[tuning] Re: 88-edo & LT beating precision etc........

Man, Wikipedia users who don't provide their real names
are losers. There's a time and a place for anonymity.
A publicly-edited encyclopedia isn't one of them.

Yes, I know one of the design elements of the original
wiki was anonymous contribution. But that's a different
sphere. The argument for anonymity there was largely
based on ThreadMode. Wikipedia has edit history; anonymity
clearly isn't one of its design elements. And no, virtual
identity isn't good enough. It's an encyclopedia of the
real world; sign your freakin' name.

In situations where people might be persecuted for their
speech, fine. I think those should be rare in the English
edition.

-Carl

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> Man, Wikipedia users who don't provide their real names
> are losers. There's a time and a place for anonymity.
> A publicly-edited encyclopedia isn't one of them.

It's very easy to accidently edit anonymously on Wikipedia; all you
need do is fail to log in. Haven't you ever done that?

> In situations where people might be persecuted for their
> speech, fine. I think those should be rare in the English
> edition.

There are topics that are sensitive, in that people might not want
other people to know that they had an interest in them. I just
checked, and Wikipedia has an article on necrophilia. I might hesitate
to contribute, even if I knew something about the topic, for fear
people would wonder just why I'm so damned interested in necrophilia.
In fact, many of the edits are anonymous, though many are not.

However, if I ran a funeral home, there's no way in hell I would
contribute to an article on necrophilia. Yet, someone could be running
a funeral home and have a lot of practical, hands-on experience with
necrophilia, and feel they wanted to bring their wisdom on that topic
to the world.

I find there is more about this topic in this article than I probably
wanted to know, such as the existence of homosexual necrophile ducks,
or the fact that in some states there is no specific law against it.
That's the wonder of Wikipedia. I'd be careful messing with it if I
were Jimbo.

> > Man, Wikipedia users who don't provide their real names
> > are losers. There's a time and a place for anonymity.
> > A publicly-edited encyclopedia isn't one of them.
>
> It's very easy to accidently edit anonymously on Wikipedia;
> all you need do is fail to log in. Haven't you ever done that?

You get an ip address, not some weird handle with no real
name on the user page.

> > In situations where people might be persecuted for their
> > speech, fine. I think those should be rare in the English
> > edition.
>
> There are topics that are sensitive, in that people might
> not want other people to know that they had an interest in
> them.

My advice to those people: unless you live in China or some
other opressive country, get over it. I discuss things like
that anonymously on boards dedicated to them, not on
Wikipedia.

> I just checked, and Wikipedia has an article on necrophilia.
> I might hesitate to contribute, even if I knew something
> about the topic, for fear people would wonder just why I'm
> so damned interested in necrophilia.

I was thinking of tuning theory when I wrote my original
complaint. There are a lot of handles that do a lot of
editing on a lot of ordinary topics, with no nexus to the
real world.

But given that the Wikipedia modus operandi is unbiased
reporting on reality, its authors should enjoy far less
worry over this kind of thing than they would anywhere else.
If you can't say it on Wikipedia, maybe you ought to
reconsider if it's worth thinking about.

> However, if I ran a funeral home, there's no way in hell
> I would contribute to an article on necrophilia.
> Yet, someone could be running a funeral home and have a
> lot of practical, hands-on experience with necrophilia,
> and feel they wanted to bring their wisdom on that topic
> to the world.

One could always log out in such cases.

-Carl