----- Original Message ----- From: <WJhonson(a)aol.com> To: <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 6:13 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? You can't spell, you can't write, you shift ground constantly, you fail to understand even the most basic point. Your understanding of the subject is in inverse proportion to you arrogance and hostility. Wikipedia is full of people like you. This of course will be used as proof that specialists do not understand Wikipedia and are therefore unwelcome.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I still have 80 mails to read to be up-to-date about the current polemic, but I would like to ask a question to you Peter. You said that experts can bring knowledge to readers, but that some editors are aggressive idiots with whom there is no possible discussion. This attitude towards expert knowledge is certainly also present amidst readers - it is simply not detected because of a lack of interaction with them. So, Peter, how is this communication failure [1] (and I think the mails I attached are a good sample of it, without judging who is right in calling the other an idiot) towards idiot editors is different from towards idiot readers? Apologies if my wording is bad, but as you would said, it's just a formal question, the knowledge is the same. :) [1]: according to this goal: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." On 02/10/2010 19:21, Peter Damian wrote: On 02/10/2010 19:17, Peter Damian wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Thank you, your answers reveal quite clearly your vision. (I disagree, though, but that's not important). A few comments below... On 04/10/2010 15:58, Peter Damian wrote: I disagree about the "never". I think it depends greatly about the methods and means to reach them. Your realism seems strongly context-dependent, with a narrow set of contexts considered. Your conclusions are probably valid for it, but you're not talking about the world at large, in my point of view. IMHO you're talking, maybe without realizing the range of your ideas, about a specific occurrence of knowledge communication (university teaching between 1980 and 2010, say) and I don't think this is all there is to understand about it. If this discussion was about the contexts of teaching and communicating instead of the statistical results in already known environments, I wonder if you would still bear a fatalist (elitist?) point of view about mankind's intellectual capacity. Personnaly I think there is only a bottom 10 percentile of those who are born mentally limited, whatever the education and communication they receive, they're doomed. The difference with your stats shows what we CAN do something about. It seems that you think that Wikipedia is behaving as a magnet for obtuse people, for one hand. On the other hand, you seem to think that what the wiki system does about the heterogeneity of the editors is filtering out the quality. This may well be true in some cases. But I think that the opposite can also happen, and that changes everything. I have the belief that on the long term, open people and high quality have a higher potential on Wikipedia, if we aim to set the conditions for their thriving. Let's go back to your example: "I estimate only about 20% of people will understand in any way what you are saying." Somewhere, sometime, there is certainly someone that can make 21% of people understand a specific topic. It's not necessarily an expert, though he should be able to understand them. So imagine we find him and make an article out of his "teaching". Then we have gain 1% of audience and consensus of understanding (you may disagree but you understand and respect what is said). With this reductio ad minimum I just want to show that levelling up quality is possible: thus putting the failure on the idiots is not giving our best shot. I've read this text like 3 or 4 times in this discussion now. Why are you repeating this argument? Do you wish specific comments about it? I am sincerely asking you, without insinuation: how do you know you're not one of them? What's the difference between the one who knows he knows and the one who doesn't know he doesn't know if it's only about self-perception (or social perception)? Where is the universality of knowledge in this conception if it boils down to intimate convictions ? Wouldn't self criticizing, openness of mind, intersubjective references, shared arguments, and the empathic capacity to understand what the other see a better approach to star a discussion? That's putting the dust under the carpet. The universality of your knowledge is not achieved through the silence of those who don't understand it, in my opinion. I understand your point of view of the problem, but do you think that's a one-sided point of view? Could you think from others point of view for a broader understanding, before coming back to your convictions?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Noein" <pronoein(a)gmail.com> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 4:06 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? When someone understands the importance of it, or shows they have taken the point on board, then I don't need to repeat it. Enough said.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Noein" <pronoein(a)gmail.com> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 4:06 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? There are well-established mechanisms for determining this. I have had many papers published, I am currently working collaboratively with another academic on a book on medieval philosophy. I have no problem working with people who understand the rules, I am told the quality of my work is good. There are objective mechanisms for determining whether someone is a crank. I admit to having a seriously short fuse, and that was my main problem in working in Wikipedia. But that is different from the issue you are talking about.

Peter wrote: 2. An initiative to highlight 5 "top importance" articles and get them to GA or FA. There are very few FA status articles, compared to the rest of the project. 3. Another initiative to re-classify the top 50 articles in terms of importance and quality (I looked at this and some are wildly out of line). <endquote> These are obviously good ideas and the sort of effort that most wikiprojects engage in. There's no question that an active philosophy wikiproject could pursue this type of initiative and have an impact, but I thought the premise to this discussion was that the participants of this particular wikiproject had been driven off and left the 'pedia without the resources to attempt this sort of thing. Nathan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 04/10/2010 17:54, Peter Damian wrote: This social acceptance (or credentials if you prefer) has a weak epistemological value.[1] It's only convincing for the people of your own circle - whether they're right or wrong is of no relevance -. For people outside your circle, with whom you can't discuss or don't want to, the arguments for your views are reduced to the authority: authority of the number of believers, prestige and ranks of the apostles, influence and mediatisation of the message, power and fearsomeness of the church you belong to, if you allow me to use an analogy. This unilateral way of handling down knowledge to the rest of mankind is a fertile ground for domination about the rights to talk, the ways to think, about the decisions that are to be taken. I'm not saying it's currently happening in your circle. I'm saying that it's an obsolete model for the sharing, free, collaborative, massive project that is wikipedia, and that you won't be able to force it on most individuals. Many editors, I believe, claim some sort of independence of thought, though many don't have the required knowledge to back it up, and I think this is the correct model from which a universal knowledge can be build, despite its current limits (giving the same powers to the ignorant than to the savant). Teach a mind to be critical and it can learn everything. Teach a mind what you believe and you just shaped a sheep. If it's about choosing between expert knowledge and independence of mind, I personally prefer the latter, because it will slowly but ultimately lead to the first, while the reciprocal is not guaranteed. Dealing with humans is much more annoying than with flocks, but that's the only way forward I can envision. That's why I believe that Wikipedia is right demanding sources and objective (not social ones) arguments. Although there is still some indecision if an article should be about what people said (a historical and literal approach), what they thought (a more comprehensive and philosophical one) or what the denoted reality is (a more scientific and objective one). Note, Peter, that I am not rejecting the value of your knowledge, your critics about quality of articles or your proposals. I only disagree about your model of communication of knowledge for wikipedia. [1]: following popperian criteria.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Noein" &lt;pronoein(a)gmail.com&gt; To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 5:47 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? I don't care about models of communication, unless they produce results. If the current process were producing articles that belonged to a comprehensive and reliable reference work, I don't mind. I was fascinated with the Wikipedia model when it first came out (I have been regularly editing since early 2003) and I often defend it to the unbelievers. It's a model that works fantastically well for certain things. But for other things, it does not produce results.Under any criterion, some of the articles in the philosophy section are truly awful. Also I'm not sure whether you are suggesting that the "academic" criterion for quality is somehow flawed, and that if only people like me would learn to put on the right spectacles, we would see that they are in fact good? Or not? Well in any case, Wikipedia's own grading system suggests there is a problem. This is the 3rd time I have posted this. http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Philosoph… I would quarrel with the number of 'top' importance articles. I think the number should be more like 100, in line with other disciplines where Wikipedia is 'good'. But I generally agree with the quality assessment. The depressing fact is that articles like 'ancient philosophy' or 'pre-socratic philosophy' are start-class, the article about the subject itself is 'C' as is the article about one of the greatest philosophers of the tradition (Plato). Citation please. All my experience suggests that specialists write better articles than non-specialists. Or to qualify: the typical writer of a 'good' article on Wikipedia is someone who has formal training in the subject but somehow missed getting an academic post. Or who is a postgraduate student looking to sharpen up their writing skills. The few 'good' philosophy articles were written by User:Lacatosias, who falls exactly into that category. Also it's not credentials I look for. I despise credentials. I look for a clear writing style, elegance and economy of expression, logical and evidenced support of views. This is not a credentialled or elitist thing. Anyone can develop these skills. But typically the process of natural selection means that formally-trained editors are more likely to have these skills than not. In summary, the objective of the project is to produce a reliable and comprehensive reference source. Everything else should be subordinate to that goal. Wikipedia is not some gigantic social engineering project.