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[littlefallsmets]

http://www.wikitruth.info

Wikipedia is faaaaaaaaaaar from self-ordered anarchy, my friend. On a micro-scale, it may appear as such and... on the level which you and Lady Rumjay enjoy wikipedia, it may be functionally as such?

But, man, you look up the ladder and there is a mad king who lays down arbitrary shit all over the place and his inner circle of sycophants with their own arbitrary fiefdoms.

The self-ordering nature is frequently and thoughtlessly overruled by the people who own the nut of the enterprise for reasons of... avoiding litigation, of protecting their own versions of the wikipedia stories and their own personal stories, to put their own versions of the truth, to gain favour of those up the Wiki food-chain, etc.

Much like unfettered capitalism, it looks like freedom if you're functioning on certain small-scales and never happen to run into the people who were lucky enough to consolidate the real power early in the game and pass it onto their children and/or proteges...

But if you bump up against those who had the luck or prior advantage to consolidate real power at the beginning and/or those who inherited their power with interest, you begin to realize that...

A ruling class created by rising within the mechanisms of self-ordered anarchy, by luck or by innovation or by prior advantage or by charisma, will eventually use their consolidated power to change the rules so that they support the existing ruling class in perpetuity.

Even if the first generation are truly uncorruptable idealists, the second generation will not be.

Without checks and balances, that's what happens in a "freed" system. The people who for whatever random reason got a sufficient chunk of the pie at the beginning will watch their power snowball until they or their descendants eventually un-write the "freedom" to protect their own interests.

Wikipedia is an accelerated example of that process.

Now, like I say, as a hobby for you or RMJ, a certain small slice of Wikipedia may function as just a cool little place to hobby-edit. And mazeltov to that enjoyment. But there's a bigger picture.

Follow the link.

[colmore]

Wikipedia is exactly functional anarchy.  It's a volunteer organization with no law, threat, force, or contract holding people into their commitments to its mission.  Anarchy isn't an antonym of organization.

[RMJ12345]

I'm a wikipedia editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JohnGaltJr because I love the idea of a self ordered anarchy. Its the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and yet the vast majority of it is well formated and true to the authors' beliefs of the facts.

AH! This is exactly what I've been trying to express about my love for Wikipedia!

I'm afraid that Wikitruth needs a serious NPOV edit. There are certainly a lot of problems with Wikipedia, and it should not be a citeable source, ever. Citing the encyclopedia is bad enough; citing Wikipedia in any kind of academic context is basically like citing a bunch of yahoos. While it's good for disseminating general information and fostering discussion and knowledge, it is not the place for anything deeper than general knowledge. It should be superficial.

[littlefallsmets]

Wikipedia is owned and run by a dude named Jim Wales.

Whenever something happens on Wikipedia that could risk legal action upon Wikipedia, could reflect poorly upon Wikipedia's public image or could reflect poorly upon Jim or his inner-circle of top level Wikipedia editors (which are employed by a for-profit off-shoot of Wikipedia) or their collective version of Wikipedia's history...

These topics are altered or shut down or erased without any say or participation by the people who can supposedly edit or add to anything and everything on Wikipedia, without the participation of mid-level volunteer editors, without even a token show-trial of a public vote...

And without any evidence left that the things changed or erased ever existed.

The most obvious of these policies is documented here: http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=WP:OFFICE but the deeper you dig into that site, the more subtle versions of this sort of power will be discovered... up to and including the Wikipedia higher-ups going into chat rooms with mid-level editors and "suggesting" that if they make changes that the higher-ups like so that they cannot be traced back to these higher-ups, some kind of favour will be curried.

Wikipedia isn't functional anarchy at all. It is corporate feudalism disgused by the fact that the first few layers of its function present the illusion of anarchy. If you're only reading Wikipedia or are only engaged in simple non-controversial edits, you might never get down to the level where you will see that feudalism, definitely.

But, again, that's why it is so much like the idea of a total free-market.

[Teatime]

His name is Jimbo Wales, science fact.

[Arachno-capitalist]

LFM hates wikipedia. I have never known a man to hate an encyclopedia so hard.
The encyclopedia has done this man wrong.

[V-Adore]

True Fact: I know the dude who designed the Wikipedia logo. I learned this when we were at lunch and he was opening his mail, which contained an official letter and check from Jimbo Wales buying the rights. Previous to this, he had never mentioned this, despite the fact that we were all nerds and this gained him immense cachet.

Another True Fact: My general feelings on Wikipedia are comparable to those of the protagonist of "Brandy" on the sea.

[pmcd9]

Man, that wikitruth website is Pat Reynolds.

[littlefallsmets]

Nah, Wikipedia is insanely useful as a starting point in learning things. As a repository for general surface facts on a subject, to later jump off into better researched and more reliable sources, it is pretty much awesome.

My problem with Wikipedia is... all the completely crazy things that people want to claim Wikipedia is beyond being an insanely useful and easy form of general non-in-depth knowledge about things.

It isn't proof of some internet utopia just around the bend, it isn't proof of the efficacy of open-source, it isn't proof of enlightened-anarchy in the new frontier, it isn't proof of how all the world can hold hands and make something perfect through their modems.

It's a great path to general knowledge about obscure things and it's a fun toy to tinker with.

It's also a personal piggy bank for some really strange fucks trying to rewrite their life stories and collect a bunch of fawning sycophants who would rewrite the internet for them to say that the sky is orange if it would get them a higher-ops level...

Protected by all the idealism and all the people getting something out of its more benign levels where it is a source of general knowledge and a tinker toy.

Man, I live in LA. There are a lot of people in LA who only brushed up against the first-level of Scientology and... for those people? It was actually pretty much useful. On the first-level, it's your general sometimes-helpful New Age positive thinking self-actualization flufapuff.

Some people are genuinely helped by that sort of thing. And good for them!

But get deep enough and there are motherfuckers demanding that you give them twenty grand so that they can tell you about an evil alien named Xenu who controls the minds of all psychiatrists and then they're going to use your twenty grand to build a gold statue of a mediocre science fiction author who died in a puddle of his own vomit in a mansion outside of Palm Springs, hopped up on anti-schizophrenia medication.

That's all I'm saying.

Wikipedia is awesome for learning about defunct European countries or what Kitty Pryde is up to in alternate dimensions. It is in no way proof that the Internet is infallible or that enlightened anarchy works or anything like that.

[JorgeFabregas]

People, shut up about wikipedia.

Christian dare.

[Nabubrush]

No shit - too much digression in a thread specifically about a particular strip. IS NOTHING SACRED?

[theinevitable]

no.

er... yes.

whichever one means "nothing is sacred."

I feel that in this case, either one could mean that. in that: "yes, you're right, nothing is sacred" == "no, nothing is sacred."

[AugustWest]

You know what, I haven't arbitrarily locked a thread in a good long while.  This looks like an excellent candidate for some caprice.

[V-Adore]

It was pretty much time.