Comments on: Personals: Wikipedia Critic Seeks Like-Minded Author for Laughs, Adventure

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:39:01 +0000

I started writing a comment here, but it got kind of long, so I just posted it to my site instead. Here’s the link:

http://www.antinomian.com/2008/01/05/an-open-letter/

Anyway, this sounds like a cool project. I’d love to be involved!

By: Jim Leonard

Jim Leonard — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:02:06 +0000

The older I get, the less time I have to spend on things that other people are already obsessing over. I figure there’s enough internal conflict and bickering at WP already, so I give it very little thought.

I wasn’t giving WP a wide berth until an article I wrote several hour’s worth of material for (CGA, if you’re curious) was challenged with the idiotic “no original research” tag. That blows my mind. If I put the exact same text on my personal webpage, THEN it’s accepted? Huh? I don’t have the free time these days to waste a few hours of effort only to have it chunked, so I don’t bother any more.

By: cassiel

cassiel — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:03:52 +0000

I’d love to burn down WP. };->
But unfortunately I don’t like to write a book for the same reasons like Jason’s either. It’s already hard work to ignore WP day by day and there are more important things to do. And writing books is an anachronism like WP itself. And as we say in German: “Es ist schwer gegen einen groÃŸen Misthaufen anzustinken”. If WP was highly flamable it would be only a matter of time when we could watch it going up in flames by its own.

I think this WP activism is just longing for attention. (German) News items about WP are decreasing. People do care less about it. WP is getting boring. And maybe that’s the 3rd best that can happen to WP beside totally ignoring and burning down.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:53:37 +0000

I think people don’t “get” what Wales is doing with the birthday. As I understand it, he was born on one day, but his birth certificate, in error, says another day. He then makes a fuss over this discrepancy. I don’t know if it’s clever marketing (give journalists a human-interest tidbit, and they’ll latch onto it instead of asking questions about $14 million dollars in venture capital), or simply his way of making a comment on official sources, or something else. But I think there’s is something to it rather than sheer perversity.

By: Fred Blasdel

Fred Blasdel — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:17:00 +0000

Part of my visceral reaction to Cory’s egotistical weirdness is that all of his fiction is about him too â€” he is always the main character.

What’s bizarre about the way he makes his protagonists exaggerations of himself is that he amplifies the absolute worst parts of himself in them: They’re super-paranoid, passive-aggressive, kneejerk, abusive, self-promoting asshats â€“ somehow even more than he is in real life.

Even the other characters in the books he writes hate ‘him’.

Jimbo Wales outdoes even Cory Doctorow with stuff like the debacle over his birthdate â€” there’s a Borgesian metafictional element to it when your ego is wrought in the guts of The sum of Human Knowledgeâ€¦