"Giorgio F. Gilestro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Hi Michael, > >> David Gerard, who is on vacation, found that the bulk of WP was >> originated by occasional editors. While admins and wannabes had >> lots of edits, they were not the main source of useful content. This >> contradicts statements by Jimbo about who is contributing. > > I am not sure I know what you mean by occasional editors but I have the > feeling this contradicts also the result of that experiment I have read > about elsewhere. (AaronSw on 'who writes wikipedia'). That was the only > collection of data I could find around - now my knowledge of the topic > is in fact very limited but I am sure I am not wrong when I say that a > systematic analysis of how wikipedia is working has never been done. > I don't know why this happened and the only hypothesis I could put > forward is that simply nobody was expecting such an explosion of WP and > so we weren't really prepared to handle the situation. > This is a great pity in my view and it would be even worse to repeat the > same mistake again. Ideally one should be able to know as much as > possible about the work of the authors and the editors: byte by byte. > When something goes wrong in an experiment first thing you do is run to > the data and trying to figure out what was wrong indeed. Here we cannot > do it. As a matter of fact we don't even know what the structure of > wikipedia is. > > Anyway, if the data you mention are real, meaning that only a small part > of the crew does the big part of the job (I confess this is hard to > believe for me) than this issue should be taken in the deepest > consideration because it would change things. You don't need anymore, > for instance, to give too much power to the majority of users since > their contribution is minimal; that would lower the noise in the system > (reads: less vandals). > >> You are calling for people who really understand to explain things. > Right, but it is not as easy as that. Before explaining something you > need to make your mind clear and have the problem well figured out. And > you need a method. A professional, for instance, would NEVER write > anything without introducing the proper references or by giving error > rates when talking about statistics. This is something the average > citizen never does because it is really matter of method; either you > learn to do that or you don't. > >> When Feynman ran out of brain to figure things, he explained 'em: > I am not sure I follow this, sorry.
Hello Giorgio, Feynman explained how we don't understand things. There is no model. He mentions the Mayan system, for predicting when Venus would be the morning star and when it would be the evening star, at the beginning of his New Zealand lectures, which can be viewed at the link I furnished. They had no model but a good system of counting and renormalization. Now we have a model - the solar system. However for particle physics, we have no model but a good system of counting and renormalization. The lectures were experimental - he wasn't sure if he'd be able to explain. The brains that will cough up the model need to be pointed at the problem, and I suppose that was Feynman's motivation for trying to explain things. Grigory Perelman isn't interested in money or politics. I'd hope that if he felt like explaining what we don't know about math, just as a one-shot, that citizendium would be an inviting place for him to attempt this. As for the stats on who does WP, what Gerard said was, that it wasn't the regulars, but rather people who found it easy to contribute something they knew, and didn't get involved after they had done that. So that is what I meant by occasional, which I suppose you'll find believable. Jimbo was claiming that only a few people had done all the work. Ciao, Michael _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
