Comments on: The Great Success of the Great Failure

By: Cherie

Cherie — Fri, 05 May 2006 04:33:14 +0000

Jason,
I was very thrilled to find your wikipedia speech from Notacon online. Do you remember me telling you that I would miss it?… sigh… anyway, late last night I sat and listened and made comments at the ceiling and at Chad about the many points that you had brought up. I have to say that I agree with you about Wikipedia becoming a major source of research since I have seen it within the classroom. The students do not understand how some of the Wiki is “unreliable;” they think of it is as concrete and the last word on most topics. Even now, as I scope out things from reddit or metafilter, I constantly see references from wiki as the ultimate source for info…not to mention, links from SunTimes and The New Yorker leading straight to Wiki for clarafication. Anyway, I just wanted to say sweet talk and I’m glad I got to grab it. Talk to ya soon.

By: riscphree

riscphree — Wed, 03 May 2006 12:45:59 +0000

Jason, I absolutely LOVED your talk. I went into the room not expecting something that damn good, I came out freakin amazed.

By: Firas

Firas — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:40:04 +0000

( Does it have a Wikipedia page yet? )

Not notable :p

Jason, while I didn’t find the main thesis of your speech very intruiging (wikipedia’s claims vs. actuality and how that relates to creating collaborative information spaces), I think the most interesting observation you made was that the downside of having no authoritative administrative structure in the old days (in an effort to promote egalitarianism) means that when some contentious administrative decisions have to be made they happen in zipped-lip fashion, messing up people’s expectations. I wonder what a sociologist would make of it. As a political science student it makes me wonder about whether without a transparent ranking structure (x has power, deal with it, discuss) you get x exercising power in an unaccountable way (all of you are as worthy as x, but x has to make a decision on this, deal with it, don’t discuss).

By: Bryn Davies

Bryn Davies — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 06:56:08 +0000

I often waste hours idly browsing on Wikipedia ( and similar timesinks such as e2 ), but had to acknowledge a long ago the stark weirdness about NPOV, notoriety, original research and the value of experts. I really enjoyed your speech, so thanks for putting it online where everyone can listen to it.

( Does it have a Wikipedia page yet? )

By: Derek Arnold

Derek Arnold — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:29:10 +0000

Jeff: Monitors are not books, and additive color is different than subtractive. Less light hitting my eyes actually amounts to less strain after my hours-long surfing sessions.

This speech summed up everything that people that I IRC with have been saying in more rough and profane terms for some time.

By: Jason Scott

Jason Scott — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:25:32 +0000

S’called a joke, Jeff.

I appreciate the positive/insightful review on your site about Inclusionism/Deletionism; I should point out that those terms aren’t mine, although framing them as being a truly intractible battle was definitely my own independently-deduced idea. (I suspect others have noticed the same issue.)

By: Jeff Atwood

Jeff Atwood — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:45:56 +0000

“Incredibly ugly color scheme”?

Have you looked at your own site lately? Holy cow.

I realize there is a religious aspect to the black-on-white vs. white-on-black decision, but.. the site that mirrors the look of printed pages in books, which we’ve been reading for the last thousand years or so, isn’t the odd man out here.

I have some citations supporting this here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000340.html

The general rule of thumb is, you want contrast, but not TOO much contrast. I get halation effects really badly from sites colored like yours.

By: James

James — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:26:36 +0000

I have to admit, that because you were rather vague beforehand on what was in the speech, I was in the group who thought you were going to attack it as “wrong”. I am pleased to be proved wrong.

Having listened to the speech it strikes me as a list of examples to learn from[1] for future creators of wiki encyclopedias and online communities in general. I know Debian formed a strong constitution that limited DPL’s power after a year of being run ragged by a very strong DPL.

It also strikes me as a lot could be learnt from studying nomic[2] as it starts out with a simple rulebase and evolves towards a definition of winning the players themselves define.

[1] ie, they’re mistakes that should be avoided.
[2] as well as normal political theory of course.

By: Grey

Grey — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:47:34 +0000

Thanks for putting this up. I’ve listened to some of your other speaches, “100 years of digital art” and “digital preservation” and found them highly interesting. I look forward to this one and keep them coming : )