I'm not sure this landed as I meant for it to, so just to make sure I'm clear, here's another summary:
Logic is inherent to knowledge itself (knowledge IS logical connections) while expertise is a political status that exists outside of knowledge. If knowledge is not logical it is not knowledge, but an 'expert' can hold illogic/error by virtue of status, call it knowledge. and propagate social acceptance/approval of that error. As long as expertise is the approver instead of logic, knowledge overall suffers. What Citizendium is missing is a simple logic test/methodology for proving an article is logical. I suppose 'experts' could be the ones to administer this 'standard,' but the test itself can't be based on their individual expertise. It must be bigger than any one individual and simple enough to implement across all articles. The discussion piece in this context, is purely around whether or not an article is logical against some standard, not which expert is correct or which expert society has accepted as correct. Kind Regards, Bruce LaDuke Managing Director Instant Innovation, LLC Indianapolis, IN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hyperadvance.com ----Original Message Follows---- From: Hasan Murtaza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Bruce LaDuke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [Citizendium-l] Why I Stopped Authoring in Citizendium - For Now Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 08:45:56 -0500 ---------------------------------------- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [email protected] > Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 14:49:20 +0000 > Subject: [Citizendium-l] Why I Stopped Authoring in Citizendium - For Now > > Larry, > > In reference to your request about lagging author participation, I couldn't > figure out where to e-mail you and your Citizendium talk page is full and > bogging down, so I'm responding here. You can screen this out if you want, > but it might be beneficial for the whole group list. > > I'm registered as an author and wrote one article: Knowledge Creation. That > said, I haven't put any more time in this because I don't think Citizendium > has figured out how to manage expertise in light of knowledge creation. > > An expert is one that holds knowledge. But if that which the expert holds > is not logical, it is not really knowledge at all, but a mix of questions > and logic. The test of knowledge is logic, not expertise. In other words, > one can be seen as, esteemed as, an expert and not hold logical knowledge, > or hold a mix of things logical and illogical. Expertise is sheerly > political without a logic test. > There is a way to get the best of both worlds: those with logic _write_ articles, and those with expertise _edit_ those articles. The number of experts in the world is probably something like 10x greater than the number of people who have internally organized the knowledge in their heads into something resembling logic. The people who do not have a logical framework in their minds will usually not be able to create a logical framework on paper either. So in the wikipedia model, they will either not be able to edit a page at all, or only make minor edits to it. So all of their knowledge is essentially wasted by the wikipedia model. Wikipedia offers the same interface to both type of people--the editor and creator. CZ should allow them to judge articles according to their perceptions (and that is all that critics have--well developed and strong perceptions about the world) and capture their approval or disapproval by some methods, whether comments or simple voting. CZ should track the opinions of a "significant set" of reviewers--like professional academics in the field. When it reaches the 90% approval mark (or something), then it should be considered stable. The broadening of the article creation process to include passive criticisms should be just what is required for a busy world, where there are more reviewers than creators, and there is not enough time for everyone to make an active edit to a wiki just to get their objection noted. It is much more efficient for them to log the criticism somewhere, and have someone else take care of it. Note that I am advocating a passive way of editing, as opposed to Wikipedia's active way. Wikipedia requires you to actively force the article to change if you object to it, but there is no way of telling if your changes are valid except by relying on the invisible hand of God (or the invisible eyes of the wikipedia community) to bless your changes. This explicit feedback is neccessary for an online encyclopedia, and Wikipedia has been getting along without it by sheer force of momentum (and the extraordinary efforts put in by its volunteers.) CZ should aim to do the same thing--with a lot less work by a lot more people. Linus Torvalds has said, given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. In the same vein, with enough eyeballs all objections to an article will be shallow, and so we should formalize a process to capture those shallow objections--whether it is by using a simple "approve/disapprove" button with a small check box for reason, or a bayesian filter that captures the most frequently cited objections and makes it simpler for subsequent reviewers to confirm one of those objections, or whether it just tracks the raw statistics and proportion of people who approve an article and aims for increasing that above a certain threshold. The wiki model can be compared to the 5-step maturity level of software development, the Capability maturity model (CMM). The lowest stage is "Initial". Here is a quote from wikipedia's article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Level_2_-_Repeatable "Level 1 - Initial "At maturity level 1, processes are usually ad hoc and the organization usually does not provide a stable environment. Success in these organizations depends on the competence and heroics of the people in the organization and not on the use of proven processes. In spite of this ad hoc, chaotic environment, maturity level 1 organizations often produce products and services that work; however, they frequently exceed the budget and schedule of their projects. "Maturity level 1 organizations are characterized by a tendency to over commit, abandon processes in the time of crisis, and not be able to repeat their past successes again. "Level 1 software project success depends on having high quality people." (--Note: sounds exactly like Wikipedia.) Citizendium should aim to be at level 2 and above. By building on the baseline of Wikipedia, and having a formalized process for content creation, and ( I believe) by having explicit communication between creators of content and editors, it wlll ensure that the whole wiki creation will cease to become a black art and will be taken into the realm of more established Internet practices such as blogging. Hasan _________________________________________________________________ >From photos to predictions, The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes has it all. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/ _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
