Yeah I fully agree Silver Siren. The impression I get is that he is not at all passionate about actually promoting knowledge and likes to see himself as some sort of moral leader.

Gentlemen, your criticism is too little and too late, sorry to say. You should have been knocking Jimbo back in 2004, when Jimbo's favorites, the "Cabal-thingy" bunch, was tightening its screws on the project.

David Gerard, JzG, Jayjg, Fred Bauder, Erik Moeller, Raul654, Kat Walsh, Charles Matthews, and many others. You can thank them for the mess, and you can thank Jimbo for personally installing most of them on the first versions of Arbcom. Go thru this if you don't believe me. Instead of getting "professionals", or even capable amateurs......he got crackpots and ass-kissers and backstabbers.

It is your claim that Wikipedia would have turned out good if it had not been for some administrators and editors you don't like? You must be kidding. Given the defective structure of WP, it is difficult for me to see how it could have turned out much better even if none of the users on your shit list had ever made a single edit.

Surely he was saying that there was a weakness at the very top, and that this led to certain types gaining power that they shouldn't. Had it not been them, but Wales had still been there, I'm sure another bunch of creepies would have moved in. But if someone else had been in charge at that critical point? Someone who could judge character, e.g.?

Admittedly Jimbo and his crew are not be the equals of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and James Madison. But if the American revolution had been a wiki-revolution, lead by anonymous users, there is good reason to think it would have turned out worse than it actually did.

Basically all the problems found on WP that can be replicated on WR are replicated on WR. That suggests the problem is not the result of a few problematic users on WP only.

Exactly my own taste. All you left out is Rachmaninoff and Brahms, but I suppose those are given if you like melody.

Harmony, melody-- if I can get those, I'm fine. That includes rock and roll and pop. I even absorbed the blues-y shock when Barry Gibb went falseto in 1975.

Rap and hip hop? Not music. If your tastes differ, fine. But for me:

Jazz is music, but as with you, not my favorite. Of course there is some old melodic jazz that I enjoy very much-- Gershwin, Cole Porter, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Nat King Cole, a lot of Louis Armstrong, and so on. None of this is considered very advanced, but the more advanced it is, the more I wish for something else. Coltrane excepted.

Ja Milton. Rap and hip hop is a pile of shit... Ye have good taste amigo...

In regards to Jimbo, I do think there are far more equipped people to deal with the job but the reality is that even if somebody replaced him I doubt the functioning of the foundation would be any different. Its easy to blame everything on him but a lot of the problems have to do with the way the foundation operates and cowboy adminship. It seems that it is mostly those who are not interested in developing wikipedia as a resource that have the most power and seem to do little about actually promoting quality. For instance how many language schools exactly are aware of the millions of articles needing translation and sourcing from foreign language sources? We have potential vast pools of new editors but the foundation as far as I can see do very little to actually seek editors. They just expect everybody to do everything for them and wave a wand and magically the articles are improved.

"I don't understand the people who feel that content is more important than anything else " - Wikipedia administrator.

Eaxactly. That sums up many people who have power on wikipedia. They think its a law court not an encyclopedia.

Oh I'd have to say I'm mostly into rock and blues music. But melodic jazz as you say I'm passionate about and I see it as more sophisticated and complex. Its more complex than rock and blues so it appeals to me to figure it out! I must admit though a lot of the avant garde jazz which is completely off key and just sounds like a weird noise I really dislike.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAoQjoJl8mI

That's the sort of jazz piano music I'm leaning to play.

Play Misty for Me...

Play Misty for Me!!!

Wow, completely forgot about that book. Perfect reading for lil SB.

Both Rocky himself and Horowitz do this one stightly better, but you can't see their technique as we have mostly sound recordings.

This piece itself is appropriately dark and only the Russians use E-flat minor for keyboard. This one to me always sounds like old boarded up Russian mansions full of prerevolutionary furniture, ala Dr. Zhivago. You can hear the melancholy of the artist for his lost homeland. It has a buildup to a nice satisfying climax 2/3rds of the way through (for you, Horsey), and a spooky wind-down, all with a listenable theme.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.




You don't even like Lonely Island?

Back in music school, when somebody practiced this, everybody smoking outside the practice rooms would all chime in at the beginning with "THIS...IS THE PIECE OF DEATH!"

sing along and see if that doesn't work....

E flat minor? The favorite (harmonic minor) of Yngwie Malmsteen....

Phooey! There is only queen king of the piano:

It works, it works! There's no misery like Russian misery.

At least that other piece of death has some comedy!

I've just been educating myself with

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CglPPmtlnM&NR=1

You wouldn't have had a god damn clue that A half diminished (A minor 7 flat 5th) works with a frickin E flat augmented chord... The flat 5th of A though is an E flat so I guess that makes some sense...

Instead of explaining to him that his wiki-activities are a waste of his time,
you gents are feeding his OCD by discussing music with him.

Is it possible for someone to move the music stuff to Off-Topic?

If they keep him stuck here he won't edit!

And if talking about random things is an expression of OCD it will be possible that every person in the world has mental disorders!

Fuck you Eric.

"I blog, you suffer". What a fucking moron. At least I have more constructive things to do with my time than paint art a cap onto a picture of Clint Eastwood and advertise "Penis Plugs And More" you fucking prick.

Damn, damn. Now I can't play the bit of this that I know without thinking that.

Think of how many fairly nice pieces of music are diminished as cliches by association with something else, often films. For me:

William Tell --- The Loooone Ranger
Flight of the Bumblebee -- The Green Hornet
1805 Overture --- The only cereal that's shot from guns!
Meditation from Thais-- one dozen boring weddings
Guadalcanal March from Rogers Victory at Sea --- Garg, Richard Nixon's favorite march.
Der Landesvater bit of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture-- Animal House
Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto-- Full Moon and Empty Arms
That Handel Sarabande (noooos! Barry Lyndon/O'Neal It means having to say I'm sorry!)
Also Sprach Zarathustra -- Man-apes and tapirs and man-apes and tapirs...
Copeland Rodeo Hoedown -- Beef
Beethoven's 6th-- Soylent Green euthanasia. A satyr or too from Fantasia.
Dance of the Hours-- Hippos in tutus, Camp Grenada
Anything else from Fantasia: Fantasia

Hmmm, I see two Stanley Kubrick films up there, and it comes to me that besides the musical "synesthesia," there are quite a lot of images and associations from Kubrick films that I sort of wish were not stamped forever into my brain. All the way from the evil French army in the Paths of Glory to Strangelove ("We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.."), Sparticus, Clockwork Orange.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

You're seven years off.

Oh, and...

Ode to Joy and Gunslinger Girl - but I don't mind that so much.

Doh! I knew that, too.

Oh, excuse me. Instead of posting hundreds of useless stub articles on WP servers,
I'll just go back to running my company. Having trouble keeping up with demand.

Actually, you don't!

@Eric. You think I'm this OCD freak who can't bare to live without wikipedia. Well I'm formed an opinion of here that you Eric clearly have issues. You fit the bill of somebody suffering from Autism or Asperger syndrome in that you have the inability to treat others as you'd yourself like to be treated. All you do here is bad mouth people and find it very difficult it seems to actually communicate with people. You come across as a bully which reveals much inadequacy about your strength of character; it clearly makes you feel better about yourself to take swipes at others and mock them. While I know there are many decent editors on here (and with good musical tastes) who comment on this site because they really care about the running of wikipedia or are reasonable people, I find it incredibly double standards that you are passing me off as some sort of compulsive freak when between you and Somey you can make over 15,000 posts on this site which is arguably not much more than a forum for complaining. What I find amusing here is that you two think you are too "cool" to edit wikipedia or to say a good word about the sad people who edit it and bad mouth those who have genuinely been passionate for increasing its scope but are clearly obviously mentally disturbed by something which happened in the past on wikipedia which obsesses you enough to keep on posting here in a disgruntled manner day after day. If you truly did not care about wikipedia or thought you were above it you would not comment and be compelled to do so. If you truly could not give a shit about wikipedia, Jimbo or any of its pathetic contributors why do you give a shit to spend so much time commenting here? What motivates you to post here then? What exactly do you have to gain on here notching up 15,000 comments between you and being so unpleasant other than having some serious personality flaws and inability to communicate with others in a half decent manner without attacking them or being sarcastic?

I've edited wikipedia because I am a very creative person and see big potential in it as a resource. However much certain people here seem to detest wikipedia, it does have potential. Sure, I've created lots of sub stubs at times when I've perhaps been overly passionate about the project and too enthusiastic that others will develop them article as (even I it would seem) don't have the time to write them all, but I've also created a lot of worthwhile content which I'm proud to have contributed. My relationship with wikipedia believe it or not blows hot and cold and actually I find it very hard to actually stay on the website for too long without going elsewhere. Some days I love wikipedia to bits, other days I really wonder why we bother and it seems incredibly bland... Given that I work out first thing in the morning for at least an hour and have RL things to do in the morning I generally do not even log into wikipedia until late morning or midday and I rarely am on the internet beyond 11pm (with the exception of today). So even if potentially I was editing wikipedia for 12 hours or even an extreme 16 hours you'll find a lot of time gaps between my edits when I get bored and you'll often see half hour or more between my edits when I'm not actually on the website even if you look at the overall day and it seems I've been there all the time. Completely untrue. I actually don't read very much on the site because although I've read some excellent content, I generally come across such shitty articles in browsing that it prompts me to edit again or (more often) causes me to despair at how much work needs doing and try to forget about it. Think what you like about me, but anybody who truly knows me is aware that I am a very creative person and a passionate one which is what drives me. I'm not OCD, or if I am then you suffer from Asperger's. That true? I agree I've spent way too much time editing wikipedia and should spend more time on me and developing more projects to benefit me personally. But no amount of you ranting on about me is going to change my interests. You have no right to tell me what I should be doing or cite whatever musical hobbies and other interests I might have as being part of some "disease". As for you being this "successful businessman" Eric and wikipedia contributors "suffering", I hardly get the impression of you having much success if that blog is all you have to brag about. Maybe you are more successful than the nature of that blog would let on... But its not my business what you do with your time and efforts in the same way it is none of your business what I actually do and how I spent my time. But all I know is that however much time you believe I spend editing wikipedia I have time to devote to other interests and to get by financially. Anyway I'm done with posting on here.....

Wow. I'm impressed.

You Eric Barbour, the follically challenged guy who makes vaccuum tubes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ons/EricBarbour

You are blocked indefinitely it seems and were responsible for advertising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasonix on wikipedia.

It actually seems like a cool product and I have been meaning to get a drum machine for some time to record my own music. I would have wished you well on it, but given your nasty attitude to me and everything in general I won't bother. You clearly are still disgruntled at the way you were treated on wikipedia and your block and take everything out on anybody who has had influence on the site. Either that or you are pissed off at losing your hair. Anyway I wish you the best of luck.

So where can I order a "Butt probe" or a "Scrotum Smasher " Eric? I bet it's way better than my Boss GT-10 processor. After all the more digusting the distortion, the more people want them eh?

Here's another one that I've always enjoyed, because it's so perverse :



"Fuck you....and you....and you....and you....Fuck you....and you...etc"

and then there's this one :



The lyrics to the famous horn solo are "I've got a hard on...."

So, what would Brenda Vaccaro do in a situation like this?

Thanks, for making my point for me.

Where did you get the idea that I/we "don't give a shit" about Wikipedia, Jimbo, et al? I think you're making that up. If we didn't think it was such a menace to world culture, civilized discourse, education, and society in general, then maybe we would have stopped bothering long ago. "We're here because we care"...


I suspect you're only saying that because you don't appreciate all the hard work that goes into building popular guitar-distortion stomp-boxes with all-vacuum-tube circuitry that are covered with vaguely obscene cartoon imagery.

Regardless, this is "classic" stuff, reaction-wise. I'm sorry to have to say it, but a non-narcissist understands the difference between one or two people in a group bashing him and everyone in the group bashing him, and (not coincidentally) that's how the non-narcissist copes with being bashed. There's less need to bolster the ego-facade because the ego-facade isn't based on what other people think, at least not as much, nor is it based on a self-image of near-perfection supported by elaborately exaggerated claims of ability and experience.

You're probably not a bad person, maybe not even close - but I believe that if you had those things, you would never have gotten involved in Wikipedia in the first place, or certainly not to anywhere near the extent you have.

Well said. Thank you.

All I want to see is for Blofeld to admit he was possibly wrong;
that at least some of the thousands of hours he spent editing WP may have been a waste of time.
And maybe even that Jimbo isn't the Gandhi of Huntsville.

Not much to ask. But instead I get ad-hominem abuse.

Is there any other kind? It's arguments that are described as ad hominem, not abuse.

La Pianista would probably lurve you, fyi. You should come to IRC sometime and say hi to her. She is a piano fiend.

Not speaking for Blowie but people all make mistakes Somey. If I had my time again from 2001, I would never had contributed any articles to Wikipedia that's for sure.

Oh I've admitted I've spent way too much time on wikipedia and have certainly wasted my time with lots of articles on there and people. a] Its a waste of time creating tons of sub stubs about obscure countries and topics as very few are likely to expand them even if its a way of trying to increase scope and contributors. b] Its a waste of time having to explain myself to people who complain or try to delete things without bothering to do the research. c] Its a waste of time questioning the behaviour of admins or objecting and complaining as they always get their way, being Jimbo's allegiance. I'm proud of the good work I've done on wikipedia and don't see a problem with wanting to improve it. I actually enjoy writing articles like Chamba, Himachal Pradesh for example. My articles like Clint Eastwood etc are read by thousands of people every day and a lot of people have benefited from the information in the articles I've written. It is a shame of course that we personally don't receive any compensation for editing which is the biggest issue I think. If I thought the project as a whole was a waste of time I would never have contributed, I think it has massive potential. But I think unless the foundation give incentives to certain editors to edit/improve untouched/stale topics then it will remain very uneven in quality. I think most of us can agree here that Jimbo is not the ideal leader of wikipedia and it sucks that people do the work and he reaps the financial benefits. But wikipedia does have a great deal to offer from a learning point, even if it is severely lacking in many areas and most articles need improvement. But at the end of the day its just a website and I've spent way too much time on there.. Should I feel like returning in the future I will certainly try to reduce my input and time spent on the project and concentrate on things that bring me personal benefit...

On a positive note, Eric, have U2 and that really used the Scrotum smasher? I think that's awesome!! Although personally I would prefer to kick The Edge in the balls myself for being so impertinent as to wear a hat indoors and during the hot summer.... LOL :

PS looks like Dave Brubeck.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PTrTOgas4PE/S-9W..._b%26wHiRes.jpg

Oh, but they do - a Board Member proxied for a banned user to put up two pages on some of the most important poems in the English language that had stubs before.

Well, that is something.....

Okay, I'll humor you. Yes, U2 bought a huge pile of stuff a few years ago. Dunno what they did with it.

Trent Reznor is still a big fan--buys everything we make the instant it hits the dealer's shelf.
Listen to recent NIN albums like Ghosts and The Slip, plus things he produces for
others, like Saul Williams's album Niggy Tardust--they are all full of Metasonix noises.
And this guy is obsessed with our products.

The Butt Probe is old history. We're working on a new pedal this year.

It's all vaudeville. Musicians are fond of being insulted, believe it or not--because almost all other gear
manufacturers cater to their insecurities, and also tend to copy each other's designs, thus all sounding
the same as each other. So much cowardice. Just by being a bit rude and an innovator, you can get attention.

Metasonix is now so famous we don't have to do any substantial advertising--we just put out a new product, and people talk about it and buy it.

Dr. B, I'll be frank with you and I hope you don't take it too personally. For the most part, we're saying "Wikipedia is a waste of your time" because we believe that any other approach won't really appeal to you. What people like me (and I would venture to say a few others in this thread) would rather be saying is, "look at how these activities of yours have affected others" - and in fact, this is the approach we took before you registered here. You could say that we're just trying to be nice, but that's a whole 'nother issue, really.

Let's take the three points you've made above:

This, in particular, demonstrates an exceptionally self-serving, and almost blinkered, mindset. Red links are what keeps Wikipedia alive, because they attract new users. (If you can stomach the Blofeld-bashing, read this thread, esp. starting here.) Stubs don't attract new users at all. This is exactly why Jimbo dislikes you, because recruitment (and to a lesser extent, retention) is his primary concern, as would be true of any cult leader/figurehead.


And yet, the more articles you create, the more responsibility you give yourself for having to explain precisely those things. And if someone challenges you and you don't explain yourself, even when the person has no idea what he's talking about, you come off as hostile, opening yourself up for a civility/behavior violation. I believe this has already happened, in fact.


Personally, I wouldn't give Jimbo so much credit when it comes to supporting admin behavior. They're perfectly capable of circling their own wagons, with or without Jimbo to help them. What I think you have to ask yourself is, have you ever involved yourself in a situation in which an admin acted abusively, but that didn't already involve you intrinsically? In other words, a dispute (or whatever) that occurred on an article or topic area you never touched or had anything to do with? Or have you been worried that you'd be seen as a "busybody" and lose valuable goodwill points with the other admins?

The thing you can learn from someone like Eric Barbour, IMO, is not merely that a person can make a decent living by building signal-processing gear with vacuum tube technology in boxes emblazoned with obscenities. Rather, it's that there are people in the world who can say "I don't really care what other people think of me," and actually mean it, and still succeed in spite of that. It's not easy, but you could be that way too - I mean, why not? Moreover, when you don't care what other people think of you, your definition of "success" usually changes to something a lot more manageable and attainable.


And yet it's clearly not the biggest issue from a more general perspective, because Wikipedia is already far larger and more extensive than any professionally-produced (and traditionally-published) informational reference, all without paying the actual editors a dime. This fact is used time and again to "prove" that crowdsourcing is the best (or at least fastest and cheapest) way to acquire encyclopedic content on a massive scale. Concerns about quality are easily dismissed by pointing would-be critics to the roughly 5 percent of articles that are actually good - and given the numbers, even 5 percent (between 100K and 200K articles) is far more than any one person could critique in any sort of coherent fashion.

In my field, if you get paid for editing it is a miracle. Just an fyi. That is why I have no qualms about producing content on wiki. The wider distribution and accessibility is also a bonus.

There are much less wealthy online operations than Wikipedia actually paying editors and contributors. Wikipedia could be improved immeasurably if editors and/or contributors, screened for basic competence, were paid for their contributions (and subject, therefore, to some kind of serious management).

But of course that means recognizing that, while anyone "can" edit, not everyone should.

I've been rather critical in the past of Dr. Blofeld's "micro-stubs", or rather the sheer volume of them, as most will never be anything more. But you do raise an interesting point; creating an article is far easier than expanding or improving one, but far more highly valued, presumably because of its perceived attraction to new editors.

Well I've always created new stubs on the basis that if you create new articles they stand a much better chance of being expanded and containing some info then if they didn't exist. I agree with pretty much what you said Somey but I'd have to say that the majority of minor wikipedia editors and ips feel the prospect of creating an account and starting a new article daunting and are either afraid of it being deleted or don't feel confident enough to do it. People who've supported my stubs in the past have said that at least I start the stubs consistently and cleanly which could reasonably be expanded by anybody (many sporadic new articles by newbies are often even worse in needing cleanup/categories reference fixing etc), in fact a number of editors have actually thanked me for batches I've started as it makes it easier for them to work off and wouldn't have done it otherwise. I think probably at least a thousand of stubs I've created are now full length or half decent content articles. Some like Xinjiang Medical University are surprise expansion ones. The truth though is the we don't have the amount of editors or interest to expand them ALL. So in principal unless the articles is expanded then at this moment in time it has been a waste of time... I'd have to say though Malleus that with the expection of some of the obscure "third world" villages the vast majority of stubs I start have some information on the Internet which could be added to them. For instance Burmese villages like Gwebin and Shwenyaungbin I started increasingly have info on them beyond the xxx is a stub. These are the valuable sort of articles I want us to have on parts of the world never covered in a general encyclopedia before and was my intention with any sub stubs i started that i want them written eventually. Of course I'd rather start the articles with knowledge like this but in the past I've been so aware of the scope of missing topics that I've tried to get them onto wikipedia, jeopardizing quality. Its finding a balance I think between starting new articles which are actually useful and contain some sentences of factual information and developing articles to GA quality. You'll find that most of my new articles in the last year or two have been useful stubs or start class articles, although I did create a lot of village stubs a while back.

Of course from a neutral point, quality and content is the most important thing. Of course there are problems with paid editing with multiple editors editing at the same time and potential squabbling over who is owed what etc but i think the articles which are core and nobody is improving and which REALLY need improving then I don't see why the foundation couldn't raise a certian amount each year to pay accomplished editors in certain fields a small amount to get the job done.

I think the most important things on wikipedia are a] increasing its scope and venture into poorly or uncovered areas of knowledge, like agricultural industries in African countries etc and b]Developing articles to GA level which have been reviewed and have been assessed as approved articles. It always comes down to the quality vs quanity thing. I agree I want every article to be GA but I've always found it difficult to ignore the vast topics which are not even started. Given that I don't have tine to write them all and given that wikipedia is visited by millions of people its my way of trying to do something towards it, and hoping that somebody can add to it later, which they often have but more noticeably have not... I believe I've mostly started articles which an encyclopedia of wikipedia's scale "should" have but we need more editors to help expand... That's why opinions of me and my intentions are divided is that some see the idea of promoting new topics and their long term potential and others like yourself Somey which regard the stubs as useless and a waste of time and creating a maintenance problem...

Stubs don't attract new users at all. This is exactly why Jimbo dislikes you, because recruitment (and to a lesser extent, retention) is his primary concern, as would be true of any cult leader/figurehead.

I'd have to disagree with that though Somey and I'd say the reason why Jimbo doesn't like me is because I tell him what I think of him and the way the project is run and he doesn't like that or my sarcastic sense of humour on his talk page. Let's not forgot that I have written more decent articles that most people have on wikipedia too which attract a lot of visitors daily. I am certain that thousands of people have google searched for articles on major towns or their villages or films/actors and have found the wikipedia entry at the top and entrered the site. I think you are underestimating that at least some of the articles I've started have created new traffic. I'm certain of that. But I'd agree with you that the stub is by no means a way of actual getting these new visitors to join and build it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbas_Kiarostami

My first Featured Article.....

Probably worth 1000 stubs....