(Well, I’d rather not “think” what porgy tirebiter meant. If he can’t be bothered to tell us what exactly he meant, then I can’t be bothered to respond to his words.)

More on the wonders of Wikipedia policy and policy enforcement: administrator HighInBC, seeing that his blocks on users engaging in personal attacks are being undone, says:

“Perhaps we should rename `Wikipedia:No personal attacks’ to `Wikipedia:Only a few personal attacks, as long as they are not too bad’.”

As for Conservapedia, I’m glad they’ve made clear the distinction between “conservative facts” and “facts.”

It’s like hearing someone criticizing (reasonably and fairly, perhaps) design flaws in, say, Boeing 747, and finishing it by saying: “but I don’t like Yugo either.” I think that’s what tirebiter meant.

Although I contribute to Wikipedia, and have been involved in some of its disputes, the arcane details are beyond me. I have enough trouble remembering the secret Crooked Timber passphrase, not to mention the order of the seventeen circles of initiation.

(I wonder what porgy tirebiter means by this statement. Maybe this statement is just some sort of grand philosophical pronouncement. As in, something along the lines of “You just proved my point! (and no, I’m not going to tell you which point it was, and how it was proven)”. Or “Krispy Kream Doughnuts: So good, you’ll **** ****.” All you need to know that porgy tirebiter just said something profound, even if you don’t quite know what exactly it means.)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled treasonous facts.

Carry on.

I don’t see any policy “changes”. At most there’s a proposal to verify credentials—I understand it was tabled at the beginning of March, and it’s now April. With so much apologetic rhetoric around, I highly doubt the proposal will even begin to fly. And remember, “Essjay” wasn’t promoted to the Arbitration Committee by normal procedure in the first place: what’s the use of changing policy, given that Jimbo promoted “Essjay” by overriding policy in the first place?

Also, let’s not forget that the enforcement of existing policies is already a total mess—wheel wars, backlogs, all that.

And you really can’t beat this for sheer apologetic bull:

“The ethos of Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute, regardless of status, argues Dr Platt. What’s relevant is their knowledge as judged by other readers, not whether they are professors or not – and the fact the student [“Essjay”] was exposed shows it works.”

Man… isn’t it great? If “Essjay” was exposed, the process obviously works; if “Essjay” wasn’t exposed, nobody’ll know about it and there’ll be nothing to complain about, so the process definitely works too! And of course, it took only 9 months to expose “Essjay” surely inspires great confidence in the Wikipedia process…

= = =

As I said, I don’t like Conservapedia either. I might get behind Citizendium or Wikinfo (or even Encyclopaedia Britannica, if I’m that desperate).

I’ve always thought the Talmudic injunction against millennialism and apocalyptic excess was extremely sound. The rabbinical sages advise that if you’re about to plant a tree, and someone comes rushing up to tell you that the Messiah has come, you should first finish planting the tree and then go greet the Messiah.

Transposing the point for this audience: If you are about to feed the cat, and someone comes rushing up to tell you that The Rapture is at hand, you should first finish feeding the cat and then go greet the Apocalypse.

Look, I think I’ve offered as much as can reasonably be done for this level of discussion. I can’t review the entire dataset, and even if I could, anything I said would be dismissed as a partisan critique. I think I’ve raised legitimate methodological issues that are apparent in an initial inspection of the data.

The analogy to global warming/Lancet/evolution denialism is rather the reverse, since Wikipedia generates a lot of rhetoric about how ordinary people can triumph over the ivory-tower intellectuals.

[Further disclosure – Orlowski has quoted me a few times in his stories]

If I have an axe to grind, it’s mainly that I don’t think Orlowski should be taken seriously. His stuff reminds me too much of global warming/Lancet/evolution denialism.

I agree with the implied view that Wikipedia needs to take more notice of real expertise. I think that changes over the last couple of years have moved things in that direction, but there is still a fair way to go in some fields.