Yes, he is very annoying--all the more so because he's obviously well-educated and therefore hard to dismiss as an ordinary crackpot. He hasn't been too terribly destructive. He just cranks out reams and reams of subjectivist rants with quality inversely proportionate to their quantity. But one or two sentences out of every page he writes actually has some interesting insight worth keeping, and he does put up with my abuse pretty well, so I haven't yet been tempted to suggest any action.
Besides, his anonymity will always serve to minimize his credibility, so he'll lose a lot of arguments on those grounds alone. I know I've suggested in the past that perhaps only logged-in users should be allowed to edit, but I think I'm more inclined to leave things as they are, and just have a social norm here that anonymous editors should simply suffer the consequences to the credibility and lose arguments by default.
You Wrote:
Hi all -- just wanted you to know that I might be around more on the list than the Pedia for a bit (unless something egregious comes up
and
needs editing). I'm teaching two new classes this quarter, so
time's a
bit short...and frankly, I'm finding 24's rants somewhat
disquieting. I
know this probably sounds dumb, but I've come to think of us as a community of nice people -- or at least people with whom I feel safe
in
revealing my name, etc. (more info is no longer on my page). 24's comments on meta make me wish I hadn't. I don't know if it's in earnest, or if it's just its unpleasant way of playing games, but without trying to sound paranoid, do we have any systems in place to discourage the frighteningly anti-social types? Anyway, maybe it's
just
me being paranoid... JHK
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I don't think that 24 really understands the NPOV policy. 24 writes: "It remains to be see if people here wish to find the actual median of global human opinion." And also: "There are 6100 million potential readers of the wikipedia, long term, and views shared near-universally by 100-300 million of them just aren't good enough to qualify as neutral point of view, if there is serious dispute about them among the other 5800-6000 million people."
But NPOV is not about finding the 'median' of human opinion, nor about presenting only views that are "shared near-universally" by only Western, technologically advanced, American, or whatever other group he means.
The examples he gives of things that we wouldn't even want to have in the encyclopedia betray his misunderstanding. Selecting just one of them, "hate views of ethnic groups" is certainly something that Wikipedia should have an article on. But the wikipedia should take no position "for" or "against" those views, but should instead present those views in such a way that both proponents and detractors can mutually agree.
Similarly, imagine that 24's hypothetical poll of the entire world shows that most beleive that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy" -- what should the wikipedia say about that? Well, nothing less than that a poll of the entire world showed that a majority of the world believes that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy". Hopefully our reporting on this fact would be enhanced by an NPOV discussion of the reasons why many people believe that, an NPOV discussion of what Americans believe, and why, and so on.
His threat to post to indymedia.org to bring an onslaught of progressives is interesting and revealing, as well. Brion Vibber's response was correct: please do, go and bring them in. If lots of them come all at once, there will be a period of chaos while they come to understand our NPOV policies, but after that, those who can tolerate NPOV writing will stick around, and that'll be great. It'll help keep those of us who do not share their viewpoints "in line".
But if his indymedia.org friends want to violate the NPOV, then they will be just as unwelcome as, say, libertarians who come in and want to violate the NPOV. Even such "stupid" followers of Ayn Rand, as your humble host would be held to the fire just as heartily for NPOV violations.
The interesting thing about the NPOV is that all reasonable people can understand why we have the policy and adhere to it. I suppose that if a large group of people descended on us, people who steadfastly reject the NPOV *itself* for some reason, insisting that instead of working hard to reach unanimity on articles, wikipedia should be like Usenet, with endless shouting and reversals back-and-forth and back-and-forth of articles from one point of view to another until someone gets too exhausted to continue... if that happened, then we'd have a serious problem.
But I don't think that such people exist in large numbers. Even people who I might personally regard as religious fanatics of one stripe or another generally _can_ agree to a neutral presentation of the issues.
Having said all of this, I think there is more to say about systemic bias in wikipedia.
Is there a systemic bias due to the types of people initially attracted to the project? Quite possibly, but I don't think that this has been demonstrated convincingly. To be sure, the wikipedia is _uneven_, as the Amazon rainforest example shows. But unevenness and incompleteness is not bias, otherwise wikipedia will be "biased" until every possible sentence in every possible language has been entered.
How is Wikipedia biased? There are many articles that take into account what large numbers of people believe, even if no one here believes those things. We have some good articles on Islam, even though -- to my knowledge, at least -- they were not written by followers of Islam.
But other articles (or perhaps even the Islam articles!) may inadvertantly leave out important points of view unknown to the author. To the extent that this is true, then Wikipedia is _not_ NPOV, even when we think it is, because of our current ignorance. But this is always true of every publication by every author -- we cannot write about that which we know too little. At least with Wikipedia, our _model_ is fertile for change in the right direction.
--Jimbo
At 02:42 PM 4/4/02 -0800, Jimbo wrote:
I don't think that 24 really understands the NPOV policy. 24 writes: "It remains to be see if people here wish to find the actual median of global human opinion." And also: "There are 6100 million potential readers of the wikipedia, long term, and views shared near-universally by 100-300 million of them just aren't good enough to qualify as neutral point of view, if there is serious dispute about them among the other 5800-6000 million people."
But NPOV is not about finding the 'median' of human opinion, nor about presenting only views that are "shared near-universally" by only Western, technologically advanced, American, or whatever other group he means.
The examples he gives of things that we wouldn't even want to have in the encyclopedia betray his misunderstanding. Selecting just one of them, "hate views of ethnic groups" is certainly something that Wikipedia should have an article on. But the wikipedia should take no position "for" or "against" those views, but should instead present those views in such a way that both proponents and detractors can mutually agree.
Similarly, imagine that 24's hypothetical poll of the entire world shows that most beleive that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy" -- what should the wikipedia say about that? Well, nothing less than that a poll of the entire world showed that a majority of the world believes that "9/11 was caused by US foreign policy". Hopefully our reporting on this fact would be enhanced by an NPOV discussion of the reasons why many people believe that, an NPOV discussion of what Americans believe, and why, and so on.
His threat to post to indymedia.org to bring an onslaught of progressives is interesting and revealing, as well. Brion Vibber's response was correct: please do, go and bring them in. If lots of them come all at once, there will be a period of chaos while they come to understand our NPOV policies, but after that, those who can tolerate NPOV writing will stick around, and that'll be great. It'll help keep those of us who do not share their viewpoints "in line".
Seconded. Heartily. By possibly the leftmost person on this mailing list. NPOV is about spreading and sharing information, and about distinguishing information from opinion. This is a Good Thing, in my own not-so-humble opinion: oppressors of any stripe want to control information, ideas, and knowledge.
But if his indymedia.org friends want to violate the NPOV, then they will be just as unwelcome as, say, libertarians who come in and want to violate the NPOV. Even such "stupid" followers of Ayn Rand, as your humble host would be held to the fire just as heartily for NPOV violations.
Exactly. Which is why this works, why you and I can agree to work on this project, and improve it and make something valuable. We don't have to agree on other things--and it's possible that Wikipedia is the only thing other than the English language that we have in common.
On Fri, 05 Apr 2002 07:59:40 lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Yes, he is very annoying--all the more so because he's obviously well-educated and therefore hard to dismiss as an ordinary crackpot. He hasn't been too terribly destructive. He just cranks out reams and reams of subjectivist rants with quality inversely proportionate to their quantity. But one or two sentences out of every page he writes actually has some interesting insight worth keeping, and he does put up with my abuse pretty well, so I haven't yet been tempted to suggest any action.
He's driving me nuts...
Besides, his anonymity will always serve to minimize his credibility, so he'll lose a lot of arguments on those grounds alone. I know I've suggested in the past that perhaps only logged-in users should be allowed to edit, but I think I'm more inclined to leave things as they are, and just have a social norm here that anonymous editors should simply suffer the consequences to the credibility and lose arguments by default.
I consider it quite rude that whomever it is doesn't do us the courtesy of registering even a nom de plume and clearly label his points on the talk pages. It makes having a discussion with him/her/it a PITA as you can't immediately distinguish who is saying what.
Is it time to make it wikipedia policy that you should sign your posts on talk pages?
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
Is it time to make it wikipedia policy that you should sign your posts on talk pages?
Other than a very tiny handful of things, we run more under social norms than policies, I think. I mean, NPOV is policy, in the sense that I'm willing to defend it by banning people, if it ever came to that. (Like, if a large group of ideologically minded people swooped in on us to put forward their version of the world, at the expense of NPOV, then I'd be willing to fight it with software, bans, etc.)
But most other things are "merely" social norms. Like: be bold in updating encyclopedia articles. Like: don't edit other people's signed comments during an ongoing discussion on a talk page.
The only way to enforce the social norm you're proposing is if most people "sign on" to it. Larry used to write these things on a page, and people could "sign on" as agreeing -- a sort of unenforceable but powerful social commitment. I guess we'd just ignore people who don't sign posts? Or, we could make it "fair game" to just delete comments that are unsigned?
I see some drawbacks to either.
Maybe the best thing to do is to "sign" the comments _for them_. I.E., add an identifier to what people have written, primarily to keep the comments straight.
Anonymity isn't the problem, right? I mean, anyone can make up any name and use it. The problem is more one of _continuity_. If I'm /Talk ing with LDC or AxelBoldt, then I know something of their history, and they of mine, so we can talk more efficiently.
--Jimbo
On Sat, 06 Apr 2002 02:05:47 Jimmy Wales wrote: <snip>
The only way to enforce the social norm you're proposing is if most people "sign on" to it. Larry used to write these things on a page, and people could "sign on" as agreeing -- a sort of unenforceable but powerful social commitment. I guess we'd just ignore people who don't sign posts? Or, we could make it "fair game" to just delete comments that are unsigned?
I see some drawbacks to either.
Yep, however I'm personally getting to the point where I'm considering the ignorance option. However, I don't think there's anything like consensus on that.
Maybe the best thing to do is to "sign" the comments _for them_. I.E., add an identifier to what people have written, primarily to keep the comments straight.
That sounds like an excellent idea.
Anonymity isn't the problem, right? I mean, anyone can make up any name and use it. The problem is more one of _continuity_. If I'm /Talk ing with LDC or AxelBoldt, then I know something of their history, and they of mine, so we can talk more efficiently.
Precisely.
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