In a message dated 10/22/2008 12:29:33 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org writes:
Seriously though, we need a new word for high profile full-time troll.>>
----------
I'm registering my name as a trademark so don't even think about it!
Will Johnson
**************Play online games for FREE at Games.com! All of your favorites,
no registration required and great graphics – check it out!
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In a message dated 10/22/2008 10:38:58 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com writes:
And seriously, Knol? It's a cesspool, it's useless. Half the articles
are promotional, the other halfs are straight copies from wikipedia
(copies that don't fulfill all the requirements of the GFDL, btw).
Just as a test, I just tried one search on Knol, to compare articles
with Wikipedia. I searched "Kentucky". I figured, it has to have an
article on Kentucky. It's a US state for cryin' out loud. I was wrong.
My search came up nil.
--Oskar>>>
------------------------------
It seems to me that people using Knol are more likely to write about topics
in which they are somewhere experts or have a fan-level interest.
"Kentucky" just doesn't generate the level of interest that "Bill Gates"
does. I think there are at least three biographies of him on Knol.
I think our own Kentucky article was built from dozens if not hundreds of
tiny bits. Some WP articles however are more than 50% the creation of a single
writer. As far as the license, I think more writers would take your
suggestion that they add a link to the WP article if the Knol article is truly a
copy. But even our "partners" fail the license in almost every case.
Will Johnson
**************Play online games for FREE at Games.com! All of your favorites,
no registration required and great graphics – check it out!
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The thing I like the most about Knol isn't the cash.
The cash is like a few pennies a month, it's nothing.
The thing I like is the attribution.
Some of the articles on WP are essentially my creature, but you wouldn't
know that.
Sure people make a few spelling corrections or add a tidbit, but essentially.
It's just nice to have a place where fairly obscure topics can be submit
with attribution.
Will Johnson
**************Play online games for FREE at Games.com! All of your favorites,
no registration required and great graphics – check it out!
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1211202682x1200689022/aol?redir=http://www.games.com?ncid=emlcntusgame00000001)
Which refers to http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21558/page3/
Which in turn says some inaccurate things about Wikipedia, but also happens
to capture a BLP problem:
Lanier's complaints when his Wikipedia page claimed that he was a
film director couldn't be taken seriously by Wikipedia's "contributors"
until Lanier persuaded the editors at Edge to print his article
bemoaning the claim. This Edge article by Lanier was enough to convince
the Wikipedians that the Wikipedia article about Lanier was
incorrect--after all, there was a clickable link! Presumably the editors
at Edge did their fact checking, so the wikiworld could now be corrected.
As fate would have it, Lanier was subsequently criticized for engaging
in the wikisin of editing his own wikientry. The same criticism was
leveled against me when I corrected a number of obvious errors in my
own Wikipedia entry.
The article itself doesn't consider this a big problem, but if this is
anything like true, we should.
With all due respect, after reading the New Yorker article that
occasioned this thread, I don't think Wikipedia played all that great
a role in Palin's selection as McCain's running mate. It may be true
that someone noticed her through her Wikipedia article, but other
factors played at least as significant a role. The New Yorker article
article describes a visit to Alaska by a number of conservative
political figures and pundits such as William Kristol and Fred Barnes
and says they were personally impressed by her, with several
apparently agog because they found her physically attractive, and
others taken by what they perceived as her charisma. The article also
notes that a PR firm was employed to promote Palin and that she
actively worked on "developing relationships with Washington insiders,
who later championed the idea of putting her on the 2008 ticket."
Finally, of course, the question of where someone first HEARD of Palin
is (or should be) only a small part of the process by which she got
chosen as a vice presidential nominee. Presidential campaigns form
exploratory teams for the purpose of combing through possible choices,
conducting background and opposition research, and vetting possible
nominees before making their selection. The McCain campaign had ample
time and resources with which to evaluate Sarah Palin. They certainly
didn't rely on her Wikipedia article as their sole source of
information. It has been claimed by some journalists and commentators
that McCain didn't vet Palin adequately before making his decision. If
so, that's entirely his decision and his responsibility. The fact that
a Wikipedia article existed certainly didn't PREVENT him from doing
thorough vetting.
Personally, I think McCain was in something of a "damned if you do,
damned if you don't" situation. He didn't have any other good options
when he went looking for a running mate. Even before the stock market
meltdown, 2008 was shaping up to be a difficult year for Republicans,
and with the exception of a brief period just prior to the Democratic
convention, he trailed Obama in the polling, as well as in fundraising
and other key predictors. When someone is trying to play catchup, they
are more likely to make risky choices in hopes of a big turnaround
than they would be if they were in the lead. It's the same as in
sports. It's very common in football to see a quarterback who is
behind (especially late in the fourth quarter) go for long passes,
throw into double coverage, and try other plays that present a greater-
than-normal risk of the ball being intercepted. He does this because
he knows that by that point in the game, he'll lose for certain if he
sticks with careful, low-risk strategies. A high-risk approach becomes
the only strategy that offers any chance of victory, even if it's a
small chance. By contrast, the team that is ahead becomes
strategically conservative, preferring to run the ball, take time off
the clock, and avoid anything that might lead to a turnover.
Some of McCain's actions during this election have been the equivalent
of a football team trying a "hail Mary" pass or an onside kick, and I
think his decision to select Palin was one example of this. If it had
paid off (as appeared possible shortly after she was selected),
everyone would be hailing McCain as a brilliant improviser and a come-
from-behind genius. If it doesn't pay off (as now appears likely),
he'll be criticized for having done something stupid. In reality, it's
neither genius nor stupidity. It's desperation.
-------------------------------------------
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Research director, Center for Media & Democracy
Center for Media & Democracy
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(A moment of light relief)
One of the continual plagues of anything where somewhere has two names
is people continually switching from one to the other.
Usually, this is a zero-sum game; it's moot which one you use. In a
specific historical context, you can get away with one then the other
in brackets (so people don't start wondering why the Danzig shipyards
were important in the 1980s); here, people just tend to change the
primary to the secondary and vice versa. Net result: no-one who didn't
already care deeply about it tends to notice.
Sometimes, they change them all, such is their desire to expunge the
"wrong" form...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Kolkata&oldid=228200961
"Calcutta, formerly named Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state
of West Bengal..."
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk