Re: [WikiEN-l] Evaporative cooling in online communities
Perhaps it's more of a misunderstanding that this is still a wiki above anything else - in particular, those understandings that literally anyone else you write, and you can edit anything anybody else writes. I believe those who have a good understanding of those two fundamental wiki concepts tend to do better in a wiki environment (not just Wikipedia) than most others who do not. But this is coming from a person who specializes in building up already-existing articles over trying to create brand new articles from scratch. -MuZemike On 10/11/2010 1:51 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote: On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Ryan Delaneyryan.dela...@gmail.com wrote: Now here's the interesting point: High value participants are treated as special because they have recognition reputation from the community. But, as the community scales, these social mechanisms break down and often, if nothing is done to replace them, high value members get especially miffed at the loss of special recognition and this accelerates the Evaporative Cooling. We have the reverse problem on Wikipedia, where visibility and reputation allows some editors to get away with behavior that we otherwise wouldn't tolerate. John Locke called this kind of reputation 'prerogative' -- it's now become a technical term in political science, but it basically means that when we notice someone making decisions that everyone else goes along with, we start to 'go with the flow' and accept that person's authority in future cases as well. It's a kind of momentum building of social power, and since it's the only real power anyone has on Wikipedia, it is very significant - and vulnerable to abuse. Where a contributor known to make lots of valuable contributions in other areas suddenly demonstrates insanity on a specific topic, people will tend to give way where they wouldn't if it were coming from someone they didn't know or view as a 'valued contributor'. The result is the 'evaporative cooling' of those who don't have that social power on Wikipedia, or less of it, but whose edits are no less valuable - if only less voluminous. Arguably we have the reverse of your reverse problem. What is the ultimate status-lowering action which one can do to an editor, short of actually banning or blocking them? Deleting their articles. In a particular subject area, who is most likely to work on obscurer articles? The experts and high-value editors - they have the resources, they have the interest, they have the competency. Anyone who grew up in America post-1980 can work on [[Darth Vader]]; many fewer can work on [[Grand Admiral Thrawn]]. Anyone can work on [[Basho]]; few can work on [[Fujiwara no Teika]]. What has Wikipedia been most likely to delete in its shift deletionist over the years? Those obscurer articles. The proof is in the pudding: all the high-value/status Star Wars editors have decamped for somewhere they are valued; all the high-value/status Star Trek editors, the Lost editors... the list goes on. They left for a community that respected them and their work more; these specific examples are striking because the editors had to *make* a community, but one should not suppose such departures are limited to fiction-related articles. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Evaporative cooling in online communities
On 12 October 2010 18:08, MuZemike muzem...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps it's more of a misunderstanding that this is still a wiki above anything else - in particular, those understandings that literally anyone else you write, and you can edit anything anybody else writes. I believe those who have a good understanding of those two fundamental wiki concepts tend to do better in a wiki environment (not just Wikipedia) than most others who do not. The problem comes when an expert (in the broadest sense) understands something that most people don't get, or get exactly wrong, and where most people can't or don't or even refuse to understand the literature on it. In that case, much of the population of the wiki will be repeatedly editing the material back to what they believe, rather than what is actually true. The expert can try to explain the problem, they can revert it back to the objective truth of the literature, but in the end they will be the ones seen as problematic, rather than the majority of people that are repeatedly putting the wrong information into the wiki. The more careful experts are, the more likely that they are to get banned or otherwise censured for 'causing trouble'. The classic example of this is William Connolley. He stuck around, but other experts have evaporated. Long term I see issues though. The expertise needed to improve the Wikipedia is ratcheting ever upwards, but I doubt that the admins are; if they see a person 'causing trouble' they tend to attack the minority as being 'not consensus', but people with genuine expertise are always in the minority. The Wikipedia should be and needs to be becoming more expert friendly, not as a matter of policy, but due to some of the subject matter being more fine-grained and precise. I suppose at the moment, the admins are acting as a plaza, whereas specialist admins may be more and more desirable. -MuZemike -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Evaporative cooling in online communities
On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 12:20, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: The expert can try to explain the problem, they can revert it back to the objective truth of the literature, but in the end they will be the ones seen as problematic, rather than the majority of people that are repeatedly putting the wrong information into the wiki. The more careful experts are, the more likely that they are to get banned or otherwise censured for 'causing trouble'. The classic example of this is William Connolley. That's not even close to what happened in that case, Ian. Speaking generally (not about WTC), just because someone has a higher degree in a topic doesn't mean they can write, or that they're good at the kind of research that Wikipedia needs. It doesn't mean they're good at collaborating with others, or that they're knowledgeable about the topic in general (only in the narrow area they specialized in). And we don't know whether they're highly regarded by their peers. It's important for Wikipedians to recognize that there is expertise out there, and we need to be very careful not to assume we know everything. But it's also important not to be dazzled by people who claim expertise. Sarah ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Evaporative cooling in online communities
On 12 October 2010 19:33, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: We have a danger here though; peoples bona fides are hard to verify online in general, and on Wikipedia with its culture of pseudonymity particularly. An expert may not be who they say they are, and we may have no way to tell either way even if they are. A large part of the system we have is designed to mitigate not knowing the quality of the people we have editing. You're talking about qualifications; I'm talking about expertISE. They're not the same thing. It's the difference between making reasonable edits, and having a piece of people that says you ought to understand something. We don't care about the latter. I'm saying that the wikipedia is set up as a plaza at the admin level. This means that, in many cases, admins don't have much clue as to whether they know enough about a dispute to intervene. In some cases (most) it's very clear and they'll keep away from things they don't understand, but in some cases they may make the determination incorrectly... and bad things will tend to happen, *particularly* where there is an obvious, but wrong point of view (wrong with respect to the available sources), then the person with expertise will be labelled as a trouble maker. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Evaporative cooling in online communities
On 12 October 2010 20:11, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: ... and having a piece of people that says you ought to understand something ...having a piece of paper that says you ought to understand something(!)... (it previously read something like 'having people that ought to understand something! ) /Hannibal Lector -- -Ian Woollard -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion-analysis/stand-and-deliver-on-its-last-legs/story-e6frgcko-1225937823844 This reads like a radical anti-egalitarian manifesto by some young Internet-based firebrand ... then I got to the end and my jaw dropped at the author's job. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12 October 2010 20:24, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion-analysis/stand-and-deliver-on-its-last-legs/story-e6frgcko-1225937823844 This reads like a radical anti-egalitarian manifesto by some young Internet-based firebrand ... then I got to the end and my jaw dropped at the author's job. - d. You discovered he had an agenda a mile wide? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_England_%28Australia%29#Distance_Education Okey not on the level of the open university (which appears to have failed to kill conventional universities) but still a far from neutral observer. -- geni ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12 October 2010 20:38, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: You discovered he had an agenda a mile wide? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_England_%28Australia%29#Distance_Education Okey not on the level of the open university (which appears to have failed to kill conventional universities) but still a far from neutral observer. His agenda is to cut his wages bill. (Vice-chancellors are not picked for their fluffy goodwill to all humanity.) But this is the guy who runs the business saying holy crap we're fucked. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12/10/2010, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: His agenda is to cut his wages bill. (Vice-chancellors are not picked for their fluffy goodwill to all humanity.) But this is the guy who runs the business saying holy crap we're fucked. The thing is that free sources of information have been available for practically forever; they're called 'libraries'. They didn't replace the need for people known as teachers/lecturers/tutors either, nor the need for examinations to prove that people could actually do stuff, both of which are functions provided by universities. So I suspect, at the moment, that he's being pessimistic. Still, in theory, a really good automated educational computer based learning system could change all that I suppose, but I've never heard of one that good. - d. -- -Ian Woollard ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12 October 2010 21:16, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: They didn't replace the need for people known as teachers/lecturers/tutors either, nor the need for examinations to prove that people could actually do stuff, both of which are functions provided by universities. So I suspect, at the moment, that he's being pessimistic. Possibly. The Open University, for one example, gives respected degrees, but is not cheap for the student even with subsidy (though the students are generally people with jobs), and remains rather labour-intensive. I wonder if Lord Brooke [1] has seen that article yet. - d. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8058885/Lord-Browne-review-round-up-of-reaction.html ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12 October 2010 21:36, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if Lord Brooke [1] has seen that article yet. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8058885/Lord-Browne-review-round-up-of-reaction.html ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12 October 2010 21:36, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if Lord Brooke [1] has seen that article yet. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8058885/Lord-Browne-review-round-up-of-reaction.html Browne. Gah! It's right there in the URL! - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 10/12/10 12:24 PM, David Gerard wrote: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion-analysis/stand-and-deliver-on-its-last-legs/story-e6frgcko-1225937823844 This reads like a radical anti-egalitarian manifesto by some young Internet-based firebrand ... then I got to the end and my jaw dropped at the author's job. At least he respects the importance of drinking beer and hanging out with friends. This is in contrast with the impo[r]tence of the established order. Ec ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Forwarding from foundation-l. David - thanks for the heads-up; this essay is brilliant, and not just about biology. Here's a shorter link: http://j.mp/ten-wiki-rules And to think I was only able to come up with 8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:8_simple_rules_for_editing_our_encyclopedia ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why the Internet dooms universities
On 12/10/2010 21:37, David Gerard wrote: On 12 October 2010 21:36, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if Lord Brooke [1] has seen that article yet. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8058885/Lord-Browne-review-round-up-of-reaction.html Browne. Gah! It's right there in the URL! There is something odd about the last fifty years of tertiary education, which is how little the model has really changed. (Arguments over how to fund it rather mask the point.) The demographic is very different, the scale is very different, but what universities are all about is not so different. There might be a step-change on the way, presaged by a new attitude to books that is visible already. The idea that one learns both socially and intellectually from contact with one's peer group (pretty much defined as age group plus some social and intellectual stratum restriction) is more deeply embedded than ever: few people expect to learn from a master now. Therefore any new model is not going to be distance learning as such. Charles ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
