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

[Charles Matthews]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>> 2. Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five years?
>>     
>
> 	Depends on if Google does something to boost that sort of site.
> (I think the *real*, crucial, irreplaceable, founder of Wikipedia, is Google)
>   
I think you left out "inadvertent".  And in any case, let's look at the 
proposition.  Google could turn off Wikipedia's high hits tomorrow if 
they wanted to.  So far they haven't wanted to.  They could privilege CZ 
pages tomorrow, also, if they wanted to.  They might actually lose money 
on the first? They would then gain money on the second?  (Really?)

Assuming the reality is that WP's high page ranking is because that is 
not an artefact but a situation of compatibility of Wikipedia's content 
model and Google's business model, you're not really expressing it the 
best way.  It is more like symbiosis. 
>   
>> 3. Is debate about Sanger's and Wales's respective cofounder/founder
>> claims regarding Wikipedia a worthwhile endeavor?
>>     
>
> 	Speaking here just as a very interested observer, apart from
> matters of personal injustice or formal relevance, there's many issues
> at the bottom of this about Wikipedia itself. To note just one, either
> way there's a pretty scary implication - that is, EITHER:
>
> 1) One of the most prominent and highest-ranking Wikipedia people is
> claiming his biography is being kept wrong, by a group favoring
> "a disgruntled former employee building himself a nice career on this lie"
>
> OR
>
> 2) One of the most prominent and highest-ranking Wikipedia people is
> attempting to use Wikipedia to rewrite history for his own self-promotion,
> with only the threat of outside scandal limiting his attempts to do so
> "I can't {{sofixit}} without creating a media firestorm"
>
> [I assume the infamous IRC transcripts I'm quoting are accurate]
> [I'm of course for case #2, but I acknowledge there's belief in case #1,
> which after all does include that prominent and high-ranking Wikipedian]
>
> 	Though case #2 is better for Wikipedia itself than case #1,
> again, either way, there's something profound there.
>
>   
Not really original to me, but "Matthews's Zeroth Law of Wikipedia" is 
that "everyone has some misconceptions about how Wikipedia works".  (My 
own would be another thread.) This sort of dichotomy swiftly falls foul 
of the Law.  Not to be too cryptic, but I think it was Manin who 
explained that a gyroscope seems like a messenger from another planet, 
because you prod it one way, it turns another. In other words if anyone 
tries to manipulate Wikipedia, you get a kind of "squirming in your 
hands" reaction.

Charles