29th November 2005, 3:57 PM
That sounds aboot right.
And by the way, I am really loving Wikipedia. Always use rational judgement about what is there, and if something doesn't sound right, look into it further (just like everything else in life), but it's amazing how accurate the majority of the place can be. The idea is just that anyone can just come in and alter any page there and it's up immediatly. It shouldn't work. If our experiences with the internet have taught us anything, it should be riddled with net graffiti, propaganda, misinformation, and advertising. Yet somehow, this actually works. Information that is incorrect is eventually weeded out and updated by someone with more knowledge. Slowly, an intelligent document worthy, nay, superior to any Encyclopedia entry forms, and justifying it's information with many references and/or details on how to make the observations on one's own. Sure, there is the occasional "this is gay" entry to be found there, but eventually those are replaced. I'm actually surprised how even handed even out and out wrong ideas like intelligent design are handled (I bet ya two male nipples, an appendix, a panda's thumb, t-rex's arms, the human combined breathing and eating hole, some inverted retina, and a defective gene in humans that in dogs allows self-production of vitamin C our bodies are NOT perfectly engineered). I at first thought the majority of people editing topics would be those actually interested in it, but then I checked out the moon landing hoax page, and even though I would think most willing to edit it would actually be those who believe the moon landing was a hoax, the page actually contains a detailed debunking of "hoaxer"'s claims.
I'm still shocked it works. This is more than an amazingly useful tool and use of the internet. This is an experiment in memetic evolution AND human social psychology combined! This is also the most optimistic forcast for the human mind's potential I've yet seen, showing that eventually, all nonsense is weeded out for what it is.
And by the way, I am really loving Wikipedia. Always use rational judgement about what is there, and if something doesn't sound right, look into it further (just like everything else in life), but it's amazing how accurate the majority of the place can be. The idea is just that anyone can just come in and alter any page there and it's up immediatly. It shouldn't work. If our experiences with the internet have taught us anything, it should be riddled with net graffiti, propaganda, misinformation, and advertising. Yet somehow, this actually works. Information that is incorrect is eventually weeded out and updated by someone with more knowledge. Slowly, an intelligent document worthy, nay, superior to any Encyclopedia entry forms, and justifying it's information with many references and/or details on how to make the observations on one's own. Sure, there is the occasional "this is gay" entry to be found there, but eventually those are replaced. I'm actually surprised how even handed even out and out wrong ideas like intelligent design are handled (I bet ya two male nipples, an appendix, a panda's thumb, t-rex's arms, the human combined breathing and eating hole, some inverted retina, and a defective gene in humans that in dogs allows self-production of vitamin C our bodies are NOT perfectly engineered). I at first thought the majority of people editing topics would be those actually interested in it, but then I checked out the moon landing hoax page, and even though I would think most willing to edit it would actually be those who believe the moon landing was a hoax, the page actually contains a detailed debunking of "hoaxer"'s claims.
I'm still shocked it works. This is more than an amazingly useful tool and use of the internet. This is an experiment in memetic evolution AND human social psychology combined! This is also the most optimistic forcast for the human mind's potential I've yet seen, showing that eventually, all nonsense is weeded out for what it is.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)