On 6/18/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:16:11 -0400, "Daniel R. Tobias" dan@tobias.name wrote:
in those policy areas, there does seem to be a fairly cohesive small clique of people who have a disproportionate amount of influence, and whose behavior seems to be practically immune to questioning. This is not so much an "evil conspiracy" as it is the natural social-networking tendencies of human nature; people tend to form into clusters of friends, who help one another out and back one another up.
I have heard this asserted before. The problem is, I am unable to identify the members of the clique. Every time I think I have them bang to rights, they go and disagree with each other about something fairly significant.
Yeah, one would except human beings who think alike on some issues to think and act precisely alike all on issues, so any time they disagree by one, it's proof .... Well, it's proof they're human beings.
KP
Maybe it's a human nature thing: the tendency to see a conspiracy wherever a group disagrees with you. Or maybe there really is a clique, and I am just very bad at spotting it. Or perhaps there are actually a lot of individuals, some having been around longer than others, and some of their values overlap in some areas.
One thing Jeff Merkey said which I thought was interesting: in his vision of Wikipedia, teenagers would get less influence. I'm not sure if there is an age correlation (old or young) in the supposed cliques.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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