[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[David Gerard]

On 29 July 2011 11:25, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> At times I wonder if some Wikipedians have ever heard of epistemology.


Larry Sanger was no great shakes as a philosopher, but at least he'd
heard of the stuff.

Here's essays from Tom Morris (another philosopher):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Reliability_Delusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom_Morris/The_Definition_Delusion

Basically, the fact of "Wikipedia's epistemology is broken" is
becoming better-known.


> I also have taken note that there is a tendency among some editors to
> truncate probability calculations to the nearest whole number.


This is Wikipedia-induced aspergism, which turns
otherwise-socially-able people into annoying doctrinaire nerds, who
CANNOT STAND UNCERTAINTY.

This is where Wikipedia's epistemology is broken: the real world is
made of uncertainty. And the grey areas are what people are actually
interested in.

None of what I'm saying here is new, it's been circulating since 2004.
That doesn't mean it isn't in urgent need of being fixed, now that
Wikipedia is *the* reference work and we've dodged the Expert Problem
by being so big the experts are now coming to us.


- d.