Talk:Criticism of crowdsourcing

See Archive 1 for October 8-11, 2008 content.

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Now Is The Wiki Of Our Discontent

The 1st Part of the Discontention

JA: There is a fundamental social wrong that hides at the core of Wikipedia, a wrongness that is complicit with the worst of its content, but far more its cause than its effect. We need to get at that underlying wrongness if we are going to comprehend, much less remediate, the problematic phenomena that we find in the Wikipedia domain. Jon Awbrey 09:12, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: That is one of the reasons why I continue to have reservations about taking the concepts of "crowdsourcing" and "user-generated content" as a basis for our critique of Wikioid phenomena. Doing that only plays into the dodge of content-blindness (analogous to snow-blindness) that keeps so many would-be critics running around in circles of futility until they get frostbyte and die in the drifts. So let's watch out for that. Jon Awbrey 09:22, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: To my mind, the architectural error in WMF-sponsored projects is that Jimbo adopted an inappropriate regulatory mechanism for an educational enterprise. Jimbo adopted and maladapted the Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation which (I claim) is a monumental and tragic error. The primary tool of governance (blocking and banning) corresponds to Bill of Attainder — a corrosive, ill-conceived, and ill-advised regulatory device. It was problematic when Hammurabi defined it some 3750 years ago, and it remains problematic today. Whoever came up with that foolish idea should go jump in the lake. —Moulton 11:16, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: Thanks for writing a short paragraph. That encourages me to try and work through it bit by bit.

1. Yes, the fundamental social wrong is a built-in feature of the social-technical architecture, or "SocWare", for short. And the buttons for blocking and banning are certainly a big part of it.
2. Yes, the fundamental social wrong might be called a bad case of Hammer-Rabies gone viral, but I don't think that's the be-all end-all of it.

JA: I think that we have to keep asking the question — If the SocWare is so maladapted to the aims of Education And Information, and yet Wikipediots persist in promoting it, then what is the SocWare well-adapted to do? Jon Awbrey 11:40, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: The Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation (including the specific version of it adopted by Jimbo) is optimally adapted to sustain a Drama Engine. —Moulton 13:05, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

JH: Hammurabic code like this one …

If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

JH: That not very helpful … I would suggest some thing more simpler, like the golden rule and the 10 commandments. Joehazelton 16:25, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: Moulton, I cannot tell if you are using the word "drama" in the ordinary sense of the word or in line with the way that Wikipediots abuse the term, but you seem to be saying that the Wikipedia System is good at producing this "drama" and that Wikipediots keep cranking their engine because they desire this "good". Jon Awbrey 20:05, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: I am using the term "drama" in the sense of dramaturgy as a vehicle for embedding educational, cultural, or moral lessons within a dramatic literary storyline featuring interacting characters (e.g. protagonist and antagonist). It is my thesis that Jimbo unintentionally devised an efficient drama engine by hamhandedly misdesigning Wikipedia's social regulatory mechanism. As I see it, Jimbo's fundamental mistake was adopting blocking and banning as the principal tool of governance, thus reprising a cyberspace reification of the classical (i.e. biblical) drama of scapegoating and alienation. —Moulton 05:50, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: It sounds like you are trying to use the word "drama" in the ordinary sense and trying to avoid abusing it in the Wikipidgin Manner of Speaking (WP:MoS), but I don't get the sense that you are being consistent in that attempt.

JA: At any rate, your Theory Of The Archdrone's Mind (BK:TOTAM) that ascribes unintentionality to the design of the hive is a theory that I view with suspicion. The way I see it, BK:TOTAM is nothing but a variation on the theme of WP:AGF. As such, I have to regard it as naive beyond measure. Jon Awbrey 06:52, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: I'm using "dramaturgy" in the sense of the Bardic Arts, full stop. It is my thesis that Jimbo did not conscientiously and deliberately set out to create the Internet's most popular Drama Engine when he conceived, adopted, and blessed the emerging social dynamics of Wikipedia. —Moulton 10:20, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: People sometimes use the word "drama" to denote any series of actions and events that are filled with emotion and suspense, as in "the dramatic developments on Wall Street this week". Wiki-Pidgin speakers use "drama" as a wiki-pejorative term that means pretty much the same thing as every other wiki-pejorative term, to wit, "We No Like It". But you seem to be saying that you do not intend those looser usages.

JA: Sometimes people use the word "drama" to describes any kind of Amateur Participatory Improv Psychodrama (APIP). Maybe you are using the word that way, but for my part I do not call that Art.

JA: Dramaturgy, in the sense of the Dramatic Arts, demands Dramaturges, in the sense of Dramatic Artists. These include playwrights, actors, directors, producers, stagecraft artists and managers, and so on and so forth as the credits roll. Are you seriously trying to tell us that you are crediting Jimbo & Company with that sort of Art? Jon Awbrey 11:02, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: In concert with the Bardic Arts and Barsoom Tork Associates, I've published a song about it: Hey JUDE —Moulton 11:04, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: Jon, I think you are conflating a dramatic production with a drama engine. Think of a drama engine as the analog of a physics engine in a pinball game. Jimbo gave the world a free-wheeling drama engine — a venue where arbitrary actors can don costumes and synthetic personas and engage in improvisational street theater with each other. The result is a post-modern, pre-apocalyptic theater of the absurd. —Moulton 14:14, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: Thanks for finally admitting that you are NOT using the word "drama" in the ordinary sense of the word but more in line with the way that Wikipediots abuse the term. "Drama Engine" is a neologism that you just made up, so of course the notion of a drama engine cannot figure in the ordinary meaning of the word "drama". Jon Awbrey 19:06, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

Dear Abbie,

I tried shouting "theatre" in a crowded fire but it did not improve The Review — and then the Firemen dashed on the scene and I discovered that my Drama Engine was no match for their Fire Engine.

Just call me,

All Wet @ Fahrenheit 451

BK: Jon, I did not coin the term "drama engine" as you can discover by reading about first generation drama engines, lame though they may be for the purposes that game designers have in mind. Jimbo's Unintended Drama Engine (JUDE) operates at what I imagine would correspond to a third generation drama engine in the game world. —Moulton 21:59, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: I apologize for accusing you of Originality, but your esoteric gamer-tech geek-world reference, however amusing, only serves to prove my point that the new-fangled notion of a "drama engine" forms no part of what enters the mind of the average person in the street when he or she hears the word "drama".

JA: But let us put the definition of drama aside for now. You are trying to reduce the bardic and dramatic arts to a kind of Accidental Stage Setting (ASS). And that is nothing short of absurd. It is true that people can learn from a climactic absurdity, but what they must learn is the absurdity of the collective premiss. Jon Awbrey 02:46, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: I don't think we are all that far apart, Jon. I've been thinking about the use of dramaturgy in education for many years now, and I've been following the snail's pace at which the game culture has incorporated dramaturgy into the design of games. What I noticed about WMF sites is that, while Jimbo did not intentionally set out to craft a post-modern theater of the absurd, that's what WP and sister sites have evolved to become. A secondary question is what (if anything) the participants in Jimbo's Masquerade Ball are learning through their participation in that happenstantial psychodrama stage. Moulton 10:35, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: If all you mean by "drama" is something like "the affective element in education and inquiry", then that has been a factor in my studies for as long as I can remember, but I think it would be a whole lot clearer just to say the latter. I have participated in the mystiques of enough psychodrama and street theater to know the agonies, the thrills, and the uses thereof, but I do not call that Drama in a literal literary sense.

JA: It is possible to learn from almost any experience that we undergo — adverse, artful, or otherwise — but we have to be capable of reflecting on the experience to the point where we can extract the lesson, and that is a step beyond mere mystified participation in absurdity. Jon Awbrey 11:18, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: What I've been thinking about is the artful construction of a custom-crafted drama optimally designed to midwife an epiphany of a particular individual at a particular juncture in their lifelong learning journey. I am thinking of stories like Peter Falk as the grandfather reading the story of the Princess Bride to his grandson, or Arabian Nights or Aesop's Fables or the Parables of Jesus or this ditty by Bing Crosby. —Moulton 12:56, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: I'm not sure I understand all this "Hallo, Jude!" stuff you keep going on about, but it begins to dawn on me that it's you, you, my friend, who are in the grip of some Will To Drama that you'd fain e-body in, oh, let's say, Barry's Intense Drama Engine (BIDE), and that you project this project of yours on your favorite local authoritarian, Jimbo Wales, who knows it not. Jon Awbrey 06:08, 15 October 2008 (PDT)

The 2nd Part of the Discontention

JA: By way of marshaling our critical resources on behalf of the end in view, let me recall the charge that I sounded at the top of this topic, after which I will sort through the intervening discussion in a game try at racking up the points of agreement and disagreement.

JA: There is a fundamental social wrong that hides at the core of Wikipedia, a wrongness that is complicit with the worst of its content, but far more its cause than its effect. We need to get at that underlying wrongness if we are going to comprehend, much less remediate, the problematic phenomena that we find in the Wikipedia domain. Jon Awbrey 09:12, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

Points of Consensus

• Although we continue to have difficulty identifying it, or even thinking of an apt name for it, many of us seem to agree that there is a fundamental social wrong that hides at the core of Wikipedia's Social-Technical Architecture (STA). Unless we can diagnose this bug with more exactness, attempts to "fix Wikipedia", whether in-place or in a new place, are most likely going to continue being futile. Jon Awbrey 05:36, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

• We seem to agree that the social sanctions known as "blocking" and "banning", as implemented in the corresponding social powers and technical utilities, or something about the distribution of those powers and utilities, are telling indicators of the fundamental social wrong in Wikipedia. Jon Awbrey 05:52, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

Points of Dissensus

• Hard to pin down, but something about the character of drama and the role of drama, however cast, in the Wikipedia System. Jon Awbrey 06:20, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

Points for Expansion

JA: I am out of time for pursuing this right now, but one of the points that we need to probe a little further has to do with the function of blocking and banning within the cult(ure) in question. Words like alienation, excommunication, exile, scapegoating, and shunning have been used in the past. What is really going on is not any form of physical transportation, but a filtering out of messages from identifiable sources, a form of "killing the message", if not exactly the messenger. Jon Awbrey 07:50, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: There really are such things as noise, spam, and vandalism, and so there are legitimate reasons for filtering and ignoring certain classes of messages. When the functions of filtering and repression become dysfunctional for any error-controlled system, however, is when valid feedback about the system and its environment is habitually being ignored. Jon Awbrey 07:50, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: See also Bill of Attainder, Immurement, and Safeword. —Moulton 13:36, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

Made Glorious By This Sum Resummed A Fork

JA: All in the fullness of time … Jon Awbrey 09:14, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

Dysfunctional Inquiry Programs (DIP's) : Slip Slidin' Away

JA: The phenomenon that I wish to address under this head is one that I noticed many years ago, one that I observed arising especially acutely in the W(P+R) context, and one that I tried to tackle under numerous heads at The Wikipedia Review, but like every other topic that risks diversion from the WR Soap Opera In Regress Everlasting (WR:SOIRE), all of those inquiries fell like lead balloons on leaden ears.

JA: Vide Dysfunctional Inquiry Programs (DIP's) : Slip Slidin' Away.

JA: Maybe it was something I said? Jon Awbrey 14:40, 15 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: In my experience, the inquiry process fails when the would-be inquirer departs from rigorous skeptical inquiry by failing to examine all the evidence with a critical eye and by failing to reason in a coherent and scientific manner to valid conclusions and insights. —Moulton 15:44, 15 October 2008 (PDT)

You know the nearer your destination

The more you're slip slidin' away

— Paul Simon

JA: The particular phenomenon that I'm talking about here occurs when all the right evidence and all the right reasoning lead a person right up to the door of what, by rights, would be the inescapable conclusion, and yet … and yet … the fear of losing a cherished illusion keeps that person from walking through that door. Jon Awbrey 19:16, 15 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: Do you mean the inescapable conclusion that there is no hope for Homo Schleppians or Western Civilization because we lack the critical mass to evolve from a political culture to a scientific one? —Moulton 19:59, 15 October 2008 (PDT)

JA: No, I mean that there's very little hope for Some People until they ¡¡¡ Wake Da Φυκ ↑ !!! Jon Awbrey 03:54, 16 October 2008 (PDT)

BK: Oh. Well Gurdjieff and Ouspensky pretty much established that most people are sleepwalking their way through life. Moulton 07:51, 16 October 2008 (PDT)

Future use of this page

I would like to encourage everyone using MyWikiBiz for various discussions to please adhere to a policy of "don't derail pages". You are welcome to have conversations about the origins and ownership of Wikipedia Review, as you are welcome to have conversations about the identity of various cross-dressing British officials. Just have these conversations on their own pages.

As for the future of the "new forum" that we've been discussing, I would like to draw everyone's attention to my current mindset, as expressed here. Thanks, everyone! -- MyWikiBiz 16:22, 12 October 2008 (PDT)

Wikipedia - why it needs a warning label

This is a work in progress, and I will try to improve it later, but you can read it if you like. http://catonine.virtue.nu/thoughts/wikipedia.html I tried to make it like Lir's one, but I hope on more important topics, with a more relevant worldview. Blissyu2 02:26, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

Again, the way to do this is to create an article Port Arthur Massacre (Wikipedia) in which you can reference these claims and have other people investigate them. This (if your claims are correct) would form part of a series of articles here which are about the Wikipedia articles, where there is evidence of bias or corruption in those articles. Ockham 04:53, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

I have done that already [1] (it does probably need shortening however). Of course, that is not the sole aspect of my web page, and only represents one example of one of the major problems. There is no doubt in my mind that Wikipedia's article on that topic is, basically, a deliberately false article, as it does not, as an article as a whole, agree with either the recognised truth of the issue nor what the majority of people say, and deliberately false statements have been added to the article, primarily by Thebainer, with enormous control of the article, initially by Robert Merkel but later taken over by Thebainer. I was going to put all of that in a nice readable format in that section on my web site criticism. Again, however, that is just one aspect of what is wrong with Wikipedia, and just one example of truth changing. SlimVirgin's truth changing of the Lockerbie bombing article on Wikipedia is just as notable. Unfortunately, I am not an expert on the Lockerbie bombing so can't get into specifics of what she did, only that it is obvious that she did change truth. Blissyu2 04:29, 14 October 2008 (PDT)

Thank you

I want to thank this page for underscoring in my mind the importance of the new criticism project to be a closed group of content generators, and for it not to begin in wiki format. -- MyWikiBiz 08:50, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

MY suggestion for the format, your criticism should be in three parts..

First part: A page, where any one may submit criticism, in public, in which all discuss it in a free for all, no holds bar discussion. No rules less one... No attack on each other just their augment.

Second part: After a time, a committee, would review the article and decide to add/delete some or all of said article to to a protected part where it will stand.

Third part, I would have a wide open form, "boogie check" no rules less Defamation, Liable. All comers welcome, a thunderdrome of ideas regarding wikipeida so all have say.. from the crazy loon to the highest Ivory tower pigeon.Joehazelton 15:55, 13 October 2008 (PDT)

Whatever happened from this?

Maybe I missed it, but 6 years later and I don't see a website created. If you did make one, you certainly didn't tell me, nor did you write it here. I feel a bit upset at not being invited if you did create it. :( Blissyu2 (talk) 13:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I am not completely sure why, but the website I was using for about 10 years mysteriously disappeared. Thankfully it was archived happily, so here is my Criticism of Wikipedia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20130310011711/http://catonine.virtue.nu/thoughts/wikipedia.html Blissyu2 (talk) 13:09, 21 December 2014 (UTC)