(Warning: blue sky speculation and impratical idea-slinging follows)
So, I was watching a downloaded copy of an interesting talk sponsored
by Google (and available on Google Video, natch:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&q=Human+Comput…
) called "Human Computation". It was given by [[Luis von Ahn]], and
it was largely about his ideas on [[Human-based computation]], with a
lot of attention given to [[ESP Game]] and PeekaBoom.
ESP Game, to summarize, is a quest to label images on the Web by
making describing the image the product of a game in which two players
negotiate the description.
In his talk, I think he estimated that 5000 players could label every
image on the web in about 2 months.
Now, what struck me about this (aside from the ingenuity of figuring
out a way to put human cycles to work) was how currently *pointless*
this quest was. So Luis now has a database with descriptions of a
portion of the web's images. He can make an alright image search
engine. Maybe sell the data to Google who could obviously make use of
it. Image search might improve a few percent (let's be optimistic). He
even admitted as much in the questions section, that the loop isn't
closed, but that it's just an "engineering perspective" (should I make
a joke about academics here?).
The essential point is that this is an instance where the famous
"Read-only Web" or Web 1.0 is a serious barrier to actually using the
gathered info on a large scale, since you can't go in and add the
devised descriptions to those images lacking them (which is useful for
among other things, screen readers). The HTML and images are static.
You can't analyse the relevant object and improve it. The source is
closed.
But we here are fans of wikis, good ol' Web 2.0, the RW web. Why not
apply these ideas to Wikipedia? Disambiguations are one possibility;
categorization is another; image tagging or pace ESP Game,
descriptions (I know we have to have a bunch of images on en or
Commons which need descriptions; even a few disjointed words are an
improvement on nothing). It's too bad Luis probably wouldn't want to
use Commons instead of Google's image search, since he has everything
all set up already. I mean, already we've got plenty of bots and
rather complex software specialized for various obscure tasks. Why not
a game?
I mean, critics are always saying Wikipedia is a crappy text-based
MMORPG masquerading as an encyclopedia... why not prove them wrong and
show that Wikipedia is a mediocre text-based puzzle game masquerading
as an encyclopedia? :)
~maru
Sorry if this has been discussed before. I just noticed
that [[Abdominal thrusts]] gives detailed advice on how to
perform a medical procedure. Maybe there are other such
articles too. Given the fashionable practice of filing
suit whenever a medical procedure fails to work, it seems
to me that this is rather dangerous for Wikipedia.
Wouldn't it be legally safer (and more likely to be
medically correct) if the actual procedure in such articles
was presented as a direct quotation from a named medical
authority? With permission, of course. Maybe there should
also be a disclaimer.
Zero.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Price_is_Right_pricing_games
No less than 102 pages, detailing each and every "pricing game" ever
used in the American version of the game show The Price is Right.
And what do we have to say about them? Analyses, statistics, etc? Nah,
just when it showed up, and when it went.
Heh.
Steve
"Matt Brown" wrote
> To follow up to my own posting, one of my concerns about pushing too
> hard about 'reliable sources' is that it discourages people from
> sourcing AT ALL and encourages mis-sourcing.
And please to bear in mind that perfect sourcing, with poor selection of material, is a great way to be misleading; while it is of course possible to respect NPOV without footnotes.
Charles
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G'day Nathan,
> So it seems that several admins have taken only one
> side of a complicated situation and have indef blocked
> me for being honest and defending myself.
>
> It was fun to be on Wikipedia until now.
>
> Thanks Cyde, you really made my stay worthwhile.
What on Earth happened? Could someone give a brief, fair, etc. summary? From what I can see (looking during my lunch break, I swear!), there's a very disturbing allegation obliquely made against you? If true, I can't blame people for being upset.
On the other hand, I see there's a taunting note on your talkpage from CydeWeys about you leaving. Now, people who declare "Goobye!" all the time piss me off too (see MeatballWiki), but that's just not appropriate conduct for an administrator. Cyde, I assume you're still reading the list. I've said it before and I've no doubt I'll keep on saying it as long as you're a sysop: pull your bloody head in. Regardless of what Nathan's done, there's a line, and I'm sick and tired of watching you cross it, even by the smallest of margins.
--
Mark Gallagher
Stan Shebs wrote
> To me it says that en: has gotten big. I think the old assumption
> was that the definition of admin as "trustworthy editor" really
> meant that admins would naturally tend to be in agreement about
> philosophy and principles.
en-WP does scale/doesn't scale. One can make both cases. On the one hand, just as the hardware now copes with hugely more traffic, so also the social arrangements are perhaps surprisingly robust in relation to continued growth. OTOH, there are possibly some areas where there is no consensus, and the absence of a really agreed basis of how to proceed is storing up issues (which cannot adequately be aired). I come down on the optimist side of the argument, myself. The old-school wiki-way says if you don't like it, leave and come back some other time. Plenty of folk do stay and keep it all very constructive.
Charles
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So it seems that several admins have taken only one
side of a complicated situation and have indef blocked
me for being honest and defending myself.
It was fun to be on Wikipedia until now.
Thanks Cyde, you really made my stay worthwhile.
- Nathan
Can anyone extract useful ideas from this blog entry:
http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-sour…
There is the usual suggestion that if Wikipedia adopts article forks
then all will be well because then the obnoxious editors who don't
want to work with others will be appeased and something about power
structures. Etc etc.
But there are some vague notions of *lots* of alternate Wikipedia
distributions (rather than "forks"), analogous to Linux distributions.
This bit seems like an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure how
one would approach it. Categories as packages? (like an .rpm or a .deb
.) Is there something here that's the seed of a useful idea?
- d.
I'm very disappointed by the new Israeli apartheid AFD at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Allegations_of…
Whether we like it or not "Israeli apartheid" is a concept that is discussed
and debated in scholarly books and articles and within Israeli society
itself. However, it is a disagreeable concept and it's understandable that
people who support Israel would want to rubbish it and delete it.
It will be a sad day for wikipedia if the article is deleted, however. We
have articles on many contestable concepts but our task is not to censor but
to make sure the articles are well written, balanced, NPOV and sourced.
There is a systemic bias in WIkipedia on certain subjects. The Middle East
is one of them because there are more fluent English speaking Israelis and
Jews than there are fluent English speaking Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims.
As a result, we have more editors who are pro-Isreal than pro-Palestianian
and more admins who are on one side of the question. This is probably biased
in the other way on the Arabic wikipedia and probably relatively balanced on
other language wikipedias but in English it's a problem that we have to come
to grips with if we are to maintain our neutrality and our credibility.