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Wikipocalypse:Consensus
From Wikitruth
[edit] Wikipocalypse!!! Consensus Will Crush the Truth
People are trying to write an encyclopedia who've never written one before, or, even, never written before. seems doomed to failure really. I would've thought that if a bunch of people were going to come together to write an online encyclopedia succesfully it would be a bunch of academics.
There's a lot of mention of consensus in terms of determining the truth. Which, if you think about it, is ridiculous. In contemporary western societies, the media generally manufacture the consensus. Most of us could rattle off a list of names of scientific trailblazers who defied the consensus, and whose work modern math/phys/chem/etc are built upon. So the idea of people voting for the truth (if it even worked like that, which your exposition of the workings of the wiki show that it doesn't), especially when most peoples knowledge of the existing scientific models are crap, seems stupid. And not only science.
I'm writing this because I found your 'site interesting and amusing. I've never really used the wikipedia, and on reflection, I doubt I ever will, that much. Homogenised monocultures are easily attacked. I remeber reading (maybe on theregister, again) someone suggesting that the 'net as a whole would be better off if it was less homogenised, if there were different addressing and data transfer protocols, as virii and other exploits/attacks would likely be confined by virtue of being written to take advantage of a specific subset of the whole. I guess after reading your 'site my gut feeling about wikipedia is the same: there are already a trillion people out there writing and uploading content in a variety of forms on a myriad of subjects. Trying to centralise it and control it all under one roof is like totalitarianism. Which, in fact, is exactly what you reveal in the actions of the wikipedias 'big guns'.
This entry in the Wikipocalypse contest comes from Mr. Slade.
