On 14 April 2013 01:29, Gwern Branwen <gwern(a)gwern.net> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:54 PM, Fred Bauder
<fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
> Jimbo and Angela did not play a significant role
in debates over
> inclusion and deletion
Indeed, that was my point. I don't think they did
anything, or
intended anything of the kind, but they chose not to intervene back
when the gradual slide could have been stopped and so the ultimate
effect was much the same. (Amusingly eventually leading to a nasty
surprise for Jimbo with Mzoli's.)
You're assuming they could have, and that this would have been worth
doing. I don't think there's any reasonable basis for such an
assumption, as it carries the implicit assumption that we understood
Wikipedia well enough to make that sort of intervention, and that's
definitely false. I still don't think we really know quite how this
damn thing works, for all the millions of words wasted on the effort,
and I don't consider the many incompatible hypotheses of how it does
cohere to form evidence otherwise.
- d.