People who are not the beneficiary of a "Received Truth" (myself included) seek truth, or at least an ever improving approximations of the truth, through various self correcting systems. These system include political democracy, free speech/press, science and market economies (not my personal favorite, but in fairness it belongs on the list). They each have mechanisms, (elections, discussion, experimentation, and value exchange) that provide an ever increasing level of information and the opportunity to use that information to improve the process in the next iteration of the process. A wiki, just not WP, but the content management technology itself, has many attractive features to people attracted to self correcting systems.

All self correcting system function in the context of community. The generation and refinement of "truth" is a social activity. All of these system can be distorted and even rendered useless by the creation of centers of concentrated power and influence. Undue influence can be viewed in self correcting systems as uneven distribution of 1)access to information and 2)the ability create new information accessible to other members of the community. Political democracies are undermined by restricting minority viewpoints and the ability of the rich to buy elections. Free speech/press is distorted by money and celebrity, until becomes a vehicle for obsessing over pop culture and selling crap. Science can be warped into the servant of corporations and a tool of a war machine. As for markets, well, after 6,000 years of slavery, pillage and theft you want play nice now?

For any self correcting system to work it needs over-sight to assure the free access and distribution to information. If any wiki based project to succeed (including successor projects as WP fails). We need to identify what has made WP so dysfunctional and could undermine other similar projects. What do you think these centers of undue influence are?

Like a Bede on a Wire ...

Lieber Ludi,

(I'll postpone quotation to give you time to fix the italics.)

I have been studying various types of adaptive, cybernetic, or self-correcting systems for many suns and moons now, currently taking them under the wing of Inquiry Driven Systems. My article "Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems" provides a brief survey of the main ideas.

You aptly observe a general theme that affects any good method — no sooner does one find a positively catalytic method toward any goal than one is faced with an obstinate array of blocks, impedances, impediments, inhibitors, resistances, and short-circuits that seem determined to undermine and waylay it.

You have also noted one type of block or short-circuit to inquiry.

There are, off course, many others.

Jonny

In engineering, self-correcting systems only work if there are strict parameters which prevent a meltdown. I see nothing at all in a wiki which prevents editor cabals being formed, and the project going astray in short order.

Studying a little of the history of Wikipedia, I find a different "culture" that founded it than is now seemingly the majority. I may be wrong, but I find that very early on, it was inhabited by folks much like the mind set that GlassBeadGame is, ie "People who are not the beneficiary of a "Received Truth" (myself included) [and] seek truth..."

Around part of 2005 and all of 2006 it seemed to take on very much a "MySpace" feel to it, with some people just concerned with editing their user page.

WP is too big for its britches. A fork maintaned by some respected user will eventually address these current issues, but I wonder of the wiki model can mantain itself with such a large number of members that do not concern itself with the idealistic ethics of the project.

Another slightly related idea--Citizendium states that it has eliminated vandalism. This got me to thinking about the large amount of people on WP that only fight vandalism. The end of vandalism is the day these people leave WP, as they contribute nothing else.

This is not to say they are not important, someone has to do it given the large amounts of vandalism that occurs. However, if vandalism was eliminated, I would say that active participants in Wikipedia would drop significantly.

I remember reading (and cannot find it just now) a blog entry by our beloved Kelly Martin in Non_Bovine Nonsense in which she made a pretty good point about the people who write articles for Wikipedia are not the same group as those who maintain it. The writers are on an altogether higher level than the social networking, wiki addicted dregs who man the various patrols, haunt the AfX and RfX pages and who make clerical or mechanical contributions. Admins would be, for the most part, solidly in the lower caste. Say what you want about KM but by blogging off wiki (although the writing is often dreadful) she strikes some blows against the totalitarian nature of WP, even if she is often motivated only to carry on lost battles off wiki.

There was a time ...

Yes, I collaborated on several different wiki projects before I ever heard of Wikipedia, and the wiki culture was a very different thing in those days — much more Hawaiian, if you catch my drift. The people all knew each other — like a small town that still had some pity — and everybody that was there was there, sharing the same goals, however rough-hewn. Problems were handled in tribal healing circles where the voices of 2 or 3 peers saying, "Now think about this", was enough to calm things down and get the collective mission back on track.

¤ Sigh ¤

Jonny

Jonny:

I've tackled IDS in OpenCycle, and I'll admit, for the moment I'm whipped. Your a very tough read. Sort of like Donald Knuth and James Joyce at the same time. Complete with something that might be a Bitwise Operator Decision Table. I think it has something in common with Machines of Loving Grace. Is there a more accessible place to start? Maybe C.S. Peirce for Dummies?

While I was there I registered at OpenCycle.

His Oner, JA, spent the (19)90's writing a mega-page Dissipation Proposal in Systems Engineering at a universtity in Automation Alley, and that "Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems" was cobbled together from early prolegomena to that. So it might have been subtitled "C.S. Peirce for Cybernauts".

The OpenCycle article on Inquiry is quicker, but it's a bit sketchy in its current state, and it doesn't get as far as making the connection to systems thinking.

There's also an article on Semiotic Information Theory that bears on the broad subject area of adaptive information systems, auto-correcting knowledge systems, learning organizations, etc.

If you tell me where you dozed off exactly ... there's a chance it might help to improve the articles.

I know I've got other essays scattered about the Web somewhere ... I'll go look for some of those.

Expressed in terms of inquiry driven systems, our present concern seems to be something like "How A Good Community Of Inquiry Goes Bad".

The way I see it, you have to go back to the nature, origin, and purpose of an IDS in order to address the typical pathologies that their flesh is heir to.

Jonny

The most auspicious embarcation point for this investigation might be here:

• The First Thing About Logic

Generally speaking, I find it almost impossible to have an intelligent discussion with people who do not know The First Thing About Logic.

Needless to say, so I'll say it anyway, Wikipedia — in its present and most likely terminal condition — is positively rife with people who do not know The First Thing About Logic.

Jonny

Dynamic Page for Collecting Other Links that Come to Mind

A paper on various theories of signs and inquiry that benefits from the co-authorship of a far better writer than Mr. Jawberwocky:

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (Autumn 1995), "Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry", Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), pp. 40–52. Eprint.

A desultory pre-ramble to a later dissertation proposal:

Inquiry Driven Systems : An Inquiry Into Inquiry

Two versions of a paper on universities as learning organizations — prospects, pitfalls, and the consequences for education and society:

Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (May 2001), "Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities", Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 269–284. Abstract.

Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (September 1999), "Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century", Second International Conference of the Journal 'Organization', Re-Organizing Knowledge, Trans-Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Eprint.

A slightly indirect e-gora thread that bears on some patterns of inquiry blockage that occur in e-gora:

Inquiry List, Inquiry Blockage Amplifiers

Jonny

I didn't dose off at all. The article is very dense with ideas and concepts I only partially understand. I would read until lost, then try to penetrate another paragraph or section. No particular place was problematic. I have had similar problems with other highly technical material. It reminds me trying to figure out OOP. (I am not a professional programmer, nor university trained in programming.) It took many retreats and "backfills." Eventully the material yields.

I found this. It's not C. S. Peirce for Dummies, but it's close.

Yes, Chandler's book is a pretty good appetizer for the theory of signs — better coverage on Saussure and contemporary devolutions than Peirce, though.

It takes another jump to see the link between sign processes in general and the sorts of goal-directed sign processes that qualify as non-trivial forms of inquiry. There is supposed to be some hint of that connection in the "Interpretation as Action" paper that I listed above.

For our purposes, then, we have to imagine the sorts of inquiry processes that occur in distributed systems of many interpretive agents, or "hermenauts".

Jonny

There are links to various papers and projects along these lines at Jon Awbrey's ¢iare directory page.

Jonny

I just did a Google search for ' Inquiry Driven Systems ' (no quotes). I got about 1.2 million pages returned. Hmm... let me just click the very first search result. Wow, what a cool new wiki, where contributors can write whatever they want there without fear of reprisal, and in less than eight days, have it pop to the very top of Google.

(I wonder why WikiProject SpamFighters wouldn't want to promote this site to SEO spammers?)

<sigh>

Greg

Would one of our Mod Squadders be so kind as to move this thread to the Meta-Diss Forum?

Gratia In Futuro,

Jon

You're forgetting one important point and that is that the concept of "moral rights" exists.

This is the right of a creator to say "this is my work" or "this is not my work"

In civilized France, "moral rights" are perpetual, meaning that any of your direct descendants have the right to say "this is not my great-grandfather's work", and that's all it. If the rightholders don't say "this work exists", it doesn't. Period.

What WP refuses to accept, both in terms of BLP issues and also in terms of individual creators (read WP editors themselves, if you're so inclined) is that these people have the right to say "this is my work", but also "this is NOT my work". Or even "this is my work, but I don't wish that this be publicly available".

The people who meddle with policy are, for all means and purposes, in the same position as those who maintain the CC or the GFDL licenses They have no reason to insert themselves into the equation between the person expressing the thought and the person receiving the thought, but they place themselves in this position. This allows them to participate, vicariously, in the creative act. And by doing so, they believe that they are somehow "creative"

The problem is that 1. they are not necessary for this exchange to take place and 2. they have no creative function.

Hence all of the drama...

I could go into this further, if anybody's interested...but I'm sure that you get my drift....

Happy to accommodate your request, Jon. I wonder where you are heading with this piece of thread necromancy?

Oh, I was just -- yikes, thunderstorm warning ... and the lights a flickering --

I'll Be Back ...

Jon

Like I was saying, I was just doing a mix of random and routine web searches, and happened on a couple of old Revue threads that looked mildly interesting. My brain is too fogged over from a summer cold nine days old to do any real work and the drone of the Never Ending Soap Opera Wikipedia — not to mention the fascicles of our Revue that are every bit as interesting as the Soap Opera Digests you glance at lining the 7–11 checkout lanes — are having an irresistibly soporific effect on the few fatigued neurons under my command that are not already asleep at their posts.

Jon

Random Bump

Jon

Posted in a thread about ArbCom:



Might be more productive here.

Self-correcting systems have to be able to learn from experience (and not forget what they once learned). The problem with WikiCulture is that the community turns over rapidly and is dominated by younger participants who have little or no institutional memory. In that regard, WikiCulture fails as a learning community, because it cannot make very much progress in terms of lessons learned. That's one of the reasons there is so much lunatic drama in WikiCulture compared to more functional learning communities.

Yeah, sure, but Wikipedia's Lack Of Learning (WP:LOL) is a controlled, dynamic, maintained, persistent phenomenon — as we should have tumbled to by now — and that calls for another order of explanation than the proverbial es ist passiert.

Jon Awbrey