Seth, I hope you can write an article for the Guardian (or similar venue) reflecting on this episode; you said alot of interesting things.
Posted by anon at March 5, 2007 10:02 PMWe'll see. I'm actually feeling like I wasted a lot of time on this. Same problem, the tiny audience heard it, but that's small and preaching to the choir. I ran some website stats yesterday, and the results were disappointing. The top post, the one about "What [This] Tells Us About Wikipedia", got around 1,000 hits, since it was echoed to a bunch of second-tier websites. And that was the highest result. Objectively, it's a drop in the bucket. The drive to be heard is quite powerful, and I am not immune.
Posted by Seth Finkelstein at March 5, 2007 10:35 PMas the owner of one of the 'second tier websites' I would also like to thank you for your thoughtful words on this matter.
Posted by fordie at March 6, 2007 12:57 AM"My main problem is that I'm just too good a guy." -- Jimbo.
His bigger problem is that he gets behind the "gang" without any consideration of the facts of the matter.
Posted by Dr Zen at March 6, 2007 01:15 AMfordie: You're welcome. No offense intended, I often talk of my blog as "Z-list".
Dr Zen: Factual analysis is for wonks :-).
I don't often do linkposts, but I've finally blogged about this at my fourth-tier blog, pointing to the most recent eight of your posts... that should easily bring you, oh, five or ten more readers (well, 15 if Bloglines starts picking up posts again).
Posted by walt crawford at March 6, 2007 10:58 AMSeth, you should probably read this:
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070306/NEWS01/703060446/1008
Posted by Jason Scott at March 6, 2007 12:12 PMwalt: Thank you - so far today, *three* (3) readers. All gratefully accepted, but ...
Jason: Thanks.
One of the other blogs, not sure if it was Scott, Carr or Freakonomics, posted a quote saying Wales was to start "vetting credentials."
Now think about that. That's very interesting. Why vet? If on Wikipedia it doesn't matter who you are, just your work matters -- wouldn't the consistent approach be to ban all mention of credentials? No use of credentials in content disputes, on your user page etc. A level playing field.
"Vetting credentials" just shows the inconsistency, the delusion, was there in Wikipedia from the beginning. The place is just as venal as everywhere else, except they were dishonest about it.
Posted by anon at March 7, 2007 12:09 AMby Russell Goldman
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2928756&page=1
by Dan Harris
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerindex?id=2929512
by Brian Bergstein
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2820693
If, on Wikipedia it doesn't matter who you are, why is there a whole Wikipedia category of pages needing expert attention?
Posted by Seth Gordon at March 7, 2007 08:22 AMYou can read Wales' proposal at:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/064619.html
As noted in the thread above (and the replies to Wales), it flies in the face of everything else Wales and company says, so it is only reasonable to conclude that it was raised more as an exercise in PR than any expectation it would be taken seriously.