Excuse me if this is a little off track, but I promise there is a
Peircian edge to it from several points of view.
I know that several people here on Peirce-l have attempted to write
articles for Wikipedia - and I have expressed my own concerns here in
the past. If you missed those then you can find a summary of the issues
on my Wikipedia user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StevenZenith
As many of you know I am interested in semeiotic issues as they relate
to the development of human understanding, deliberation and consensus on
the Internet - and I conduct "field research" by going out there and
actually engaging to some level with the various mediums.
A principal issue that occurs again and again - and we have seen it here
on Peirce-l - is what is broadly called the issue of "transparency."
That is the ability to know who the author is. As you will see, I
firmly believe that when dealing with knowledge it is essential that we
can identify the author - it is essential for the author to be
transparent. There are many reasons for this but the primary reason is
that without this knowledge we can be easily misled and manipulated both
as individuals and communities.
My primary focus in the past couple of years has been Wikipedia and
Citizen Journalism where this problem is actively manifest.
So, aside from the observations that assist theoretical developments, I
am a pragmatist and I have assembled a concept piece that I would be
please if Ben and Gary, at least, would review.
In essence I believe that the basic idea behind Wikipedia is a good one
- a free encyclopedia will aid many and particularly the alternative
education community of which I am a life member. But Wikipedia is
doomed to fail principally because of the transparency issues mentioned
above. In addition, they can't back out. The copyright license they
have selected essentially prevents them from changing their model - they
would have to start again and would not be able to use the current base.
Which is exactly what I think they should do, but they won't because the
community of anonymity is a compulsive game - they have too much
invested. So what, I thought, would solve the problem?
See
http://www.panopedia.org
It is a concept piece based on the familiar Wikipedia software modified
to enforce transparency requirements. It combines several interests of
mine - including my personal commitment to place on line a resource that
will continue to serve my home schooled children in their adult years.
Contributions and comments from your experiences with Wikipedia and
elsewhere are welcome.
Caveat: This is a concept piece that currently sits on servers in my
garage where bandwidth is limited - and it is essentially an empty
encyclopedia - if it seems viable I will move it out of there.
With respect,
Steven
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