[oclug] Linux talk tonight.

[Brad Barnett]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:34:54 -0400 (EDT)
"Jon Earle" <je_oclug at kronos.honk.org> wrote:

> Brad Barnett wrote:
> > Wikipedia's issues will only be resolved when there is a way to
> > publish a static page by consent, perhaps every week or month or so. 
> > When this occurs, Wikipedia's strengths will no longer be cancelled
> > out by its weaknesses.
> >
> > Until then Bill, you're nuts if you hand out Wikipedia urls as
> > trusted. This specific page in question will likely move all over the
> > place in the next six months.  It could easily move to rants against
> > Windows, and back to rants against Linux.  It could be entirely
> > replaced for fun by someone over a period of a few hours, and not
> > caught for a few days.  I could be replaced by a picture containing
> > child porn, and during the few minutes it stays, be viewed by someone
> > you have sent there.
> 
> I used to think as you, but then I realized the folly of that. ;)
> 
> Wikipedia has the _potential_ to be inaccurate from time to time,
> however, there are enough editors and monitors watching over things to
> ensure that no "replacement page" stays up very long, thus marginalizing
> that potential.  So what if the page on Linux is replaced by a porn
> short for a few minutes... someone with BO and a goatee will have it
> replaced in a jiffy with the usual canned warning to change one's
> offending ways, etc.

I think you're missing the boat.  How does fixing the page (as I state
with "I could be replaced by a picture containing child porn, and during
the few minutes it stays, be viewed by someone you have sent there.")
resolve the child that was sent to that page.. and encountered it during
those three minutes?

> 
> Heck, even minor accuratizing (I just made up that word) edits are often
> reverted if someone doesn't believe the new truth.  What's up tends to
> stay up, from what I've observed.
> 

This is not always the case.  People lose interest in Wikipedia, and move
on.  Pages they guarded as zealots then shift in direction and content. 
New people come along and bring 20 of their friends.. and the page is
changed by sheer force.  

Naturally we are talking about pages with significant variation in
opinion.. and of course a Linux versus Windows page is likely just that.
Of course, the political pages seem to really get hammered, as well as the
religious.  


> Would I use it as a HOWTO for brain surgery?  Hell no... but basic facts
> and knowledge are rather hard to disprove and for that - a general
> repository of knowledge that's manageable by mankind - it's actually
> quite good.

It is not bad at times, yes.  Of course, the only way to be sure that the
page has not been recently vandalized, or that the current editors are
sane.. is to check the history and to check with other pages.


> 
> >> > As a side note, I have encountered genuine shock in people seeing
> >my > > Thunderbird on Ubuntu: "but it looks just like Outlook".
> 
> Never heard that.
> 
> It's not a bad alternative - one of the better ones out there, actually,
> but Outlook still has some lovely features that are integrated within -
> sticky notes, task list (that you can pass around from assignee to
> assignee, etc), journal, nice calendar, etc.  Sadly, T-bird is just a
> mail client so I'm forced to using notepad to edit a billion little
> documents.  Or, I just email myself a note and store it in a folder
> somewhere.  There's always a way around things, but Outook (and yes,
> I've been caught by its bugs) makes a pretty decent all around client.
> 
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