wikipedia

[Joshua Thorp]

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25

Here is anther story about wikipedia,  the open web encyclopeadia that
can be edited by anyone (with an internet connection).  The author
argues that wikipedia is doomed because of its anti-elitist stance.  I
think this is very interesting.  Can a project that is explicitly
egalitarian overcome human nature of hoodlumism and
self-agrandisment...  Slashdot does a nice job of dealing with trolls
through community point giving/taking which might be an interesting
enhancement to wikipedia.  The author here,  though,  believes that
there is a pervasive anti-authoritarian, anti-expertise element that
could gang up in such a system to push all the experts out.  My
idealist nature doesn't want to believe in such things...

BTW Nick,  the author uses the wikipedia philosophy entries as an
example of what is bad in wikipedia,  so you are not alone in that
critique.

--Joshua

[Russell Standish]

I think the answer will depend on the nature of the community
contributing to the open resource. I have found on some email
discussion lists a highly erudite community with relatively little in
the way of ill-informed and idiotic commentary. On others (which I
tend to unsubscribe after a short time), the voice of reason has been
drowned out by a cacophony of opinion of those who like the sound of
their own voices but don't have anything of substance to say.

Wikipedia is probably a large collection of mildly interacting
communities - some erudite, and some opinionated. Philosophy, in my
experience, tends to attract the latter - even in academic circles -
so it is perhaps not surprising that the Wikipedia entry for
Philosophy is not of much use.

The trick, as always, is to know how to sort the wheat from the
chaff. Isn't this always the problem, even with refereed journals?

                                        Cheers

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 05:33:48PM -0600, Joshua Thorp wrote:

> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25
>
> Here is anther story about wikipedia,  the open web encyclopeadia that
> can be edited by anyone (with an internet connection).  The author
> argues that wikipedia is doomed because of its anti-elitist stance.  I
> think this is very interesting.  Can a project that is explicitly
> egalitarian overcome human nature of hoodlumism and
> self-agrandisment...  Slashdot does a nice job of dealing with trolls
> through community point giving/taking which might be an interesting
> enhancement to wikipedia.  The author here,  though,  believes that
> there is a pervasive anti-authoritarian, anti-expertise element that
> could gang up in such a system to push all the experts out.  My
> idealist nature doesn't want to believe in such things...
>
> BTW Nick,  the author uses the wikipedia philosophy entries as an
> example of what is bad in wikipedia,  so you are not alone in that
> critique.
>
> --Joshua
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org

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