Gotta love the goo. That’s what the SQ says, and who are we to disagree. And it’s hard to stop loving blogger, even if it’s not quite the coolest or the most indy blogging setup on the block. But aside from Atom, what is big goo doing for me these days? Why do blogs (and wp mirrors) still clog their search results? I’m sure it’s dull to wonder about such things, but I miss having access to original sources online. Even major newspapers are becoming pretty bad about this… bad information drives out good? Bad puppets? I need more coffee.
Archive for September, 2004
bloogle
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004Newsletter Found
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004A new newsletter about the Wikimedia Foundation is out. It has all kinds of statistics about the projects, including some of the newest ones that are just starting out, and a long interview with Ward Cunningham about the evolution of the wiki concept. Sweet!
John Romero is on my desk
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004Or a protagonist that looks surprisingly like him. An old housemate left me a copy of Daikatana, in its original box… the orange color perfectly matches my title, and a certain banner-message I can think of. I haven’t opened it yet, but just having the ION STORM logo on my desk makes it seem heavier, somehow.
Slashdot comments rule
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004Going on about the encyclopedia that slashdot built (oh wait, that’s E2, not WP), /. produces a few gems.
On the proliferation of Wikipedia clones making Google searches useless:
And for this you blame wikipedia? That’s like blaming Led Zeppelin for the existence of Motley Crue and hair metal.
Propagation of hope
Monday, September 20th, 2004One MILLION dollars
Sunday, September 19th, 2004Alright, not a million dollars, but ”’1,000,000”’ articles.
That’s the milestone the collected Wikipedia language projects — all 105 of them — passed this weekend. Of course there are better predictors of quality and utility, but ”man”, that’s a lot of volunteer-effort, fully searchable, advert-free, widely-translated text.
They’re having a fundraising drive this week; please contribute to it if you can. Also, don’t miss the sexy newsletter going up this week… if you can find it.
Words for Medium
Saturday, September 18th, 2004… English don’t got none. It’s hard to say in one word that something is middling or mediocre unless one is talking specifically about vague quality or ability. Medium-large, medium-strong, middleweight (well, maybe that’s one word), of average thickness, neither slow nor fast, of average intelligence… is this because it’s not emphatic enough to say something is middle-of-the-road? In politics it comes up so much in most any discussion that we not have ‘centrists’. But how about medium-dark, medium-fair, medium-hard, mildly interesting, somewhat obscure, “in the middle-ground”?
The question might better be rephrased as, why do we have two words for most adjectives, one at each end of a supposedly linear spectrum, rather than one word for each adjective (as in NewSpeak), or three (as with “poor, average, good”)?
Who would Jesus bomb?
Saturday, September 18th, 2004Christina rants about using time efficiently
Saturday, September 18th, 2004ex post standards of librarianship
Saturday, September 18th, 2004Back in August, a now-infamous Syracuse Post-Standard article about Wikipedia centered on quotes from a local high-school librarian, one Ms. Stagnitta, who seemed to be thoroughly against the idea of Wikipedia as a reference source. A few days after the SPS article came out, some Wikipedians forwarded her a miffed response they had sent to the paper, to which she replied quickly (and with some chagrin).
It turns out she has no bone to pick with Wikipedia at all. Who knows, she may even like the site.
“I’ll probably regret saying this… this is what got me in trouble in
the first place, but… you may quote me,” she said, and I realized today while talking to a friend that her response hasn’t been quoted nearly enough. An excerpt:
I just re-read what I originally sent to Al Fasoldt in the recent Post-Standard column. I’m afraid I do have egg all over my face… The message was NOT… that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. The message was that the best thing about the web (the sharing of information and ideas) can also make it harder for the average high school student to make a judgement call when checking the authority of a source used for research. I’m sorry if this generated controversy over the authority of the site, this is NOT what was intended. It just illustrates the problem.
So it does.