On 14 April 2013 01:29, Gwern Branwen gwern@gwern.net wrote:
On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:54 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@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.