[p2p-research] Wikiversity’s potential in global capacity building

Sat Feb 21 06:10:25 CET 2009

Before I reply, I want to share these links, from Durova's blog - that made
me aware of people at Wikipedia Review who are apparently being constructive
- which improves my overall impressions of the site, even if my
opinion on *most
*of the argument there remains unchanged.

   - SirFozzie for
ArbCom<http://durova.blogspot.com/2008/11/sirfozzie-for-arbcom.html>-
very high praise for SirFozzie, who he edits Wikipedia Review  (from
   Durova, a Wikipedia admin andblogger who I find intelligent and reasonable)
   - Professor Gametheory<http://durova.blogspot.com/2008/06/professor-gametheory.html>:
   Durova says Somey is "articulate and his longstanding commitment to
   Wikipedia Review demonstrates sincerity", and goes on to share Somey's
   concerns about abuse of process in Wikipedia.

.

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 19:40, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Chris,
>
> do you have one example of unreliable information? or rather of
> systemically unreliable information as you seem to claim?
>

Just that what I've seen on Wikipedia Review is very selective in what it
references, and any time I've looked into something, I've found that it's
extremely slanted at best. (Noting the blog posts I linked above, it seems
that the best of Wikipedia Review might actually be quite good - but not the
parts I've seen.)

> most material on the site is cited either from public sources, or from
> wikipedia admin mailing lists, and can be easily verified,
>

The claims given by Marc were not referenced at all - "Jimbo Unilaterally
Cashiers WMF's Section 230 Immunity - The Wikipedia Review
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=22070 " - and also a highly
unlikely and antagonistic interpretation of events, IMO.

I probably should have said earlier that my observations are based on a
limited experience with Wikipedia Review (and almost all of the extracts
from the site quoted on this thread confirmed my negative opinion). This
doesn't mean everything they say is wrong, or that they're all trolls. Also,
I haven't looked at the site for a long time, so my memory is hazy on
details and incidents, so without spending a couple of hours looking into
this again I can't satisfy you with references.

> furthermore, the 2-3 people I know are certainly not trolls but defender of
> user rights against terrible lack of due process

Certainly bad things have happened. I've lost my temper a few times with
admins, though I generally manage to stay civil, and I work within the
system, because the system mostly does an okay job.

I can't comment on the people you know, of course. Sometimes, people are
just treated badly, often because they don't understand the policies and
guidelines, and rude admins come down hard on them. Your description of your
friends sounds like they're dealing with situations something like this.

I think also that* somet* people aren't malicious, but start by unwittingly
breaking guidelines that Wikipedia has developed over the years, fail to
appreciate why the community won't adapt to their own view of reality, and
then are not constructive in spite of people in the community trying to
help. This can create a lot of bitterness, and it's not surprising if such a
person goes and complains on a forum somewhere that the Wikipedia cabal
keeps reverting their edits to suppress opposing viewpoints etc. This is a
much more difficult situation - but a more civil and supportive community
might go some way towards minimizing this problem.

>
> what is your evidence that these are trolls, i.e. willfull sabotage with
> ill-intent, this is a very serious accusation

Constant bashing and inflammatory accusations to provoke a response seems to
be a large part of what they do on WR. It seems that anything anti-Wikipedia
is uncritically supported by the site. I do recall appalling behavior by
Daniel Brandt on WR, working to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors,
in cases where they wanted to maintain anonymity. Wikipedia Review seems to
support such behavior. (Re revealing identities, I'm not talking about the
Essjay case, of an admin acting under false pretenses - that's a different
and more complex case).

That kind of thing has led me to see it as a troll site. (I can't recall
details of other events, I confess - I found out about some other alleged
events, but I'm wary of posting here only knowing the bare outlines of the
stories)

sustained opposition to a sad state of affairs is not trolling: these are
> people, all from inside Wikipedia, who after painful personal experience,
> decided to dedicate a substantial amount of their time to documenting what
> is happening. (of course, this does not mean that they may have their own
> flaws, or that other things may be wrong, or that frustration leads to
> anger, etc...)langlanguage language language uage
>
> the summary of wikipedia critique, which is well documented and well
> summarized, came from the wikipedia review, augmented with my own research
> which only confirmed the points made
>

I actually thought the *Wikipedia Review's arguments there were very shallow
(I did agree with one of the basic points, relating to civility, though
their statement of it was over the top). Blaming Wikipedia for use of
copyrighted materials and misinformation is ludicrous (even blaming them for
the information hanging around on other sites after they correct the
errors), considering the efforts they go to counter these problems. It looks
like they are looking for any excuse to criticize Wikipedia, and are
painting it in simplistic terms. So the WR writing wasn't a good enough
analysis to get me reading more.

Your own links may be to much better material, but if I read all of those I
will never get my work done - no offence, but at some point I have to break
out of this. However, just now looking at *Open Source
ideologies<http://stillopen.anat.org.au/2007/08/19/open-source-ideologies/>
*, it seems the writer is saying that Wikipedia is improving. I think this
is true in many ways, though the author is not talking about the civility or
lack of civility in the community, which is my main concern.

*

> furthermore, I have done a new round of research, see
> http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Wikipedia, which confirms beyond all doubt the
> lack of due process in case of wikipedia conflicts,
>
> my beef with WR is the terrible software they use, which makes it very time
> consuming to follow ..
>

> so in summary, I think you have been bitten with the utopian streak of
> wikipedia thinking, and exhibit a tribal defense reflex, and so repeat the
> trolling accusations,

Don't think so. My use of the term trolling is probably debateable, but I
have yet to see anything* from the site that impresses me. I do change my
opinion when I find I'm wrong, and acknowledge good points made by opponents
in debates, and I don't think I'm being particularly tribal here. I take up
these arguments because mass collaboration processes are incredibly valuable
and important (and Wikipedia has been at the forefront of these). But I'm
not invested in Wikipedia being always right or pure. It's not.

*

>
>
> if you don't trust WR, go to Wikitruth, again full of citations from
> original admin material,

I'll keep that in mind, when I need to look more deeply into a Wikipedia
issue.

Chris

>
> Michel
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 5:30 AM, Chris Watkins <
> chriswaterguy at appropedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Is there something about this from a trustworthy source? I.e. not
>> wikipediareview.com. Speaking personally, quotes from such an unreliable
>> troll site really detract from the discussion, and make me less inclined to
>> follow these conversations, unfortunately.
>>
>> I notice one of the replies says:
>> It wasn't the concept of a course on applied ethics that was declared
>> "beyond the scope" of wikiversity, it was the implementation (drawn heavily
>> from your personal disputes).
>>
>> - which sounds far more believable, based on what I know of Jimbo and
>> Wikimedia.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 13:30, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "Jimbo Unilaterally Cashiers WMF's Section 230 Immunity - The Wikipedia
>>> Review
>>>
>>> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=22070
>>>
>>> Jimbo's recent intervention in Wikiversity, where he declared various
>>> academic lines of inquiry (primarily associated with a course on
>>> Applied Ethics) to be "Beyond the Scope" of Wikiversity. At the same
>>> time that Jimbo publishes an appeal to donors to contribute to WMF's
>>> mission of bringing the sum of all human knowledge to 21st Century
>>> youth, he declares that a wide swath of educational material on
>>> Wikiversity is beyond the remit of the project, and he personally
>>> expunges it."
>>>
>>> ==
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:27 PM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > The question is who dictates what is useful knowledge and what is not.
>>> >
>>> > God? Jimmy Wales? You? I? The Crowd? or Google?
>>> >
>>> > I personally vote for The Crowd via PageRank like algorithm.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:17 PM, Chris Watkins
>>> > <chriswaterguy at appropedia.org> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>>
>>

-- 
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
blogs.appropedia.org

I like this: five.sentenc.es
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090220/b8b9718e/attachment-0001.html>