't look, don't touch, don't take liberties." And then there is the opposite situation of the public commons, which Garrett Hardin famously examined in his classic analysis of the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.

One presumes that tragedies are to be avoided. But how the devil do we manage the problem of the public privates? Clearly we cannot hide the problem behind a fig leaf. And clearly not every private entity has the brains or the self-discipline to manage their private affairs in a responsible manner that holds harmless the public weal. Tragedies happen, and humankind must devise suitable methods for balancing private interests with public concerns.

There are functional solutions to the Problem of Public Privates, but humankind has not yet seen its way clear since the days of Adam and Eve to apprehend or adopt those functional solutions. We simply don't have enough brains or self-discipline to collectively adopt the best practices that have been painstakingly developed, down through the ages, by the wisdom of the sages.

I used the example of BP for a special reason. Thinking of recent events and of the impact that the activities of private associations or institutions can have on the general public.

For example, is it true that BP is accountable only to its shareholders? If so, why are they discussing whether to pay a dividend? And if not, does that raise the question of whether the WMF accountable only to its trustees and to the relevant regulatory bodies in California & Florida?

Were there not cases where public charities (like the Red Cross) were found to have misused funds for purposes inconsistent with the charter of the organization? And what about ACORN, which engaged in activities inconsistent with its charter?

At least no one blames the Brits for the WMF.

Go England!

Hey! Maybe you could sue the WMF for a bad transclusion …

Jon

It is my understanding, that by the term "happiness", Jefferson was translating a key term in Greek philosophy, ie eudaimonia. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/194966/eudaimonia

There were several schools of Greek philosophy, and each had its own concept to what leads to happiness. (Jefferson considered himself an Epicurean.) It frequently seems that in the USA, it is thought that having a lot of property is what leads to happiness, a POV not held by any of the schools of Greek philosophy, but nevertheless a view popular in every nation throughout the ages.

If Wikipedia had an article on "eudaimonia" it would no doubt be written by Anne Hedonia.

Wikipedia does have an article on eudaimonia, but I don't know who wrote it.

What I has in mind was more this.

(1) BP managed to spill vast amount of chemical pollutants over a large part of the gulf of Mexico. So it is accountable to more than the shareholders.

(2) Wikipedia has spilled vast amounts of toxic misinformation over large parts of the internet. Is it accountable for this? To whom?

Anne Hedonia = a joke name, Kwork. Anhedonia.

This is a good point. Both BP and WP engage in activities that place burden on people outside their immediate business/project concerns. Interesting also that both claim special protection from being held accountable. BP with caps on civil liability for its spills and WP without outright immunity under Sec. 230.

I long thought that books should be subject to recall if proven to contain false, misleading, or harmful information.

The trouble is that once any government is given such powers (through courts, enforcement agencies, etc.) enforcement be directed at protecting only the views of those who hold the levers of power. In other words, the problems presented by toxic information would not get solved, and would likely get further amplified.

If I think of a solution to that, I will let you know.

Yes, I understood that. Just commenting that Wikipedia has an article for every subject you can think of.

And keeps on going...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQM69JsK1c
(Unfortunately, this does not contain the original soundtrack music)

Anyone here know the formula for stopping the out of control creation of new articles?

I think of... Carolyn Doran!

Yes, anybody who embarrasses WMF will help to stem the tide, because you'll never read about them on WP, or their exploits if they can be omitted from an article that cannot be deleted (for example, Jimbo's BLP). Angela Beesley Starling's BLP is shorter than ever (4 paragraphs, now). She apparently becomes less and less notable, as she and Wikia age. It's like The Picture of Dorian Gray (Beesley's photo never ages, either). And one wonders if somewhere there are BLPs of Jimbo and Beesley and Doran which are growing longer and steadily more full of sins.

But they're out of sight for now.

Um, I've written quite a few articles on Google Knol, precisely because Wikipedia doesn't have articles on some of the subjects I'm most interested in.

While Godwin seems to be the intellectual equivalent of the one-hit-wonder, his one hit was pretty good. Comparing BP to WP is an exercise in self-defeating hyperbole.

Not that I don't see your point or anything, but if (1) I didn't know you and already agree with you, and (2) you made that sort of comparison, it wouldn't go over well with me. Better than mentioning Hitler, but still a fail.

I've long thought that Godwin's Nonsense was directed at stifling criticism of bullshit on the internet. This is the most direct confirmation on that notion yet. A mass kill off of seabirds and ecological devastation and a pornography host with no protective measures for children seems about on a par in terms of pretty damn bad irresponsibility.

This is a pretty silly comparison, even for the Review.

It is, because as far as I understand, it was the US Government that gave BP (along with all oil companies) a cap on liability, and BP who stated at the start that they were not going to hide behind it.

BP deserve the approbation for failing to run a safe operation, however, they have not walked away in the face of some fairly severe abuse and threats and are at least appearing to be trying their hardest to put right what they did wrong.

WMF know they are screwing up, and seem to be taking deliberate actions to make things worse while blaming everyone else.

That's not true. BP has engaged in a tremendous public relations effort and a half-hearted clean up. They will likely spend more than the $75,000,000 cap (probably already have) but the full cost of the clean up would simply put them out of business. BP spokespersons have already said at some point they will invoke the limitation. Congress, who you correctly identified as selling the public out, is considering raising the cap to $10,000,000,000. Because it is civil no ex post facto or bill of attainder problems block this action. Obviously this is much much more but still not sufficient. BP would survive this but the Gulf Coast...not so much. There should be no limitation on liability.

Ho hum, given that they have already spent a billion or more than the existing cap, I'm not sure how you can claim they are relying on the cap. It is also not clear that the clean up is beyond their resources. There is a lot of noise about what is being done or not, and the reality is that clean-up while there is so much oil being poured in can only be half-hearted.

My point was though, that , aside from some legalistic posturing on who is actually to blame, typical in the world of sub-contracting, they are not walking away.

In the context of this somewhat dubious comparison, BP still score better than WMF, which doesn't say much.

Then they should go out of business. Why not? (Of course, there is an answer for that ... they hold the power. As it is said in politics, "where there is power, there is Power").

In both case, the only defence appears to be 'scale' and using a bully boy principles.

As with the banks ... e.g. if you have a $10,000 debt, it is your problem; if you have a 10,000,000 debt, it is the banks problem ... the scale of both BP and WP make it the rest of us's problem and the big bully boys can just turn their back, walk away and say FU.

A small company or individual goes out of when they screw up, a big company or bank has its ass kissed and wiped by the government.

An accountable educational NPO is ignored by the funders, a "big famous" one is vastly over funded. Such is the way of life.

The underlying principle to this is that humanity is at such a level that it appears to respect issues of power and scale more rather than right and wrong.

In internet terms, the WP is a BP. As the above poster writes, it is polluting the environment of the internet, imbalancing the internet ecosphere and, from time to time, there are intense and focused toxic spills from which it can just walk away.

Actually, WP is actually more out of control than a BP but given the nigh impossibility and vast expense required to hold corporations liable for their physical damage to the physical environment, what hope is there for arguing against damage to the intellectual or moral environments?

I believe BP made profits of around £20billion in 2009 and paid out dividends of around £8billion last year (40% of these to the US shareholders), so in principle they should easily be able to cover the cost of the clean up. Where BP are worried is that the US legal system might be used to pillage the company.

So, if they can't cover the costs, sure they should go out of business - they are probably so severely damaged in the US that they will have to exit the US in some way which has the potential to destroy the business. However, even with the massive numbers floating around in the Gulf (oops!), it seems they are nowhere near that situation, and it is in that context that BP were bemused about the dividend - the withholding of which will have significant impact on earnings from shares in both Europe and America.

Pity we don't have .wav files, otherwise we could add some World Cup vuvuzelas to that statement.