The only “sense of entitlement” that those of us who’ve tried to correct Wikipedia errors feel is the entitlement to see our work protected from idiots, and that’s not happening.

Wikipedia certainly has its place in the world: as a first stop in researching a subject, it’s better than Google for finding a good set of links. But it appears that many people – journalists in particular – make it their only stop, and to the extent that that happens, it’s a destructive force.

Web sites attract audiences with a point of view; most of the people who have diaries on DailyKos are not libertarians, for example. And the Wikipedia editor audience certainly has theirs, a POV skewed wildly towards received wisdom, conformity, mediocrity, authoritarianism, and the like.

It’s foolish not to recognize that.

The last straw came with the article on “Boy Scouts” (look it up and look at the discussion page, if you want). I added a simple link to an article on controversies about their practices. This was deleted. I added it again; it was deleted again. I tried a bit of explanatory text, to answer the objection that there is more to the Boy Scouts than the BSA; this got deleted. Fallacious arguments of every sort, including a lie or two, were thrown at me; for instance, deleting a link was called “moving” it, as if each article should be linked to from only one place.

I tried following the mediation procedure; the few mediators Wikipedia has are so backlogged in such controversies that I found myself waiting for weeks.

Most of the editing I’d done was simple copy editing which provided momentary breaks from work. But at this point I realized that editing Wikipedia was no longer a pleasant diversion, and gave up.

However, policies on dispute resolutions and deletions are ambiguous. The bureaucracy creates it’s own lean in the Wikipedia, and because of that some of the criticism by Sean Lynch should be taken on board.

In other words, ignoring the criticism will not make the Wikipedia stronger – and that is what I have seen a lot of in recent months as an editor.

Comments

Well, of course you realize that you have just contributed to Wikipedia, albeit indirectly.

Certainly, the article will be fixed to give the proper credit, and to remove itme if copyright did not allow quoting.

This is one of the real strengths of the open source process–the ability to subsume the work of your critics into your process of continuuous improvement.

Posted by: enigma_foundry at August 15, 2006 02:23 PM

Patrick Ross and the others at IP Central of course pretended to ignore the significance of my comment, and ranted about how wrong the quoting without giving credit was.

But that is typical for those at IP Central, to ignore, and pretend to allow comments on their items (despite many items not allowing comments, there is still the “Post a Comment” link under all articles)

And then when you do send an email reply, the comment is given some ridiculous title, and not appended to the comment steam of the original item (The Solveig method of avoiding comments…)

Certainly, the article will be fixed to give the proper credit, and to remove itme if copyright did not allow quoting.

This is one of the real strengths of the open source process–the ability to subsume the work of your critics into your process of continuuous improvement.

Posted by: enigma_foundry at August 15, 2006 02:23 PM

Patrick Ross and the others at IP Central of course pretended to ignore the significance of my comment, and ranted about how wrong the quoting without giving credit was.

But that is typical for those at IP Central, to ignore, and pretend to allow comments on their items (despite many items not allowing comments, there is still the “Post a Comment” link under all articles)

And then when you do send an email reply, the comment is given some ridiculous title, and not appended to the comment steam of the original item (The Solveig method of avoiding comments…)

“Timothy B. Lee, in a paper written for the Cato Institute, wrote:”

I didn’t sign in or explain the change. We’ll see if it sticks.

Whoever the Wikipedia author is, he does not seem to understand that DRM is a first line technical barrier to deterring piracy, with the DMCA its legal backup. As a policy argument, it does no good to cite the failure of DRM to stop all piracy; all that does is reiterate justifications unpinning the DMCA.

What really makes me laugh about the example is that the very first things I see when I look up Net Neutrality are two huge warnings telling me that, 1st, the article is about a current event, and 2nd, the neutrality of the article is disputed. Before I’ve even started reading, I know to be on my guard.

Reliability is a probabilistic property. Wikipedia’s reliability is high but quite variable across different domains. Moreover, it’s pretty easy to predict which domains will be less reliable and to take account of this. The bottom line is that saying “Wikipedia gets wrong a controversial issue I care a lot about, therefore it must be a joke” is about as valid, epistemologically speaking, as “But nobody I know voted for Bush, so there must have been fraud!”

Go read the Wikipedia entry on Net Neutrality and tell me how far you can get before you fall down on the floor laughing or start cussing and throwing things at your computer. This is a political and policy question where the Wikipedians have decided they want a certain outcome – a law to pass – and they don’t mind doing injury to the facts to make it happen.

In fact, go read any entry that has political or policy significance and you’ll see the same thing. Wikipedia is even more biased than the mainstream corporate liberal media can even imagine being.

It’s a joke.

Whether we’re “entitled” to a free encyclopedia or not, an objective, dispassionate assessment of Wikipedia has to conclude that it’s a pile of crap. And that’s what Lynch is saying, and he’s right.

As to your claim that only a moron would take it as credible, kindly bear in mind that there are billions of morons in the world.