[WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again

[Ray Saintonge]

Marc Riddell wrote:
>> On 07/10/2007, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> On 07/10/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>> It is not an acceptable policy for a rational community.
>>>       
> on 10/7/07 11:04 AM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton at gmail.com wrote:
>   
>> Then the community isn't rational - that doesn't really surprise me.
>>     
> Wikipedia is an emotional community - not a rational one. Whether this is
> acceptable is up to the Community itself.
There's a very important dynamic to be balanced between the emotional 
and the rational.  That part of the community which is rooted in 
computer technology tends too much toward the rational side of the 
equation.  I was reading the "Artificial Intelligence" entry in the 
Geek's Glossary that is appended to the October issue of "Wired" where 
they remark that robots still fail in a lot of tasks which are 
relatively obvious for humans.  Seeing what needs to be done when you 
have a sink full of dishes is not a task that a robot easily 
recognizes.  They have a great deal of difficulty with the ambiguities 
of life, with puns and with cultural allusions.  Even chess-playing 
computers depend on brute force analysis which they can do better than 
any human.

We need the rational to keep the train on the track, but we also need 
the emotional to look at opportunities for new tracks.  The effects are 
often subtle.  Our massive use of templates gives the impression of 
order, but it also reduces options.  A person with a more intuitive 
approach who wants to suggest alternatives that might very well be 
improvements needs to be ready to work his way through a cloud of 
virtual insect repellent.  Getting through to the egg needs pretty tough 
sperm.

Ec