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Directory:Akahele/In the eye of the beholder (view source)

Revision as of 16:57, 22 October 2010

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     <li><span style="color: #000000;">Troll and Electric Knife, © by Gregory Kohs, <a title="©" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thekohser/" target="_blank"><span class="comment">all rights reserved, used with permission</span></a>.</span></li>
 
     <li><span style="color: #000000;">Troll and Electric Knife, © by Gregory Kohs, <a title="©" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thekohser/" target="_blank"><span class="comment">all rights reserved, used with permission</span></a>.</span></li>
 
     <li><span style="color: #000000;">Wikipedia Art logo, <a title="GNU" href="http://wikipediaart.org/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Wikipedia_Art.png" target="_blank"><span class="comment">GNU Free Documentation License 1.2</span></a>.</span></li>
 
     <li><span style="color: #000000;">Wikipedia Art logo, <a title="GNU" href="http://wikipediaart.org/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Wikipedia_Art.png" target="_blank"><span class="comment">GNU Free Documentation License 1.2</span></a>.</span></li>
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==Comments==
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16 Responses        to “        In the eye of the beholder        ”
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Comments RSS
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Barry Kort     
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Spitting In the Eye of the Bescolder
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In the gray area between True and False, there lies the Unknown, the Unknowable, and Art.
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Sincerity and Intent are notoriously hard to judge in a cyber-culture like Wikipedia.  In the end, it comes down to a personal opinion, a haphazard theory of mind about another character, based on a handful of encounters in a bizarro online world.
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Notwithstanding the taboo against original research, the discussion pages of Wikipedia are flush with novel characterizations in which rival editors are variously adjudged as disruptive trolls, tendentious PoV-pushers, vandals, meat puppets, clowns, and cranks.
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Oddly enough, few of these challengers are characterized as artistes worthy of respect for illustrating the erratic process by which one reliably reckons authentic knowledge amidst a miasma of opinions, judgments, and idiosyncratic points of view.
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My Continuing Adventures in Technology… » links for 2009-03-23     
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[...] Akahele | In the eye of the beholder (tags: art culture criticism internet wikipedia authorship online intent epistemology) [...]
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Gregory Kohs     
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It may be appropriate at this time for me to take full credit for this artistic edit:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electric_knife&diff=next&oldid=177138881
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Less than 30 hours later, the user account was indefinitely blocked for the crime of “vandalism”.  The Wikipedia administrator who issued the block also happens to be a trans-gendered individual (which might suggest a conflict-of-interest surrounding “hip and buttock padding”), but who am I to say?
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Nihiltres     
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“If the administrators would put their mops down for a minute and listen to what the trolls are saying, perhaps they might learn something.”
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If so, what’s a reasonable way of dealing with edits designed to be disruptive? What do you suggest is the proper way to react?
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It stands to reason that people who can’t behave within reasonable limits shouldn’t be listened to—being listened to is their goal, to get a reaction is their goal, and this goal is destructive. Satire and irony are one thing, but surely it is better for the goal of a constructive, collaborative project to filter out nonsense and so-called “trolling”.
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P.S.: With all due respect to Mr. Kohs, the picture with the electric knife is hilarious
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Gregory Kohs     
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Nihiltres is a Wikipedian with whom I’ve sparred (sometimes with less tact than I’d have wished) in various venues on the Internet.  However, we have been participating amicably in the Yahoo! Answers forum regarding Wikipedia, for a number of weeks now.  I have to say I am building a certain respect for this person, and his 68% “Best Answer” ratio in generating Answers on Yahoo! is simply phenomenal.
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Now, that being said, I ask the dear readers to simply peruse some of the words that Nihiltres has entered into the discussion:
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“disruptive”
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“can’t behave”
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“destructive”
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But, he does show hope in at least noting that “Satire and irony are one thing…”  STICK WITH THAT THOUGHT, Nihiltres.  If you are capable of recognizing irony when it’s presented to you from the outside artist, might not you also be capable of recognizing irony when it surrounds you from within on a particular encyclopedia project?
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Are you absolutely certain that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia?  After nearly six years of existence, would not someone by now have served on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees who has professional experience in reference publishing?
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If you’re wearing a live chicken on your head, but you insist that it’s a fedora, is it our responsibility to not “disrupt” you from your notions, “behave” ourselves, and try to not be “destructive” in telling you things might not be as they seem to you?
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Paul Wehage     
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@Nihiltres, thank you for the compliment about the photo of Mr. Kohs. It’s under his copyright and he very generously agreed to share it with us for the humorous note it gives the article.
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The business about “hip and buttock” padding on the “electric knife” article is a long standing joke on WR, but it does beg the question of why the person who made the sourced statement (dismembering spouses) was banned and why the person who made the unsourced statement (”hip and buttock padding for transvestites”) was allowed to continue editing without as much as a warning, in spite of the clear breach of policy?
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In hindsight, we now know that the person who ended up banning the person who challenged the “hip and buttock” padding was later discovered to be trans gendered herself.  So who was making the disruptive edits?  Who was banned?  Are you sure that you can completely state who was the troll and who was the encyclopedist in this situation?
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The whole point of this article is that WP editors are much too quick to call “troll” when they can’t  really know what the other person is trying to say.  Self-criticism is a good start here: even the WP cabal has come around to this idea, given the number of card-carrying members who now post on the Wikipedia Review.
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The Wikipedia Art project was handled with a bit more tact, yet it created a great deal of bad blood between the artists and Wikipedia, as their site points out.  These people are serious, notable artists.  Why are they excluded from participating because you people can’t understand what they were trying to do? Why have you allowed this to remain in this state, without trying to at least understand the motivations and actions?  Why is it always a one way street to Bansville with you people?
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Maybe you need to think about what you’re doing and why because it sure isn’t adding up to “the sum of all human knowledge” with de-facto exclusions such as this.
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Barry Kort     
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“What’s a reasonable way of dealing with edits designed to be disruptive? What do you suggest is the proper way to react?”
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The first thing to do is to verify the hypothesis that an edit is “designed to be disruptive.”  Can you tell me how you establish a reliable theory of mind regarding another editor’s intentions?
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However, if one is disturbed or upset by an unexpected edit, a reasonable way to react is to 1) candidly disclose that one is surprised, disturbed, or upset, 2) inquire if that was the intended reaction, and 3) inquire further as to the editor’s intended purpose.
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It occurs to me that jumping to a haphazard conclusion about another editor’s intentions is a classic recipe for absurdist drama.
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Nihiltres     
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Rather, I think it is one’s responsibility to not rip the chicken from the person’s head and cook them something like in that picture I found so amusing above. Instead, perhaps merely holding up a mirror will do the trick—if it turns out that the chicken is a pet by the name of Fedora…
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Nihiltres     
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My previous comment might make less sense than I thought it did, especially in the light of the comments I missed by leaving the window open for a long time. :/
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I find the responses interesting, (and indeed I acknowledge that you’re right about the importance of a theory of mind, though I want to point out that it’s not black-and-white) and think it would be worthwhile to continue this conversation in a better forum than a blog comment system.
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Perhaps I’ll get around to registering an account on Wikipedia Review; while I dislike the atmosphere there, if discussion there could produce ideas to improve Wikipedia without sacrificing its nature*, it would be constructive.
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*that is, sacrificing those elements which are arguably strengths of Wikipedia, such as open editing. Nupedia’s already been proven to not work.
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Barry Kort     
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There are two or three alternative venues that can be used for a serious round-table discussion.
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Emperor     
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Ah the infamous electric knife, with “cheeto-colored beaver teeth”.  Good times.
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Speaking of trolling, readers might be interested in the SureFire M6 Guardian article, and Jimmy Wales’ response to the creation of the article.  He titles it, “A little advice from an Internet old timer about trolls”.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ASureFire_M6_Guardian&diff=177094663&oldid=177092001
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Jon Awbrey     
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It appears that Akahele has quickly, all too quickly reached that old Kierkegaardian Either-Or — it will have to choose Either the response of the conversional aesthete, running the mill from effete to hysterical, Or it will have to convert the moral outrage that is our due into the concerted action that it will take to ameliorate, not celebrate the Absurd.
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Paul Wehage     
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Shouldn’t one first try to examine the underlying patterns and reactions to THE ABSURD in order to find the underlying meaning in all of this?  If you haven’t defined the problem, you certainly can’t solve it.  An examination of intent seems to be necessary in understanding the dynamics.
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Jon Awbrey     
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Re: “An examination of intent seems to be necessary in understanding the dynamics.”
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Observation of the dynamics is necessary to form a fair hypothesis about the intent.
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Just how long do you plan on staring at this particular cobra before you do that?
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Paul Wehage     
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Well, Mr. Awbrey, why don’t you write a piece about what should be happening? We’re going to be opening up to other contributors pretty soon…
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Violet Vernon     
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If I had a nickel for every time I came to akahele.org! Great read!
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