Fuckups To The Editor

Sorry, this whole secret mailing list has pissed me off to no end. Wikipedia is such a waste, and I feel sorry for people that have busted their ass to make that project work, only to get bullied around by a fucking secret hierarchy. I made about 1500 edits in three weeks, only to get shit all over by some kid on a power trip looking for brownie points and pats on the back from his condescending admin buddies.

Anyway, I came across this edit by Jimbo Wales, which is very, very troubling.

"And as long as some people like to pretend that our carrying out of policies against posting private emails on the wiki is an attempt "to suppress discussion" then we will continue to allow drama mongers to control the discussion of things on the site. I have said this many times in the past and will say it many times in the future I am sure: some people need to find a different hobby, because whatever they are here for, it is not to help build an encyclopedia. No one is attempting to suppress discussion, look at the ridiculous length of this page. Giano was trolling (i.e. doing something he knew to be disruptive), he knew he was trolling, and I doubt if he will last much longer at Wikipedia because of it"

Just what the hell. Maybe I'm reading into this wrong. It's as though he loves this shit, this senseless drama that tears the fucking site apart.

Of course, maybe he just worded things wrong. Then again, if he uses his super oversight powers and removes this edit forever, then perhaps not.

I hate that god damn site. It could've been so great, but it's as though he wants it to fail. I really don't see how this site can have any credibility now that it's proven to just be a tiered system where the rest of us non-gifted folk in the art of asshattery are just 2nd and 3rd-class citizens.

Without getting in to too deep a philosophical debate I have an idea as to why Wikipedia is the way it is.

First it starts with Jimbo who is a well known follower of Ayn Rand's Objectivist Epistemology. Whether or not you agree with me is besides the point, but in essence it's a narcissistic philosophy because it eliminates any value as to the subjective. It's all objective. That's why Jimbo doesn't see any problem when he just lays down the law. It's obviously correct and the argument is only there because the two sides have faulty logic that makes them "feel" differently about it and we know where "feelings" get you.

I believe this philosophy is at the heart of the philosophy of Wikipedia, that anyone can edit. The problem is the philosophy and hence the Wikipedia philosophy don't work. The problem is that if the Wikipedia philosophy doesn't work it implies that Objectivist Epistemology is faulty and that leads to an existential crisis of the highest order. The very foundation of Jimbo's life is at stake here. In order not to pull the card out of the bottom of the house out things suddenly get rationalized that no one else would ever imagine, such that open information creation and sharing requires the frequent use of the ability to make something disappear in such a way that no one even knows it ever existed in the first place or any of the other strange and wonderful Wikipedia policies that exist to torment us. The reality is that letting anyone edit the Wikipedia means letting five year olds who happen to click daddy's mouse in the right combination edit Wikipedia articles and in the end through anonymity no one knows who's the five year old and who's the research scientist because both of them are capable of saying, "I'm a research scientist."

When we look to the mother of all democratic systems, the US government we see some pretty bizarre things, such as the election of obviously bad presidents, twice. The masses don't know. That's why we have research scientists in the first place. If I want to build an atomic bomb I ask nuclear physicists, not the "average" person. The "average" person couldn't build a nuclear weapon with plutonium, a map and a flashlight. The proper research scientist could do it with one hand tied behind his back (and a speaker phone and a source of lots of cash).

The fundamental philosophy of Wikipedia is flawed. The philosophy its founder (one of them at least) based it on is flawed and (heaven forbid!) the founder is flawed (because, you know, he's human like the rest of us) but if you point out the first you can only conclude the second (based on said philosophy in fact) and therefore point out the third which is unsettling to the God King, who, it turns out, has no clothes.

At least that's my guess on the whole thing. I could be wrong.

If the goal of Wikipedia was to collect the sum of all objective human knowledge it might work, but then it would just be a database and, eventually, a simulator of the real world that enabled you to see what really happened which, it turns out, requires making your own universe, and you still wouldn't have the subjective knowledge that much of humanity's history (good and bad) has been based on. I know A is A, identity is great and all, but it doesn't tell me anything *about* A. I could define it's specifics, how many times it appears in the OED, the frequency the letter is used, every form of representing it in every font known to man kind but I still don't know anything about A. I don't know how it exists in relation to the other because relation to an other requires a point of view and we know how well that goes over at Wikipedia.

Props to the experts in their fields and props to the people exposing Wikipedia for what it is. Props to the cabal for doing the things necessary to bring attention to the fact that a secret cabal exists, despite the fact that it only exists to do things that you would have a secret cabal for in the first place, someone had to do it, we'll miss you when you're gone.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

You guys might want to point out that since Wikia has taken off, the standards of notability on Wikipedia have tightened DRAMATICALLY. Once upon a time you could use Wikipedia as a complete and detailed episode guide for lots of great classic TV shows. Not anymore; that stuff isn't notable enough for Wikipedia, but coincidentally there's a for-profit venture that'll let you make a wiki about it there.

If this keeps up all the "portals" will have to close. Nothing's that notable on the new Wikipedia.

It hasn't yet occurred to anybody apparently that Wikipedia could just use categories to mark how notable something is and then allow people to browse at their preferred notability levels. Or if it has that person was quickly shut up and clubbed in the shins with a baseball bat. Despite the fact that this was the original purpose of "Wikipedia 1.0." Nowadays, everything is "cruft." It makes me sorry I ever branded anything "non-notable."

BTW, I'm an anonymous coward of course, so please don't attribute this thinking to me anywhere. But please DO point out that somebody's making money off of the fact that lots of articles on Wikipedia are slated for deletion under new "standards" of what's "notable" enough to be included in the "sum total of human knowledge."

Hi. I'm sure there is nothing at all to be read into the fact that statistics for the number of active English-language wikipedians have not been updated. some one should remind them or people might assume that numbers have been dropping.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

Cheers.

Now, with Wikipedia the central source for so much information, all the Fair Use is going away." [1]

No Fair Use, now...and No Original Research either, as ever. Between these two edicts, what's left?

I mean if you think about it, as soon as you start providing your own photos of landmarks, who did that research? Because taking a photo is information gathering - it is, to not really stretch the point at all if you think about it, Original Research. The photo wasn't out there in some reputable publication, you, the asshole, went out with your disposable camera and snapped it and scanned it. It came from you.

As soon as you start drawing a diagram to illustrate your point because there's no free one out there, you have to ask, where is the basis coming from for the information you're basing your diagram on? Maybe you got the basis from an external source, but it's your own original input. You synthesized that data. It's not even like if you synthesized a bunch of articles out of an actual encyclopedia or two and cited them and created a well-done, yet non-infringing version. That's Wikipedia. But to draw that diagram to illustrate that point is Original Research. To take a piece of tape and stick it on your asshole and photograph the worms is Original Research.

This is not intended to be some lame pointless nitpick of wikipedia policy. Rather, it's an attempt to illustrate that this particular pair of poorly-thought-out overarching policies cannot be seriously examined with a critical eye, because together they are a rationale for deleting just about everything that isn't text on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is schizophrenic and its self-inconsistent policies would doom it instantly if it ever actually could get a truly rational, objective eye on its own proceedings. Fortunately, it's manned entirely by assburgers who are too busy congratulating themselves for following the rules to realize that those same rules disprove Wikipedia. Q.E.D.

Subject: Astrolabe: a navigation device for Wikipedia users

Dear Brad Patrick:

Jimmy Wales said you might be interested in the Astrolabe, a navigation device for users of Wikipedia who are researching a course essay. A PowerPoint presentation of the Astrolabe is available. I will send it to you when I have your personal e-mail address.

We are a McGill University information retrieval research team.

Pitch: The Astrolabe is a videogame where the user is a navigator exploring his/her own Topic Sea, which is the topic of his/her high school of undergraduate essay. In this videogame, the navigator/user interacts with information content in Wikipedia. The Astrolabe game facilitates the user locating him/herself in the topic they are exploring so that the user precisely identifies what information content is needed from Wikipedia to complete their essay researching task.

At the end of the user-Astrolabe-Wikipedia interaction, the user would have the structure of their essay on a print-out supplied by the Astrolabe system, plus the results list from Wikipedia (in Wikipedia's case, the results list would be titles of articles; in Google's case, it would be URLs for appropriate Web sties).

We would like to build a prototype of the Astrolabe with Wikipedia as a partner applying for research grants from Canadian funding agencies. Wikipedia's contribution would be advice, a test connection to Wikipedia (and advice to set that up), but not financial. At the end of the prototype building phase, Wikipedia would then think about offering it to their customers in some way (like charging a fee that would include paying a licensing fee to McGill University).

We think videogames and putting the user inside a VR world while interacting with information from content sources like Wikipedia is the wave of the future in information retrieval. I see Wikipedia itself as in-between Encarta and Google, so in way Wikipedia itself is an interface mechanism for accessing information (I am thinking of the hyperlinks to further content embedded in the Wikipedia articles).

If you agree to be a partner in our future applications to funding agencies, we need (i) your coordinates and, at the time of application, (ii) a short letter from you indicating that you agree to be a partner (on an application by application basis; we would apply until we got a sufficiently large grant; there would be two or three of these applications only, then we would stop applying).

Regards, Charles Cole Graduate School of Library and Information Studies McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada charles.cole@mcgill.ca Phone: (514) 398-4204

Subject: Simon Pulsifer

I'm amused to see that I'm mentioned by Wikitruth after all this time, even if it's only in an edit summary. As for the Simon Pulsifer article, I deleted it because it's for a not notable topic. If you want to host it on your site, that doesn't bother me in the least. My efforts to keep Wikipedia focused on being an encyclopedia don't really relate to what you're doing at Wikitruth. I should note that in theory you're violating the GFDL by not posting the contribution history somewhere, so it may be wise to stash that somewhere (the talk page, perhaps?).

I find Wikitruth amusing sometimes. I don't see you as being part of productive discourse, because you don't have a consistent position or set of ideas you advocate. As far as I can tell, the most you get from the site is emotional release from whatever frustrates you about the site, and perhaps life in general. Sometimes what you post is amusing, and occasionally some of the points you make are accidentally valid, both of which are reasons I keep an eye on your recent changes page. By and large though, I think the most intelligent criticism of Wikipedia comes from within -- specifically from the long-term editors who by and large have stuck by the project, despite its readily apparent flaws and very low quality in some areas. Still, there's something to be said for amusement, even when it's Jerry Springer-esque. Take care.

Subject: FCYTravis page

Hello,

I was reading through your site the other day, which does make some legitimate points, when I came across the article on FCYTravis, which basically does nothing except insult his sexuality. Interestingly, you claim to be against censorship, yet you poke fun at him for making comments that are clearly in the interest of free speech.

Anyway, I just thought that FCYTravis's page is really just lovely and really adds to your credibility as a legitimate group with real complaints.

Cheers,