I was describing to someone how Wikipedia works: "anyone can edit" etc.
He answered with this argument: "Wikipedia is the triumph of the average person! of the man in the street!)"
(average meaning: not good, not bad, just OK)
I asked "why?"
His explanation: "Great brilliant works are built by individuals. Groups of people can only create average works. If someone writes something good in the wiki, other average persons will intervene with his/her work and turn it into an average work. If someone writes something bad in the wiki, the others will again turn it into something of average value. with your system (meaning: Wikipedia's system) you can be sure that you will never create something too bad but also never something too good. You can create only average articles."
The idea behind his argument was that Wikipedia will be a good resource as long as it attracts good cotnributors. but it will soon become an average site/encyclopaedia because it allows anyone to join the project and edit, and most people are just average persons and not brilliant writers.
Do you think it's true? and how can we answer this argument?
--Optim
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
Optim optim81@yahoo.co.uk writes:
Do you think it's true?
No. I've seen no evidence of this process.
and how can we answer this argument?
Ask him why an average person would wish to ruin a good article? And why the community would then leave those detrimental changes unreverted.
Furthermore, ask them to point out a selection of good articles that was edited to averageness by the intervention of the mediocre. Theories that don't have confirming instances may cheerfully be disregarded.
Gareth Owen wrote:
Optim optim81@yahoo.co.uk writes:
Do you think it's true?
No. I've seen no evidence of this process.
Still, I think there is something to it, and I have strong doubts that a wiki or similarly "wide-open" collaborative process could produce a great novel or play or poem.
An encyclopedia is particularly well suited to the wiki process, because it isn't really _supposed_ to be individualistic in that way. _Greatness_ for an encyclopedia article involves a pretty healthy dose of "averaging" as one of it's essential components.
Britannica sells a delightful volume of classic articles, many written by prominent people with an axe to grind. They're great essays, but as encyclopedia articles, to my mind they fall short significantly of the kind of neutrality that we're so good at.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
Still, I think there is something to it, and I have strong doubts that a wiki or similarly "wide-open" collaborative process could produce a great novel or play or poem.
Well that's something else entirely. We're not writing a poem. More imaginative creative endeavours require a singularity of vision that, as you point out, is often detrimental to encyclopedias. A group of poets of mixed ability can produce a great anthology.
_Greatness_ for an encyclopedia article involves a pretty healthy dose of "averaging"
Balancing of content, but thats not the same as but averaging of quality.
From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com
Gareth Owen wrote:
Optim optim81@yahoo.co.uk writes:
Do you think it's true?
No. I've seen no evidence of this process.
Still, I think there is something to it, and I have strong doubts that a wiki or similarly "wide-open" collaborative process could produce a great novel or play or poem.
An encyclopedia is particularly well suited to the wiki process, because it isn't really _supposed_ to be individualistic in that way. _Greatness_ for an encyclopedia article involves a pretty healthy dose of "averaging" as one of it's essential components.
Britannica sells a delightful volume of classic articles, many written by prominent people with an axe to grind. They're great essays, but as encyclopedia articles, to my mind they fall short significantly of the kind of neutrality that we're so good at.
This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If the content is so generic as just to be knowledge then it is not really copyrightable as it would fall in the public domain.
This would also mean that the copyright claim is so weak that very liberal fair use could be made of Wikipedia.
So you don't even have to worry about the GFDL and its adaption to the Wiki process as broad fair use and a large dose of public domain knowledge means it is very hard to infringe on Wikipedia to begin with.
Perhaps once could even go so far as to suggest that the perfect NPOV article cannot have a copyright as it is so objective that there is no personal expressiveness in it, it is a conglomeration only of knowledge.
Alex R. (en:user:alex756)
Alex T. wrote:
This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If the content is so generic as just to be knowledge then it is not really copyrightable as it would fall in the public domain.
This would also mean that the copyright claim is so weak that very liberal fair use could be made of Wikipedia.
So you don't even have to worry about the GFDL and its adaption to the Wiki process as broad fair use and a large dose of public domain knowledge means it is very hard to infringe on Wikipedia to begin with.
Perhaps once could even go so far as to suggest that the perfect NPOV article cannot have a copyright as it is so objective that there is no personal expressiveness in it, it is a conglomeration only of knowledge.
At the risk of treading into wikilegal-l ground again, I think it'll probably take a big shift in copyright law interpretation before something like Wikipedia is deemed uncopyrightable. It's true that facts and plain knowledge aren't copyrightable, but so far that's been interpreted mainly to mean things like lists of telephone numbers in a phone book. It's a pretty big jump from that to an encyclopedia, which is at the very least several orders of magnitude more creative. If nothing else, it takes a certain measure of creative prose to explain complex issues succinctly and clearly, as evidenced by the large amount of factual stuff out there that is neither succinct nor clear.
-Mark
Recently I had the idea to create a "factpaedia": An encyclopaedia of facts.
According to my idea, the factpaedia could serve as a source for translations, perhaps semi-automatic, between all wikipedias. It should work with XML.
An XML factpaedia file could be like this:
<FACTPAEDIA> <ARTICLE> <BIOGRAPHY> <TITLE>Mr. NoOne</TITLE> <SUMMARY>bla-bla-bla</SUMMARY> <PERSON-TITLE>Mr.</PERSON-TITLE> <NAME>NoOne</NAME> <BIRTH> <YEAR>8436</YEAR> <MONTH>34</MONTH> <DAY>3783</DAY> <WEEKDAY>Saturday</WEEKDAY> <PLACE>Lemuria</PLACE> </BIRTH> <CREDENTIALS> <EDUCATION> <UNDERGRAD>B.Sc.</UNDERGRAD> <GRAD>M.Sc.</GRAD> </EDUCATION> <OTHER> <MA>S.'.I.'.</MA> </OTHER> </CREDENTIALS> <PROFESSION>Writer</PROFESSION> <WORKS> <BOOK>Book 1</BOOK> <BOOK>Book 2</BOOK> <BOOK>Book 3</BOOK> <ESSAY>Essay 1</ESSAY> </WORKS> ... </BIOGRAPHY> </ARTICLE> </FACTPAEDIA>
Is this file copyrightable?
thnx,
--Optim
--- "Alex T." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If the content is so generic as just to be knowledge then it is not really copyrightable as it would fall in the public domain.
This would also mean that the copyright claim is so weak that very liberal fair use could be made of Wikipedia.
So you don't even have to worry about the GFDL and its adaption to the Wiki process as broad fair use and a large dose of public domain knowledge means it is very hard to infringe on Wikipedia to begin with.
Perhaps once could even go so far as to suggest that the perfect NPOV article cannot have a copyright as it is so objective that there is no personal expressiveness in it, it is a conglomeration only of knowledge.
Alex R. (en:user:alex756)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
"AT" == Alex T alex756@nyc.rr.com writes:
AT> This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If AT> the content is so generic as just to be knowledge then it is AT> not really copyrightable as it would fall in the public AT> domain.
That's absolutely 100% not true. Copyright is on expression of facts, not facts themselves.
You need to read up on [[:en:copyright]], bub.
~ESP
From: "Evan Prodromou" evan@wikitravel.org
"AT" == Alex T alex756@nyc.rr.com writes:
AT> This brings up an interesting point regarding copyright. If AT> the content is so generic as just to be knowledge then it is AT> not really copyrightable as it would fall in the public AT> domain.That's absolutely 100% not true. Copyright is on expression of facts, not facts themselves.
You need to read up on [[:en:copyright]], bub.
Ha, ha, very funny, bub-you. If it is just knowledge then it would fall into the public domain as the expression would be totally uncreative. I don't think you don't have good comprehension skills. Perhaps you did not read that part where I said "it is so generic as just to be knowledge" such generic expresssion cannot be copyrighted, or if it is subject to copyright it is so de minimus as to be trivial. You cannot copyright a sentence such as "New York is the financial capital of the world." It is trivial expression, believe it or not.
(BTW I am a entertainment lawyer, I know what I am talking about, what are your qualifications as a copyright expert?).
Alex756
"AR" == Alex R alex756@nyc.rr.com writes:
AR> Ha, ha, very funny, bub-you. If it is just knowledge then it AR> would fall into the public domain as the expression would be AR> totally uncreative.
So, now I'm intrigued. What's "just knowledge"? I thought that even if you apply some selectivity -- as we do with Wikipedia, in deciding what's "encyclopedic" -- the collection is itself copyrightable? The phone book was brought up -- an unselective collection, ruled uncopyrightable by such-and-such a court. But I don't think that same metric would apply to Wikipedia.
However, I find it an interesting concept that individual articles might be so diluted as to be uncopyrightable. How can you have knowledge without some sort of explication -- a didactic expression of knowledge? Even if something is "just" factual, there must be some elaboration on those facts if they're rendered in prose form. The driest of police-ledger columns and science textbooks is copyrightable -- why would a Wikipedia article not be?
Not to mention that Wikipedia articles are not merely collaboratively assembled factual information, but rather a series of creative works created according to each contributors rights to authorize derivative works. Each individual version seems, to my uninformed eye, to be copyrightable and licensable (to the public and to the next contributor).
But I'm intrigued. I'd love to hear some examples of how this could happen.
AR> I don't think you don't have good comprehension skills.
That makes two of us.
AR> (BTW I am a entertainment lawyer,
Ewwwwwwww!
AR> I know what I am talking about, what are your qualifications AR> as a copyright expert?).
Appeal to authority, minus 7 flame warrior points.
~ESP
From: "Evan Prodromou" evan@wikitravel.org
However, I find it an interesting concept that individual articles might be so diluted as to be uncopyrightable. How can you have knowledge without some sort of explication -- a didactic expression of knowledge? Even if something is "just" factual, there must be some elaboration on those facts if they're rendered in prose form. The driest of police-ledger columns and science textbooks is copyrightable -- why would a Wikipedia article not be?
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is one point that copyright paranoia guys harp on, no fair use, we need everything to be "pure". That is not true because there is a lot of trivial stuff that is copied all the time, language itself is copying, you can't copyright the words or even random sets of words, something more is needed, that is creativity. I am not sure that every edit made on Wikipedia is original, fixing typos or grammar problems is not so creative for instance, otherwise most books would have a joint copyright with the editors who get it into shape.
It is important to understand the rationale behind copyright law because without such an understanding it is easy to make all kinds of statements about what is copyrighted and copyrightable without understanding the reason we have copyright law, it is not to prevent copying, it is only to prevent others from exploiting an exclusive right that is held by the owner of copyright. If it does not stand in the way of such exclusivity then copying is more than alright, it is useful.
Each individual version seems, to my uninformed eye, to be copyrightable and licensable (to the public and to the next contributor).
Uninformed is a good way of putting it. Not everything is covered by copyright no matter what the lawyers tell you to do (yes they usually say, put a copyright notice on it, you can claim it for some part of it sch as typography, layout, order, etc., but it does not mean that it will stand up in Federal Court, does it?).
But I'm intrigued. I'd love to hear some examples of how this could happen.
There are many good textbooks on copyright, Nimmer on Copyright, check out the prison or local law library, they have all the federal cases in them. Or buy a subscription to Lexis-Nexis. Also findlaw.com has a lot of free case law. Most of the federal court web sites have case decisions from the last five years. Wikipedia has a lot of copyright information you can gain access to, there is a list of leading cases (they have not all been briefed so go to it). If you'd like private lessions on copyright law most copyright lawyers are available between $200 and $400 per hour, of course their work is copyright protected as it is not trivial expression, a lot of research goes into rendering such knowledge into a unique form and yet the law itself is often not considered to be copyrighted, or if it is then the enforceablility of such copyright is extremely limited or impossible for if the public could not know and copy the laws without paying a fee any society would be in chaos.
Remember copyright is just a concept, it is not something like mathemetics, physics or computer programming, it is a social concept that is in constant evolution. Wikipedia copyright is so diluted anyway that it is practically a grant into the public domain anyway. I doubt that Wikipedia could really sue for individual articles the damages are really minimal and even wholesale copying by "forking" would probably be held to be almost unenforceable because what are the real damages to Wikipedia? It allows free copying anyway with just some moral rights notices that are not that enforceable in US law anyway; really trademark protection is much more important for Wikipedia than blatant copying and reformating of information.
Alex (en:user:alex756)
Alex R. wrote:
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
I've never seen a ruling that "the news", in general, isn't copyrightable. It's certainly the case that if I were to start copying the NY Times' news stories and republishing them, even editing out the editorials and reporting "just the news", I would almost certainly be sued, and would, barring some change in the way the law is interpreted, most likely lose.
-Mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable? As well as pictures of the presidents of the US? We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française". cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks, Yann
- -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
Yann Forget wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable? As well as pictures of the presidents of the US? We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française". cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks, Yann
As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in France.
Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British contributors are cautious because the international nature of the project never seems to be considered.
Caroline (User:Secretlondon)
Caroline Ford a écrit:
many things I agree with
but just, hi Caroline (I read the whole mail wondering who Caroline was) :-)
Yann Forget wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable? As well as pictures of the presidents of the US? We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française". cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks, Yann
As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in France. Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example. This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British contributors are cautious because the international nature of the project never seems to be considered.
Caroline (User:Secretlondon)
yes I agree with Caroline/Secretlondon, too.
I think it would be better to avoid fair use etc. It's more safe.
--Optim
--- Anthere anthere8@yahoo.com wrote:
Caroline Ford a �crit:
many things I agree with
but just, hi Caroline (I read the whole mail wondering who Caroline was) :-)
Yann Forget wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a
�crit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that
is public information.
Just like the news is not really
copyrightable. That is why you can
use pictures of famous people and famous
events. Unless their is
something particularly creative about the
photo there is just a
mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of
an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11
attacks are not copyrightable?
As well as pictures of the presidents of the
US?
We have a problem with the pictures of the
presidents of France which
are "� Pr�sidence de la R�publique.
Documentation fran�aise".
cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks, Yann
As always they are only talking about US
copyright law. As far as I know
we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I
imagine it will be the same in
France. Telephone directories are copyrighted in the
UK, for example.
This is why some of us are very unhappy about
"fair use", as it means
that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK,
or have a fork.
We have no pictures of UK politicians for the
same reason.
What would be nice would be actual advice as
to what _we_ can do. I
understand that German wikipedia has banned
fair use images. I know that
most of what has been suggested is illegal
here and that British
contributors are cautious because the
international nature of the
project never seems to be considered.
Caroline (User:Secretlondon)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk writes:
I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.
Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Monday 02 February 2004 18:41, Karl Eichwalder a écrit :
Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk writes:
I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.
Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!
Can you explain me why there is a different rule for different persons. I thought the copyright rules depend on the places, not on the persons.
Thanks, Yann
- -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net writes:
Can you explain me why there is a different rule for different persons. I thought the copyright rules depend on the places, not on the persons.
Yes, but it's arguable whether the place where the server is located preceeds over the place where the user lives. If I as somebody who lives in Germany can add contents to a database system in the US according to copyright law of the US is highly arguable; I'm also bound to German laws even if I work on database in the US. IANAL etc. pp.
I can login from a Canadian account, to make things more interesting ;)
Am Montag, 2. Februar 2004 18:41 schrieb Karl Eichwalder:
Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk writes:
I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images.
Users located in Germany must not add those images - but, surely, it okay for US citizens to add those pictures to the de WP!
No, that's not ok - we will delete them if they come up. Our agreed policy is to have no fair use images, so that *downstream users* may use all of our pictures without having to think about if *their* use is also *fair* use and without checking the copyright status of every single image. That policy ist not so much because of fearing the uploader might interfere with german copyright issues, but to make life easier for the downloader, whereever he or she is located.
Uli
Ulrich Fuchs mail@ulrich-fuchs.de writes:
Our agreed policy is to have no fair use images,
Some of "us" disagree. Of course, you must obey the law - but this does not mean we must make life easy for third party users (who often misuse WP's bandwidth for serving images, though).
Some of "us" disagree.
Three of us, currently: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbild_Urheberrecht
Uli
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Ulrich Fuchs mail@ulrich-fuchs.de writes:
Our agreed policy is to have no fair use images,
Some of "us" disagree. Of course, you must obey the law - but this does not mean we must make life easy for third party users (who often misuse WP's bandwidth for serving images, though).
It seems more sensible to let downstream users accept their own responsibility for what they do based on their own circumstances, notably the laws wherever they happen to be.
Ec
"UF" == Ulrich Fuchs mail@ulrich-fuchs.de writes:
UF> No, that's not ok - we will delete them if they come up. Our UF> agreed policy is to have no fair use images, so that UF> *downstream users* may use all of our pictures without having UF> to think about if *their* use is also *fair* use and without UF> checking the copyright status of every single image.
Excellent idea.
~ESP
Yann Forget a écrit:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable? As well as pictures of the presidents of the US? We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française". cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks,
I think we cannot. We do not have the same rights for public images. Which is why there are regularly lawsuits for pictures taken from our politicians or Steph de Monaco
"AR" == Alex R alex756@nyc.rr.com writes:
AR> Wikipedia copyright is so diluted anyway that it is AR> practically a grant into the public domain anyway.
I'm confused as to why it's "diluted". Because so many people have had a hand in making the encyclopedia itself? Or each article?
AR> I doubt that Wikipedia could really sue for individual AR> articles the damages are really minimal and even wholesale AR> copying by "forking" would probably be held to be almost AR> unenforceable because what are the real damages to Wikipedia?
Not to mention that I don't think Mediawiki holds copyright on much of anything on any of the Wikimedia sites. It would have to be individual authors that sue, AFAICT. Or perhaps Wikipedia could act as "publisher" on behalf on anonymous authors.
By the way, do you have to show damages in order to get a court order to stop distributing copyright-violating material? I was under the impression that you didn't.
AR> It allows free copying anyway with just some moral rights AR> notices that are not that enforceable in US law anyway;
My understand was that copyleft Free Software licenses were pretty darn enforceable. Viz this article by Eben Moglen:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-18-013-20-OP-LL
Do you think he's wrong? Or that Free Content is significantly different from Free Software?
~ESP
"EP" == Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org writes:
EP> Not to mention that I don't think Mediawiki holds copyright on EP> much of anything on any of the Wikimedia sites.
s/Mediawiki/Wikimedia/
Jeez, gettin' sloppy.
~ESP
The average person has taken a course at university in the subject and stands ready to regurgitate what they "learned". Such material has the support of other "educated" users.
Fred
From: Gareth Owen wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: 30 Jan 2004 16:28:33 +0000 To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia
Ask him why an average person would wish to ruin a good article? And why the community would then leave those detrimental changes unreverted.
Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net writes:
The average person has taken a course at university in the subject and stands ready to regurgitate what they "learned".
Ooh, scare quotes.
Such material has the support of other "educated" users.
Well, wikipedia is not a place for original research and theorising. Can I recommend Usenet.
You're changing the subject. Which is that an excellent article written by a knowledgable person which CONFORMS TO THE ACCEPTED CANON OF KNOWLEDGE can be trashed back to the level of what the average users remember from their undergraduate courses.
Fred
From: Gareth Owen wiki@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: 30 Jan 2004 17:38:49 +0000 To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] why an average person would wish to ruin a good article?
Well, wikipedia is not a place for original research and theorising.
Fred Bauder wrote:
You're changing the subject. Which is that an excellent article written by a knowledgable person which CONFORMS TO THE ACCEPTED CANON OF KNOWLEDGE can be trashed back to the level of what the average users remember from their undergraduate courses.
That I'll agree is true. There are plenty of fields where the state of the art has advanced considerably in the past 10-20 years, but where the general state of education in the field is still mostly teaching the state of the art circa 10-20 years ago. In those cases someone who knows what they're talking about will have to insist that it stay with the updated version, even if the newer material is only taught in graduate courses--as long as there are references to it indeed being the current state of the field.
-Mark
Fred Bauder wrote:
You're changing the subject. Which is that an excellent article written by a knowledgable person which CONFORMS TO THE ACCEPTED CANON OF KNOWLEDGE can be trashed back to the level of what the average users remember from their undergraduate courses.
Can you provide a hypothetical example? What sort of pieces of knowledge would an average college student tend to trash?
Timwi
Areas which are especially subject to academic politics which eventually skews the content of coursework. Generally these are areas which have overriding significance (in the eyes of academics) which require (in their eyes) that students be indoctrinated in a certain perspective. To give an egegious example, a Chinese history student on the mainland. But it goes beyond that sort of situation to include anyone who absorbs knowledge the content of which is subject to political process.
The area I remember from my college experience was the behaviorist orientation of psychology.
Fred
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 02:29:18 +0000 To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: why an average person would wish to ruin a good article?
Fred Bauder wrote:
You're changing the subject. Which is that an excellent article written by a knowledgable person which CONFORMS TO THE ACCEPTED CANON OF KNOWLEDGE can be trashed back to the level of what the average users remember from their undergraduate courses.
Can you provide a hypothetical example? What sort of pieces of knowledge would an average college student tend to trash?
Timwi
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Well they are or have been. For a long time Oxford used a strange mathematical notation based on Newton for political reasons.
Fred
From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:11:07 +0000 To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: why an average person would wish to ruin a good article?
Fred Bauder wrote:
Areas which are especially subject to academic politics which eventually skews the content of coursework.
Ah, I see. Sounds like Maths and Computer Science aren't affected. :)
Timwi
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
Well they are or have been. For a long time Oxford used a strange mathematical notation based on Newton for political reasons.
Yeah, but notation is a convention and not a "fact" or "truth" or "knowledge". I don't think those Oxford Mathematicians generally thought their notation was any more "correct" or "true".
Fred Bauder wrote:
Areas which are especially subject to academic politics which eventually skews the content of coursework. Generally these are areas which have overriding significance (in the eyes of academics) which require (in their eyes) that students be indoctrinated in a certain perspective. To give an egegious example, a Chinese history student on the mainland. But it goes beyond that sort of situation to include anyone who absorbs knowledge the content of which is subject to political process.
Another egregious example of indoctrination is the ritual recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in American schools. If something like that is repeated often enough it is bound to influence a person's outlook on history.
Ec
Gareth Owen wrote:
Optim optim81@yahoo.co.uk writes:
Do you think it's true?
No. I've seen no evidence of this process.
and how can we answer this argument?
Ask him why an average person would wish to ruin a good article?
Nobody is claiming any *intent* to ruin.
And why the community would then leave those detrimental changes unreverted.
They don't if they see them and recognize the changes as such
Ec
Optim-
"Great brilliant works are built by individuals. Groups of people can only create average works.
Propaganda can be brilliant. It can be convincing, touching you deep in your heart, forcing you to act, to do something about some horrible wrong that needs to be righted. Wikipedia does not work that way. Our articles are generally unemotional. NPOV sucks out the juice, the emotional adjectives, the manipulative imagery, the damning headlines.
But NPOV is a different goal, and we definitely have the potential to attain brilliance in that particular goal. I want us to provide the most neutral presentation on controversial issues that is possible to get, with all the facts and arguments from both sides presented in a manner that is easy to understand.
I want Wikipedia to be a tool for those who ask questions and are undecided about where the "truth" is, and I want us to be genuine and honest in helping people to search for their truth and find it. Above all, I want us to help people think for themselves, rather than telling them what to think.
In many ways, I think these goals are more difficult to reach than to just create great propaganda.
If you had told me a few years ago that I would be working with people who oppose homosexuality, abortion rights, evolutionary theory, separation of church and state, I would have taken that as an insult. But Wikipedia brings these people together in - not always, but often - reasonable discourse, united behind a common goal. The progress I have seen on some articles shows that this goal *can* be reached, that we *can* reach brilliance in areas where few have ever reached brilliance before.
That our process will work is by no means self-evident. It requires constant discipline and oversight, and because we are in uncharted territory, we can and will make mistakes. But only those who do nothing do not make mistakes. And they will never experience the amazing feeling, that satisfaction that you get when you succeed in reaching a true, fair consensus where you know that, together, you have created something that is good.
What is perceived as a brilliant piece of advocacy by those who already agree with the points made, or are on the fence, may be seen as mere propaganda by all others. The "average" tone of Wikipedia articles helps us to move the discussion to the rational level, so that an argument on abortion rights is no longer based on who has the most convincing embryo photos, but rather on the facts for and against the matter.
We don't try to trick people. We are all seekers of truth, and we are all united behind that altruistic goal of helping one another to find it.
And that, I believe, is true brilliance.
Erik
Optim wrote:
I was describing to someone how Wikipedia works: "anyone can edit" etc.
He answered with this argument: "Wikipedia is the triumph of the average person! of the man in the street!)"
(average meaning: not good, not bad, just OK)
I asked "why?"
His explanation: "Great brilliant works are built by individuals. Groups of people can only create average works. If someone writes something good in the wiki, other average persons will intervene with his/her work and turn it into an average work. If someone writes something bad in the wiki, the others will again turn it into something of average value. with your system (meaning: Wikipedia's system) you can be sure that you will never create something too bad but also never something too good. You can create only average articles."
The idea behind his argument was that Wikipedia will be a good resource as long as it attracts good cotnributors. but it will soon become an average site/encyclopaedia because it allows anyone to join the project and edit, and most people are just average persons and not brilliant writers.
Do you think it's true? and how can we answer this argument?
--Optim
Does the argument really need answering? That sort of normalising influence is a fact of life that needn't be turned into a value judgement. I think the effect is much stronger on the poor articles where the average person can see the article's weakness and bring it up to his standards. When that same person looks at a great article I find it hard to see him inclined to touch the article. Dumbing it down would be a lot of hard work that could be beyond his capacities. In any event, the standards of the average Wikipedian are higher than the standards in the general population. :-) We begin by excluding everybody who has not yet learned to turn on a computer.
The controversial articles should not be viewed as a factor in this. As hot as some of these debates may be, we are still only talking about a small fraction of all the Wikipedia articles.
I would venture to guess that Optim's critic may have had some degree of association with a university. In some cases simplification of the writing may be desireable if we are to make things understandable to the general population. That motivation is certainly there in the development of the Simple Wikipedia. By making material that could only be found in university libraries accessible to the general public we are advancing the spread of knowledge. There are also many people out there who for whatever reason may not have had the opportunity or inclination to succeed in a university setting who can be a valuable asset to Wikipedia. Some who can focus very well on a single topic and write credibly may not have the determinationto maintain that focus over the time needed to graduate from university.
Around 1900 many public libraries were established to make books and knowledge available to a wider public. Perhaps Jimbo may even some day be revered as the Andrew Carnegie of the internet age. :-) . Ec
Relevance: Ensure that your comment or reference is relevant to the Wikipedia article's content. Neutrality: Maintain a neutral tone and avoid promotional language. Reliability: Ensure that the source you're linking to is considered reliable and authoritative on the subject matter. Be mindful that Wikipedia editors may remove content they deem as promotional or not relevant to the article.https://codex.us.com/
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org