Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 02:10:16 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <illoai@gmail.com>, "Bart Silverstrim" <bsilver@chrononomicon.com> Cc: Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the relativeadvantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not used?)) Message-ID: <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCCEAFCAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <d7195cff0704271511u70172018hf73ff295afe71d3c@mail.gmail.com>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of > illoai@gmail.com > Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 3:11 PM > To: Bart Silverstrim > Cc: Paul Schmehl; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: Wikipedia's perfection (was Re: Discussion of the > relativeadvantages/disadvantages of PAE (was Re: Memory >3.5GB not > used?)) > > > On 27/04/07, Bart Silverstrim <bsilver@chrononomicon.com> wrote: > > > > We don't devote time and > > resources into being "renaissance people". > > Human intelligence is hardly limited in that regard. > While I do not subscribe to the Colin Wilson theory, > the vast majority of people contain so little information > it is quite shameful, and the less you learn the harder > it is to learn. > > These arguments about ethics show how truly shallow > ethicists bother to think. Wikipedia is a daycare centre > which has given out a nearly unlimited number of crayons > and is now complaining about children drawing on the > walls. It is also a fairly plain example of the cliche of the > inmates running the asylum. To assign scholarly status > and impute scholarly ethics on such a nonsensical rubbish > pile is as silly as taking my arguments here as more than > the ranting of a deranged keyboard jockey. > > What that purported professor did is no more unethical > than crapping in somone else's toilet, and to claim other- > wise is to elevate it to a king's throne. > > Once wikipedia (and its ilk) begin to systematically vet > contributors for expertise and seriously review articles > against fact we can nail them to the wall for political bias. > Wikipedia won't, mainly because there's another competing web encyclopedia out there that is taking this approach. However, you sound like you have a case of sour grapes, and you definitely don't sound like you have read much on Wikipedia. The true value of Wikipedia is that it can deal with controversial subjects. Take abortion, for example. Reading about it in a "peer reviewed" encyclopedia, if you didn't know dick about it, you would wonder what all the controversy was about - because those entries are completely stripped out of all loaded phrases and emotion. The same goes with the 2000 US Presidential election. A huge number of people, possibly the majority in the country, believe that there were dirty tricks and that the election was stolen. But, you won't get any sense of that at all reading about it in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I couldn't read the online entries about either of those topics in a peer-reviewed encyclopedia and even end up knowing where to go to find each sides wacko-rediculous statements, and without reading any of that stuff there's no way anyone can understand how unsolvable that issues like that are. Wikipedia is one of the best starting platforms out there on subjects. Naturally, you don't take it as canonical. But, it is going to suggest avenues of research that the official stuff won't. For example, look up "operation freakout" and "operation snow white" in Wikipedia, and look them up in an official encyclopedia. Quite an amazing difference, there. Ted
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