[WikiEN-l] A sudden thought on the media coverage of flagged revisions

[David Gerard]

2009/8/28 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com>:
> 2009/8/26 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>

>> There is a perennial media narrative that unmediated content
>> production cannot possibly work, as it goes against everything media
>> people understand. They have run pretty much THE SAME story about
>> Wikipedia every year since it was created.
>> This narrative is so strong that no mere facts or objective reality
>> can kill it. I expect to see it next year and the year after too, and
>> the year after that.

> That perennial media narrative is a "meme" you're fighting.


I don't think it's so much a meme as a really strong cultural
assumption, that they also believe is essential to their continued
existence. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair


> "That's the THEORY, that unmediated content CANNOT work, but the wikipedia
> works only in PRACTICE, but not in theory!!!"


They've gone beyond that now - "it used to be open but that's FAILED"
and it's into the larger narrative that the Internet in general can't
possibly work without gatekeepers, so anything that might be evidence
it can't is trumpeted as big news. See above re: salary.


- d.