[WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Durova]

Sanger's claim of cofoundership is implicitly a claim of credit for
Wikipedia's success.  The idea of applying a wiki editing environment
outside the sphere of software development was a radical one and a powerful
one, but as anyone who has worked on other wikis knows that concept alone is
no guarantee of success.

Sanger's criticisms of Wikipedia's structure and dynamics are well
reasoned.  One of the pitfalls of Wikipedia, though, is how easy it is to
kid oneself into thinking one understands it better than one does.  By the
time Citizendium launched Wikipedia was resolving elements of Sanger's most
salient criticisms through other means than he envisioned.  The disruptive
editing guideline is an example.  That's not particular to Sanger: Wikipedia
is just too big and fast-moving for any one person to keep pace.  Last fall
when Jimbo withdrew an old affirmation about having an article for every
episode of *The Simpsons*, the obvious response was to link the title of
every *Simpsons* episode FA (Wikipedia has quite a few).

Sanger's outlook could be characterized as a belief that the way to achieve
quality is to pursue it.  Wikipedia has gotten where it is by allowing
quality to overrun it.

Take an average article today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_tree

Compare to where it was in fall 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yucca_brevifolia&oldid=79111365

Cats can be taught to play 'Fetch'; the secret is to let the cat teach you
to play 'Throw'.

-Durova the Cat Herder

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Durova wrote:
> > In the long run--ten and thirty years from now--the merit of Sanger's
> claim
> > to coufoundership of Wikipedia is likely to be measured by the success of
> > Citizendium.
> >
> A bit like Einstein, then: his claim to have founded quantum theory
> (about which he was a skeptic, and in fact wrong as fas as we know)
> being judged by the success of his unified field theory? No, something a
> bit amiss there. I like the first part, though: light as quanta was a
> big deal and worth his Nobel; and then he couldn't take the ultimate
> consequences for physics.
>
> Charles
>
>
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http://durova.blogspot.com/