There is already a Wikipedia Watch out there, you know.

— Jon Awbrey, 20 Feb 2009, 05:02 PM

Ooh, David Gerard responded to you: "Yes, and it’s a haven of trolls and sociopaths."

Yes, Mr. Gerard, shame on websites that attract "trolls and sociopaths". You and I would never associate with an online community populated by bullies, demagogues and nutjobs. We edit Wikipedia.

Haven Agutamm Vishnu Verheer — Not !!!

Jon

Why do I bother?

Lonnie & All,

There are many bright spots on the Web where knowledge is valued and shared. But the adverse consequences of Wikipedia go much deeper than its problematic content.

Educators have long appreciated that becoming an educated citizen demands a lot more than amassing a hoard of disengaged bits of data.

Understanding the process that delivers what is claimed to be knowledge is every bit as important as the knowledge claimed.

Educators and journalists need to examine what goes on behind the scenes of Wikipedia stagecraft — reports of its transparency are every bit as exaggerated as reports of its populist equality.

Only when that examination begins in earnest can the journalist or scholar address the question — Is this the way of working that I would be teaching my own students and trainees?

Exercise for the Reader — much depends on getting it right.

— Jon Awbrey, 21 Feb 2009, 12:00 AM

NihilTres,

It’s 2009.

We’ve heard the Preaching.

We’ve seen the Practice.

There is no positive relation between the two.

— Jon Awbrey, 21 Feb 2009, 02:44 PM

In this context, appeals to the authority of formal peer review seem sensible. Wikipedia effectively requires, as part of its policy of requiring all users (experts included) to cite reliable sources, that not merely expertise be honoured, but legitimate expertise — say-so doesn’t cut it. As a prominent Wikipedian has noted, ‘Wikipedia, the product, […] aims to be old-fashioned and conservative[, though] Wikipedia, the process, […] is deeply radical’.

NihilTres,

There is hardly space here to document all the Diffs between WP:Policy and WP:Practice, as many intrepid investigators have been busy doing that for the last five years — and that’s just since a late adopter like me started paying attention.

However, interested parties are invited to join the discussions in any or all of the fora that I noted above.

Ahahele

Wikipedia Review : Wikipedia Vandalism Study

The Wikipedia Review

Bee There Or Bee Square,

— Jon Awbrey, 21 Feb 2009, 04:00 PM

NihilTres,

You made no points — you recited a lot of tired old Wiki-PR about what Wikipedians are supposed to do.

The accumulating mass of evidence that Wikipedia personnel at every level constantly fail to respect in practice their advertised policies is far too widespread and well-known in the current time frame, and you insult everyone’s intelligence by pretending ignorance of it.

— Jon Awbrey, 21 Feb 2009, 04:48 PM

ultimately, it seems all wp articles are based off of original research of some sort...

expertise seems like the basis of wp

it seems people who edit are processing the information that is there

seems experts should not be particularly concerned.

You had it right up to the last statement. Yes, good WP articles are written by people ignoring the rules about NOR, SYNTH and often RS. It's a lot easier.

But your last statement would not have been made unless you'd had some experience writing as an expert on a topic in which people THINK they are experts, but aren't. Health, nutrition, special relativity, Middle East politics, whatever. The giant procession of Cliff Clavins on WP are going to bite you, unless you stick to some mathematical topic where the nutters who don't speak LaTeX can't even follow you.

Ooh, David Gerard responded to you: "Yes, and it’s a haven of trolls and sociopaths."

Given that Wikipedia Watch is not a community website, and in fact only has one individual involved in it, I believe Mr. Gerard just called Mr. Brandt a sociopath - even more clear-cut libel than 90% of the BLP stuff.

...even if Gerard was calling Brandt that, which he is not?

He was either talking about Brandt or he had no idea what site he was talking about. (I actually think the latter is more likely, but that's no excuse)

David Gerard did not disclose that he is a Wikimedia Foundation (unpaid) UK press flack, err, “contact”, see

meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_department

I suppose I should disclose that I am a columnist for the UK newspaper The Guardian, and have often been critical of Wikipedia (and have gotten complaints about my columns from David Gerard — all of which said complaints have so far been deemed meritless).

For my perspective, see, for example

Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa’s workshop

— Seth Finkelstein, 21 Feb 2009, 07:34 PM

Geoff,

No sensible person expects the realities of Wikipedia’s practices and problems to be revealed according to the rules of some Wikipedia Jr. High Debating Society.

About all that anyone can sensibly do in this space is to provide readers and reporters with links to sources of information that they must examine, if they care enough, and evaluate for themselves.

That is what I have done.

— Jon Awbrey, 23 Feb 2009, 02:42 PM

Scott,

Larry Sanger must be credited with trying to stamp out one of the biggest bugs in Wikipedia, namely, the quaint old Usenet custom allowing anonymous and pseudonymous “contributions” — the kinds of unsigned letters to the editor that used to get tossed in the circular file, not “mashed up” into articles.

But the Big Three Albatrosses still hanging the neck of Citizendium are the same bizarre warpings of normal scholarly and journalistic standards that go under the acronyms of WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:VER.

— Jon Awbrey, 23 Feb 2009, 10:32 PM

it seems your point is quite valid in many respects, but until the "non" expert masses can build a rocket and collaboratively decide who to put on the moon, and in a safer manner than Nasa, it seems there are some unreconciled matters

I don't get your point. Wikpedia has done nothing of the kind. What it has done, is (again thanks to Somey for finding this) is mostly something like this:
There are a few isolated places where Wikipedia has done some amazing things, but with terrible uneveness of performance, what good are they if you can't trust them? It's like having the world's best pilot who once every few months gets stinking drunk and buzzes the tower, but otherwise in all ways is great. What do you do with him? You can't just keep pointing to the days he was a great pilot, over and over. That just ends with your opponent pointing to the times he buzzed the tower and came close to killing people, over and over. A stupid argument, because ultimately if you can't trust him, you can't trust him.

Wikipedia's a great encyclopedia. Except when it isn't. Now what?

Re: If you’ve got ideas for future posts on the topic, feel free to drop me a line at brock.read@chronicle.com. —Brock Read

Brock,

If you need ideas for future articles, let me suggest that professional journalists — while we still have them! — need to investigate the burning question as to what the Real Purpose of Wikipedia et Wikia et al. might be, since it has become increasingly clear to those who have tried to help them develop an educational and informational resource that creating a quality encyclopedia is a purely incidental distractor in service to their real agenda.

My own best guess at present is that the real business of the WikiMedia Foundation and Wikia.Com is controlling and directing as much Internet traffic as they can wrap their link farms around.

So you might look further into the mechanisms that they use to do that.

Again, some assistance in that task can be found at the sites that I linked to above.

— Jon Awbrey, 28 Feb 2009, 08:40 AM