Comments on: Thinking about Citizendium and Wikipedia: Part 1

By: Bookmarks about Citizendium

Bookmarks about Citizendium — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:44:25 +0000

[...] – bookmarked by 5 members originally found by markleung on 2008-11-04 Thinking about Citizendium and Wikipedia: Part 1 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/09/09/thinking-about-citizendium-and-wikipedia-part-1/ – [...]

By: Where next for Where Next? « Where Next

Where next for Where Next? « Where Next — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:01:49 +0000

[...] I learnt something important for myself. Being unsure is a useful prerequisite for learning.” Thus spake JP Rangaswami and he’s right. Blogging ideas, and discussing them is (for me) a great way of thinking my ideas [...]

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:09:09 +0000

As someone who has made small contributions at both Wikipedia and Citizendium, I’ll add a couple comments of my own here:

(1) Because everything I do at Citizendium requires me to use my real name, I’m more careful. Maybe that’s a personal ethical problem, but if so, it’s widespread, I’m sure. I’ve never vandalized an article at Wikipedia, but I’ve been more cavalier about adding information there than at Citizendium. (I don’t really contribute at Wikipedia anymore, but I was occasionally cavalier when I did.)

(2) I’ve enjoyed the structures at Citizendium for thinking through priorities. I tend to think that information naturally organizes hierarchically (e.g., there are only a limited number of felicitous titles for an article), but an undifferentiated mass of contributers with very little stake in the outcome will obscure the hierarchy of information.

(3) Related to #2 — I really like Wikipedia, but I’m increasingly annoyed by all the single-sentence additions that people make. “Oh, I know a fact about this subject!” they think, and so they add their fact at the end of a paragraph. It makes for lots of interesting (usually accurate) information that’s not integrated into the article. I think that Larry Sanger is right when he objects to calling Wikipedia a real encyclopedia. And I’m glad that he’s not calling Citizendium one until it earns the title.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:19:36 +0000

JP, may I be so presumptuous as to suggest that you need to work on your critical reading skills? The second of your discoveries strikes me as a symptom of missing out on “deep structure” messages due to getting hung up on “surface structure” details. We all have personal idiosyncrasies in how we communicate (don’t I know it!); and experts are no exceptions to this rule. However, as I have tried to argue in this thread, we should not let such matters interfere with our seeking to challenge everything we read on grounds of substance, rather than style:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/09/09/thinking-about-citizendium-and-wikipedia-part-1/#comment-186874

By: JP

JP — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:48:03 +0000

Maybe you’re right, Dan. Sometimes I’ve wondered what I really want in this respect. What you touch on has bothered me. A lot.

That’s partly why I haven’t been able to post further on this subject as yet. I’m trying to work some things out while I try and understand more about “expertise”.

I’ve discovered two things so far. One, that I do want to learn from experts. And two, the problem I have with (some) experts is more to do with bigoted or closed stances than it is to do with expertise per se.

Since I began to understand that, I began to concern myself with why I thought so many experts were closed in their thinking. Because right or wrong, that was the root of my anti-expertise bias. So I am working on it.

There is also something else niggling in my mind, something to do with the way some experts tend to exclude others; this exclusion takes many forms, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. I want to learn from people with fresh views and perspectives as well.

Sometimes I feel that the worst form of groupthink is that which involves experts.

So you’re right. There are things in this space I need to work on. In myself, within myself. And I’m happy to listen to offers of help.

By: Dan Shaw

Dan Shaw — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:07:03 +0000

It appears that you want to have all the information flowing like a river to you, but don’t want the “experts” to be part of it.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:18:05 +0000

Good things come to those who wait, particularly where hard data is involved. The Blotter, which is maintained on the ABC News Web site by Brian Ross and his team of investigative reporters, has compiled some numbers on the impact of phishing.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/cybersquatting-.html

I realize that this is not electronic mail from either Nigeria or a lottery; but, since most phishing attacks are conducted through misrepresented electronic mail, I figure that the data points are useful. Here they are:
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In 2006, 3.5 million adults admitted to revealing sensitive personal or financial information to a phisher, according to market analyst Gartner Inc. Of those, 2.3 million lost money, with each victim losing an average of $1,244.
–
My guess is that Gartner has more data points for its subscribers, probably even about Nigerian accounts and lotteries! Turning this back on the thesis of JP’s post, while $1244 would not cripple me financially, I rather LIKE the fact that Yahoo! applies some expertise to gather suspect electronic mail in a “Bulk” folder, presenting me with just enough data to vet it safely. Yahoo! seems to have found the right mix of invoking their in-house expertise and giving me a right to exercise my own critical reading skills.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:02:29 +0000

As part of my ongoing campaign against our all-too-human tendency to play fast-and-loose with the words we use, I have just written one of my longer posts on just how problematic the concept of “community” is when we have to deal with real-world problems:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/09/voice-of-swiss-peoples-party.html

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:52:32 +0000

I just found a nice passage that takes a slightly different approach to my skeptical position. The author is Ian I. Mitroff. The source is his paper, “A Communication Model of Dialectical Inquiring Systemsâ€”A Strategy for Strategic Planning.” Here is the first paragraph of the “Concluding Remarks.”
–
In this paper, we have tried to argue for a fundamental principle that is basic (or should be) to all inquiry, i.e., that ONE ONLY STANDS TO UNDERSTAND AN ISSUE, ANY ISSUE, WHEN HE HAS WITNESSED THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE KIND OF DEBATE TAKE PLACE ON THAT ISSUE. In this age of complex problems where no man can possibly hope to master all fields of inquiry, we are constantly being asked to rely on, to trust, or to have faith in this or that ‘expert.’ But in an age where all issues cut across expertise and where the consequences of believing in experts are portentous, it is dangerous to trust any one expert. Nicholas Murray Butler long ago defined an expert as “one who knows more and more about less and less,” and Bertrand Russell warned us that, “Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.”
–
JP should like this as an argument against the Cult of the Expert; however, Mitroff then quotes the following text by C. West Churchman:
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â€¦ people are always urged to trust each other in this age when there is much danger if mistrust occurs. â€¦ one cannot help asking why should trust be necessary? â€¦ Is there not â€¦ a dangerous as well as a virtuous side of trust? â€¦ Would it not be better to spend the time removing the conditions that make trust necessary, rather than developing the conditions for building trust?
–
This probably goes against JP’s grain, but it also leads to Mitroff’s conclusion:
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To paraphrase Churchman, would it not be better to spend out time developing methods whereby we could maximally challenge out experts â€¦ rather than in developing trust of our experts? IF I CAN MAXIMALLY CHALLENGE AN EXPERT, I HAVE LESS OF A NEED TO TRUST HIM. I DON’T WANT TO TRUST â€¦, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO INTERROGATE THEM. If there is any “faith” built into the dialectical inquirer, it is the faith that NO ONE CAN CHALLENGE AN EXPERT â€¦ LIKE ANOTHER EXPERT â€¦ WHO IS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE FENCE. But in the spirit of this paper, even this article of “faith” is subject to debate.
–
In light of these remarks, I would argue that the true value of the Internet is the extent to which it allows us to challenge experts, either by points us to experts “on the opposite side of the fence” or by providing us with resources through which we can express our own challenges.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:59:28 +0000

Colin, the skeptical doubter in me wonders whether ANY filter (no matter how well it performs “to spec”) entails the risk of undermining my aforementioned “capacity to be a critical reader.” While I did not mention it explicitly, that capacity includes a capacity for triage; and I think I mean that in the literal sense of dividing reading matter in to what requires sustained reflective attention, what should be skimmed, and what should be chucked with barely a glance (if any). Some of us learned how to do this sort of thing through our experiences with the Sunday edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES, but now we seem to have become convinced that the scale is so massive that we need technology to do it for us. I agree about the scale, and I agree that there is a role for technology. However, I believe that every individual should still assume the personal responsibility of committing to doing his or her own triage. Otherwise, I fear the risk of mind rot is too great:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/08/death-of-communication.html