wikipedia
stoat | June 12, 2011A headline which is doubtless a hostage to fortune. Anyway, I had fun deriding the Heartland Institute's failed wiki but, as frank points out in the comments, there is more fun to be had: you can look at Special:ListUsers. If you do this on a real wiki like wikipedia, you get an enormously long list, the first page of which consists of !, ! !, ! ! !, ..., ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !, after which whoever it was got bored. And who has been indefed since 2006. In fact, because of the way special characters list first, you have to page through thousands of…
stoat | June 8, 2011From the Heartland Institute:
Subject: Announcing ClimateWiki.org: The Definitive Climate Change Encyclopedia
To: <no-one@cares>Date: Wednesday, June 8, 2011, 4:40 PMAnnouncing ClimateWiki.org: The Definitive Climate Change Encyclopedia
CHICAGO - Backed by more than two decades of institutional knowledge and the work of some of the world's most esteemed climate scientists, The Heartland Institute <http://www.heartland.org/> is proud to announce the launch of a new Web site called ClimateWiki.org . It is the definitive climate change encyclopedia.
It is doomed, obviously.…
stoat | February 3, 2011People don't talk about me much, so I'll point you at ocham.blogspot.com. It is even kind, in parts, but the problem he points out - the difficulty of maintaining an article like [[Existence]] - is quite genuine. I'm currently hacking through various "esoteric" bits of wikipedia removing cruft (I even started [[Gurdjieff Foundation]]), and Existence was but one minor victim of my ghastly surgery. I don't agree with "Ockham" - my attitude is that maths doesn't really belong in an article that is predominantly philosophy, but I don't care enough on that subject to argue hard.
Update: now with…
stoat | October 27, 2010I'm sorry, but information on the list is only available via the list. As soon as you subscribe, you will get an email with full instructions. Please disable your spam filter, as we use steganography to make the more important announcements look like penis enlargement ads. In fact, you may already be subscribed.
stoat | October 23, 2010My previous post refers. There are lots more things to say; this post doesn't really say any of them but veers off at a tangent. Let me know if you get bored.
The tangent to start with is "no-one from outside understand how wikipedia works". An obvious example of this is Lawrence Solomon (my apologies for mentioning: it is more honour than he deserves; but he is a convenient example), who says:
Connolley did not wield his influence by the quality of his research or the force of his argument but through his administrative position
There are several problems with this statement: the first is…
stoat | October 16, 2010No, not the US in Iraq, but a smaller matter: the recent arbcomm case. The case is now closed, and the the usual idiots are as usual getting it wrong (hint: the bit about admin is totally wrong). But then again, no-one from the outside ever understands wikipedia.
At some point I'll do a long post on this (well, or maybe not. We'll see. The point is, this isn't that post). So for now:
The actual decision is available here, though if you prefer to skip over the goo and dribble you can just read the remedies. Though there is a fair amount of goo there too, so you may prfer to skip to just the…
stoat | June 27, 2010This post is about the ridiculous "hide the decline" video. I watched it when it first came out. It wasn't funny, it was dull. Apparently it has now been pulled from YouTube, but who cares?
But... because the thing is anti-science, the std.anti-science septics on wiki feel inclined to have an article on it. Sigh. There enough real subjects to create articles about without wasting time on vapour. I really ought to point you to the current version, and the current edit war: should this edit be included - viz, is the fact that some guy with a blog thinks the video is funny worth noting? I don't…
stoat | January 4, 2010"Part I" is very presumptuous. I might never write part II. Ah well, I press onwards in hope.
I'm going to take my text from Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia and see what we can learn about wiki's workings from the way people misunderstand it. I should warn you that blog is mostly recycled Solomon.
Before I go on (well actually I wrote this *after* I went on, but I came back up here, that is one of the marvels of modern tech) I'll point out that the LS/JD article is riddled with amateur errors that a moments time from someone competent at wiki could have fixed. This is genuine modern…
stoat | December 23, 2009Via dubious routes I ended up at the bizarre http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/william-connolley-and-wikipedia-turborevisionism/. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the original version. In what is presumably deliberate irony, he has coined the term "Turborevisionism" to describe his own updating. And it possesses the always-amusing feature of the ignorant trying to talk about wiki: that people complain about the unreliablity of wiki when they are clearly clueless about how it works.
So: assuming he hasn't re-revised it (I've kept a copy in the "extended" bit below, so refer to that if you…
stoat | December 19, 2009Actually it turns out that this is part 3! But I'm not going to revise the title now. Part 1 and Part 2 refer, as does some digging.
[Update: this made the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-28/In the news]] ]
So, Lawrence "beany" Solomon does me the honour of a full-out assault. I'm a bit puzzled as to why, perhaps more study will reveal this. It looks like he is trying to get some kind of linkage between the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident]] and my on-wiki activities. But although Solomon states directly The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment…
stoat | November 24, 2009Anyone who cares has found them by now so I won't trouble you with all the details. James "Gonad Watcher" Annan is fulfilling, with commendable neutrality, the role of arbitrator to which I appointed him, and I don't think there is much more I need to say. That won't stop me from saying it, of course. Other people who have said sensible things include Denial Depot, Newtongate, CM and of course RC (apologies if you're not on the list; oh all right Eli too since he says he needs the traffic). Indeed pretty well everyone with any sense seems to have got the right answer by now.
So I'll deal with…
awild | September 25, 2009
Nicrophorus orbicollis, Sexton Beetle, Illinois
The intrepid students of IB 468 caught this beautiful black burying beetle during a field trip to Dixon Springs, Illinois. They were kind enough to let me photograph it before it went to the collection.
Rather than me blathering on about this insect's biology, I'll direct you instead to the N. orbicollis wikipedia page. Wikipedia is normally hit-or-miss with regard to insects, but the page for N. orbicollis is an example of the medium at its best.
One thing about carrion beetles, though. Pretty, yes. But they smell terrible, and I…
awild | September 17, 2009...and creates a visual representation of the Pyramica page history over at iphylo:
This is a continuation of an issue I blogged about a couple months ago.
stoat | August 5, 2009Well not in all respects of course. Sometimes people die. But before I get on to that...
Have you noticed that I haven't posted much recently? I've been on holidays. Wales is very nice, I recommend it. I'll go again. That is Castell-y-Bere, if you don't recognise it.
Where was I? Oh yes...
The thing I'm referring to is the way memories fade. There is a wonderful book by KSR called "Icehenge" which you should read, wherein parts of the plot revolve around the way that, although people live for centuries due to strange drugs, they still have the same brains and the same fallible memories…
stoat | July 12, 2009It is most of a year since my last pointless pointless arbcomm case so it was about time for another, and here it is (that's the current state, which may not work in a year or a day's time. Permalink to current state).
I don't think it will be very exciting, but I've been known to be wrong about these things before.
The troubled career of the Advisory Council on Project Development might be more interesting though, in conjunction with its inevitable RFC. This too.
[Update: it has got a bit more exciting: [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley]] is now open -W]
stoat | May 18, 2009There is an interesting (if you like that sort of thing) insight into some wiki-politics available from a recent RFA (which stands for [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]]. Not to be confused, obviously, with RFA which stands for [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests]]). Admins are the folks who do exciting things like blocking vandals (well, and other. My own log is here if you're interested), deleting pages, and a pile of ill-defined miscellaneous tasks. Once upon a time adminship was handed out to anyone who wanted it and who wasn't obviously mad; there is still a token pretence that adminship…
stoat | April 22, 2009Finally, I've been promoted to Rouge admin status. It is a game a little like Mornington Crescent: there are no rules, but it would be a dreadful faux pas to break them.
The excuse was quite a suitable one: I blocked a septic who in a huff had said "I'd quite like to be blocked" but who then proved about as consistent as most septics by demanding to be unblocked.
If you're interested in more heavy-handed wiki humour, WP:GIANTDICK is good (or this version).
stoat | March 25, 2009Via Durova I find Wikitruth Through Wikiorder which is worth at least a quick skim if only because, unlike most commentators on wiki, they don't seem to have totally lost the plot.
Durova points out the obvious lack in their analysis: they concentrate on arbcomm, whereas the everyday activity of admins stomping on fools escapes their notice. For example, I've done 500 admin-type things in the past year, most of them blocking people for edit warring in one way or another. That is puny compared to the general block log, which has 500 blocks in the last 10 hours, mostly just for tedious…
stoat | March 18, 2009Would you believe that people are having an edit war over this [1]? Should the article say "Foam takeout containers are typically discarded after the food has been consumed and are rarely [[Recycling|recycled]]" or not? It is a burning issue.
All right, I know: people will war over anything.
Meanwhile, [2] is fun.