User:Rusl
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My full name is: Rusl Bo Busl Fo Fusl, Mee My Mo Muscle!!!
Talk to me on my talk page!
I like bicycles. I like critical mass ...
I'm not going to put a lot here yet but I will when I have more time.
Contents |
[edit] My wikipedia projection idea
I am sick of hearing the typical criticism of wikipedia: "but ANYBODY can edit it?!"
It is a real symptom of our weakness as a democratic culture and our undereducated [but overschooled] populace that such a rudimentary criticism is focused on exclusively, to the exclusion of other perspectives.
Of course that is the very essence of the system, it is weak and stronger because of being open to all. And the whole system includes many mechanisms to deal with that issue. Of course, as the system gets bigger and bigger from millions of users to tens of millions, the burden of that mass is apparent and the solutions need to be modified to scale. But all in all, it is a tremendously sucessful exercise in voluntary cooperation and design to reduce inevitable conflict [which even spam is a form of, essentially]. It is such a boring topic if that is the only thing you think about. What would people prefer, elite staff aka the same heirarchical top down structures providing a service for free? Some kind of legal authority? Stand up people! You will die one day and so will I. We can't rely on this irrational servitude any longer. This debate is so often confined to such banal "facts" like stephen colberts example about the number of elephants. The real political and interesting information is not such easily verifiable trivia. And again, what a sorry state that so many consider intellectualism to be equivalent to accuracy at trivia.
Philosophically my biggest criticism of wikipedia is not that. I am proud that the thing is open. It is something more subtle.
Wikipedia is object oriented. It strives to be objective and have a Neutral Point of View NPOV. But mostly my problem is with the infrastructure of the object, something inherent in the medium of binary computers perhaps, but different from writing, language and thinking as we normally understand them.
Of course, absolute objectivity is absurd and impossible. I think NPOV is only understood as "objective" by the naive. In reality it is a political consensus, a compromised ideal of objectivity embodied by a policy set by a group. One of the fundamental establishing principles of the project to enable a universal character.
However, the object in the computer, the object story that must be created or referred or have a section group applied to it is the wikipedia model. The technology of the database treats it all as objects. This is useful of course, to make it work. But it sets up a philosophical approach I think to be problematic.
For instance, if I want to write about something that departs from the text of an existing article, then I must create a new object or alter an exsisting one. If I alter an existing object, this may erase or at least draw focus from and priority in the article away from the input of others. So they may be hostile to this change.
My example is the Critical Mass article. Critical Mass is something I know much about, having been intricately involved for almost a decade. It is, similar to wikipedia, an anarchistic decentralised project that has fundamental unifying prinicples only somewhat. The debate, similar to the NPOV simplification, is boring. It is about legality and a narrow view of the thing. The list of other cities with CM has been removed from this article. Outside views of those that have never expereinced the ride are taken to have the same weight as perspectives of participants. Participants are innacurrately grouped to have a certain consensus when the point is in fact that the ride is the opposite, a decentralising project. Similar to wikipedia yet somehow this article has not matured over the years with the encyclopedia. Instead the tone had become more refined to be like that of mainstream media coverage that basically "just don't get it" and describes the event in very superficial ways. older versions of the page reflected the event better.
I have more to write on this, just not now. Anyways that is the basic idea. Do I create many more CM entries for each city, as all are different? This is the obvious. However, then, where does that go? who wants to read all that?
[edit] links to things I make
- bikesexual.org
- critical mass vancouver webpage
- school personal webpage with some animations
- messy bicycle pictures archive
- school essay about anti-copyright
[edit] blogs I done
- my nihilistic personal ramblings etc, I like Kenneth Patchen
- critical mass vancouver blog
- our wedding my husband is jane
- men serving tea to women in their underwear, it's like the inverse of Hooters. Open a franchise of LHTAB in your area today!
- the communist easter egg hunt is a very strange and peculiar thing I came across in the park near my house, Douglas Park Vancouver. I don't know who makes it but it is a personal favourite. It makes no sense.
[edit] news
I gots now to be using linux ubuntu! yay!
I have tried a linux debian before but it was overwhelming to my win98 mind. So I never used it. This ubuntu I think I will because it is a lot more cleanly set up. There are not so many programs automatically installed that I have no idea what to do with any of them. I have encountered a few bugs, but they could have been my fault. Also it helps that I got this spiffy new computer with an MSI motherboard, a dual AMD processor, a gig of ram and 2 x 300gb hard drives. it is fast! I like it. I ran 7 different videos at the same time and they all worked. My old computer could not multitask sound whatsoever. I may be wasting a lot more time on this box than ever before. On the other hand, I hope not. I won't be doing so much annoying repairs like with windows.
