[WikiEN-l] Trust vs. Credentials (was Re: Accountability:

[Gwern Branwen]

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 23:49:05 -0400
In-Reply-To: <bdb.12001f33.3326033a at aol.com> (Bartning at aol.com's message of
	"Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:13:30 EDT")
Message-ID: <868xe32kb2.fsf at elan.rh.rit.edu>
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Bartning at aol.com writes:

> In a message dated 3/11/2007 2:19:59 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com writes:
>
>> In  essence it *is* a popularity contest as Sarah suggests.  I 
have  no
>> interest in learning how to expand my popularity or add others 
   to  my
>> list.  
>
> I would see it as an 'avoiding unpopularity'  contest, to some 
large extent. 
> Our conduct rules reward staying out of  conflicts, and staying 
very calm and 
> detached when you are in them. This makes  sense, to me. It's a 
working 
> environment.
>
> It's worse than a modern academic environment.  Articles attack, 
  don't  
> interrelate, citations get improperly cited and improperly 
ignored.  It's  worse 
> than the USENET because at least on there you can't get blocked, 
and I see  even 
> worse cases of unfairness there.  Wikipedia has only taken 
what's bad  with 
> the USENET it seems to me right now, and it's even gotten some 
unrealistic  
> publicity lately.
>
> Vincent

No. USENET was/is a lot worse. Spam is permanently a fact of life 
there (wasn't the first ever piece of spam a Usenet message?), 
they invented the trolls and are trolled by Scientology to a more 
significant degree than Wikipedia (when was the lest time you 
heard of User:Anon.penet.fi being sued by the Church of 
Scientology on the wiki?) And they have real cabals on Usenet, not 
to mention the whole idea of canceling posts, cross-threading, 
etc. Say what you will about Wikipedia, but it's a much more 
pleasant, less volatile and less transient place to work. The two 
are different fundamentally, anyway.

-- 
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.