On 3/24/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf(a)sethf.com> wrote:
"Slim
Virgin"
So what is the untoward thing, in your view?
Briefly, the illusion of prestige comparable to an academic.
It's not invariably an illusion, though. Anyone who wants to can pick
a quiet corner of Wikipedia and write extremely good articles using
the best scholarly sources. You can do it using your real name and
cite yourself elsewhere, or at least claim the credit on your résumé
or wherever. We're not allowed to publish original work, but most
academics don't do that most of the time anyway.
I don't mean to be dismissive of your argument, which I find very
interesting, but you haven't managed to put your finger on what the
cult-like thing comes from. It can't simply be a group of people
huddled around a charismatic leader, because if you go to any major
corporation, any political party, any monarchy, you'll find courtiers
doing the bidding of (or plotting against) the king, and we don't call
them cults. There's also no element of coercion to stay on Wikpedia.
Quite the reverse: anyone who wants to leave can just turn off the
computer. There may be an addiction, but that's a personal thing
that's not obviously related to the group dynamics.
You can argue that it's irrational for people to want to work without
payment for the benefit of others, and that you wouldn't do it
yourself, and you can be suspicious of anyone who does. But being
irrational isn't enough to brand us a cult either.
To support the cult hypothesis, there would have to be something
illegitimate, untoward, nasty, inappropriate, dishonest, corrupt,
harmful to the individual -- where what we're doing isn't *really*
what we're doing, or something like that -- and it's not clear to me
what that thing would be.
Sarah