As part of the Hackers-IL wiki, I started writing a brief history of Linux in Israel. Now at first the opening paragraph read:
Israel has been a Capitalistic, prosperous country for a long time. While it has many problems (such as heavy taxation, irrational and abundant regulations, quite a lot of terrorist activity, etc.), it is relatively peaceful, has an abundant food supply...
At a point someone was unhappy with it and changed it to read only "quite a lot of terrorist activity"). Now, having seen, it I felt that it was then inaccurate and misleading, because Israel has much more serious problems than the occassional act of terrorism, despite what many people have been misled to believe by the International media. So I completely removed the "such as" parenthesis.
Why am I telling you all this? Because this convergence to mediocricity and Political-Correctness of wikis happened again, this time at PerlNet. Read on for the details.
I have a copy of the Linux Journal that a friend bought me when he was abroad. Its focus was on blogs, wikis, audiocasts, etc. One of the most amusing articles there was a rant by an editor about why he hates wikis. And in it, one keeps seeing edits and re-edits of the text by the surfers, as if it were a wiki article. Paul Graham also wrote about it in a different context:
My experience of writing for magazines suggests an explanation. Editors. They control the topics you can write about, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. The result is to damp extremes. Editing yields 95th percentile writing—95% of articles are improved by it, but 5% are dragged down. 5% of the time you get "throngs of geeks."
On the web, people can publish whatever they want. Nearly all of it falls short of the editor-damped writing in print publications. But the pool of writers is very, very large. If it's large enough, the lack of damping means the best writing online should surpass the best in print. [3] And now that the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff, the web wins net. Selection beats damping, for the same reason market economies beat centrally planned ones.
Now a wiki gives the power of editing to the masses, so it may get worse. Often you'll see a state of livelock, where two or more people keep changing one another's content. Or alternatively to satisfy everybody, the wiki converges to a commonly acceptable pseduo-"politically-correct" content.
I admit I've been guilty of such abuse as well. For example I once edited the Wikipedia article about the Iberians to say that they were an Afro-Asian people, while they in fact were not. This eventually got reverted, and the article as it stands now is otherwise much richer than what was there when I first read it.
Now for PerlNet. The Freenode #perl FAQ is hosted there because I'd like it to be a wiki page, and perl.net.au is my favourite "central" Perl wiki. One of the sections there describes the channel regulars. I wrote this in the about "beth" there:
beth, also known as Beth Skwarecki is a Biology graduate from Ithaca, New York, the United States, who studied Perl in order to deal with Bio-Informatics. Surprisingly, she knows her Perl (and UNIX) pretty well. Due to her knowledge and good looks, she had been unofficially considered as the channel diva.
Now, Jarich (an admin of perl.net.au) changed it to read:
beth, also known as Beth Skwarecki is a Biology graduate from Ithaca, New York, the United States, who studied Perl in order to deal with Bio-Informatics. Beth is the unofficial #perl channel diva.
Now, while the original version probably left somethings to be desired, I feel that the new version as it stands now, is much lamer, lost most of its colour, and is much more cryptic. (Why is Beth the unofficial #perl channel diva?)
When talking with Jarich on the IRC, she asked me if I had rights to put beth' waterfall photo on my website. I told her that I originally found this photo on beth' site, and downloaded it to my machine so it was temporarily used as a wallpaper for one of my virtual workspaces. Then I uploaded it to my site because it was a great photo and I could no longer find it on the site of beth, and Flickr and Google weren't any help. (And in case you're wondering and haven't clicked on the photo yet, Beth is fully groomed there.)
She also said that I was patronising the fact that she surprisingly knows Perl very well just because she's a woman. However, the reason I said that was because Perl is the first language Beth has learned (and so far only one), and she hasn't been working with it too much, and because she otherwise hasn't been a computer geek for too long. (And has many other interests and talents besides computing.). So I'm not patronising her because of her sex, but rather say she is surprisingly doing very well. I indeed did not specifically mention it in what I wrote, but would rather see such an explanation added than the sentence deleted.
And naturally the new paragraph does not explain why she is considered the unofficial channel diva. And Jarich told me she further believed that the other paragraph that gives a link to most of the other "real-life" interests of Beth is patronising, just because one of them happens to be knitting and sewing. Beth has chosen to put all her life online on her home site, blog and Flickr stream. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind those two paragraphs on the Freenode #perl FAQ.
I've ranted about this for a long time now, disproportionally to the length of the original text, and the time it would take me to reach a compromise. I was trying to illustrate a point about wikis and collaborative work in general: while it is important that everyone will have access and possibly even modification rights to every aspect of the project, one should make sure that people don't step on each other toes. Even if something is shared, there is the concept of propriety.
As Paul Graham notes later on in his articles, the top 1% of blogs, due to the fact they are un-edited and written by the top 1% of bloggers, eventually achieve or exceed the quality of the articles in the magazine, who due to their heavy editing, often lose a lot of their edge. Wikis suffer from a similar problem.
I still think wikis are a great concept, and have proven and will probably prove to have a huge potential. However, I think that there are some temporary growing pains for some wikis, in which many people misbehave or abuse their power. And what I described here is not the only problem faced by wikipedia and other popular wikis. I hope that the text of the wikis of the future, won't fall to the Paul Graham "95%-high-quality" syndrome, and instead will be better than that.
Re:Just a comment...
bart on 2007-05-29T18:20:52
Hmm, I read it as "she does surprisingly well for someone who's just a Biology graduate (and not a programmer)".
In other words, perhaps you read in it what you are secretly thinking.Re:Just a comment...
sigzero on 2007-05-30T00:38:39
perhaps you read in it what you are secretly thinking.No, I don't think so at all.
Re:Just a comment…
Aristotle on 2007-05-30T10:53:39
To me it read like a non-sequitur – I had no idea why that would be surprising. I did wonder whether the writer was surprised because she’s a woman, but there was no clear referee for the surprisingness in that text, so I drew no conclusion. It just seemed random and pointless.
The text was quite clearly in need of editing, contrary to Shlomi’s apparent conviction that editors only serve to castrate writing.
Re:Just a comment…
bart on 2007-05-30T19:50:53
Well, I agree, the sentence felt quite dead to me too. A bit of meaningless rambling.Re:Just a comment...
Shlomi Fish on 2007-05-29T18:23:07
Yes, you are probably right. In this case, however, the right thing to do would be to complain about it in the Page talk page, or to me by email, or perhaps add an inline paragraph in the text with "FIXME" so I'll notice.
Removing the offending text just because it's offensive, and converting it to a more boring version is similar to removing a feature from a program because it introduced several bugs. It's the wrong way to think about the problem.
And I hope you agree that in the first case (the Israel issue) it was the wrong thing to do, and that my post was indicative of a larger inherent issue with wikis.
Re:Just a comment...
chromatic on 2007-05-29T19:45:57
Removing the offending text just because it's offensive, and converting it to a more boring version is... the wrong way to think about the problem. Do you seriously mean that?
Writing something that may be offensive about another person, in public, who doesn't want to talk to you is okay, as long as it's not boring?
Shlomi, this is why you get banned from various places. Your approach to dealing with other people is broken. Even if you don't understand that other people have feelings or why they feel the way they do, if you barrel on and trample all over those feelings, they're going to react in ways that you don't like.
No matter how rational you think you're being, no matter how logical and non-emotional the arguments are in your own head, you have emotions and moods and little irrationalities as much as anyone else.
You'll have a lot more success dealing with other people if you accept both of those facts.
Re:Well...
Shlomi Fish on 2007-05-29T18:38:11
I'll consider the diva thing. But it is a fact that we still consider her this way. Perhaps phrasing it in a different way is possible.
I should note that in Hebrew it sounds strange to call a woman a "guru", because Hebrew has gender-distinction and "guru" is a masculine word. Now we could say "guru'ith", but it sounds incredibly strange, and "diva" is much nicer, and sounds more sexy. According to the wikipedia, a Diva is used to describe "any extremely independent and talented woman". There's also Divo. Both "Diva" and "Divus" are from Latin, while "guru" is an Indian word.
I could say Beth has been considered the channel unofficial female guru. I'll think about it.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish - Just another Perl hacker
What??!! From when are you a hacker? Hackers never say they're hackers! Or the only hackers are the top 0.00000000000000001% of programmers in the world. "Hacker" is a patronising term, you know.
I give up...
I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind those two paragraphs on the Freenode #perl FAQ.
Perhaps you should ask.
Re:"Pretty Sure"
Shlomi Fish on 2007-05-29T18:14:21
I tried asking her, but she never responds to what I say, and like I said has been incredibly inactive. I know for a fact that she doesn't
/ignore me, but she may find my questions and the interest I show in her a bit annoying. She also didn't reply to my email. If she complains, I'll paraphrase what I said, but if she is worried about what people would think about her from the Freenode #perl FAQ, she should be twice as worried from the stuff she puts on her own. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing particularly bad there, but people can still think more lowly of her, because of that due to prejudice. And no, as you know - I'm not better in this regard, and don't mind having most of my life online (privacy and ethos non-withstanding of course). Like Richard Feynman, I don't care too much what every random joe think of me.
Why, hello there!
beth on 2007-06-26T07:13:25
It is not surprising that I know Perl and unix well. Why would it be? I've been using them for many years. I'm a programmer/sysadmin by profession. This is what I do.
I did not study Perl "to deal with bioinformatics". I learned Perl around 1998ish so I could code CGI scripts for fun and profit. I've used Perl in a number of situations, bioinformatics being the latest of many.
My "good looks" have nothing to do with anything. I am not a "diva", whatever you meant by that. The photo thing and the "sexy" comment are, as jarich said, very ick. Thanks to those who removed that material. There was no reason for it to be there.
(Shlomi, remember that the CC license on that photo requires an attribution. Don't distribute the photo if you can't comply with the terms of the license.)
Re:Why, hello there!
Shlomi Fish on 2007-06-26T08:18:51
It is not surprising that I know Perl and unix well. Why would it be? I've been using them for many years. I'm a programmer/sysadmin by profession. This is what I do.
Hmmm... I believed you were a Biologist by trade, due to the fact you studied Biology. Sorry about that.
I did not study Perl "to deal with bioinformatics". I learned Perl around 1998ish so I could code CGI scripts for fun and profit. I've used Perl in a number of situations, bioinformatics being the latest of many.
I see.
My "good looks" have nothing to do with anything. I am not a "diva", whatever you meant by that. The photo thing and the "sexy" comment are, as jarich said, very ick. Thanks to those who removed that material. There was no reason for it to be there.
OK. Sorry about that. (And for the record - the word "sexy" did not appear anywhere in what I wrote on the wiki, or here).
As for being a "diva" - you should take it as a compliment. (A "diva" is female for "guru"). What I meant was that you were the primary female guru of Freenode's #perl.
(Shlomi, remember that the CC license on that photo requires an attribution. Don't distribute the photo if you can't comply with the terms of the license.)
I suppose I can, in fact. The question is - how exactly? In one presentation I attended there was a short attribution blurb below any CC-licensed photo, which was kind of annoying. At the moment, the photo is lying in a web-served directory - only the
.jpg file. I will add an "ATTRIBUTION.html" file if it will comply with the licence. In any case, I can correct the dis-information on the wiki in accordance with your input, or you can do it yourself. Please just register first, so we won't mistake it for vandalism.
Re:Why, hello there!
Shlomi Fish on 2007-06-26T08:30:49
I will add an "ATTRIBUTION.html" file if it will comply with the licence.I have added an ATTRIBUTION.html file. I hope it's enough to comply with the licence.
You astound me time and again, Shlomi.
Firstly, ob the text about beth, I agree with Alias: pointing out her looks and that she is the “channel diva” is what seems patronising to me. And if she’s not replying, just maybe you should not assume it’s fine to put these things in the wiki?
Something appropriate, according to how you’ve described her here, would read like this:
beth, also known as Beth Skwarecki, is a Biology graduate from Ithaca, New York, the United States, who studied Perl in order to deal with Bio-Informatics. She doesn’t actually use it much and is isn’t very active in the channel, but surprisingly, she still knows her Perl well.
Try that on for size and let’s see if it gets challenged.
Secondly, on your point about editors: newspapers articles are edited by a single person. Active wikis are edited by large multitude of people. Are you at all familiar with the conclusions of Galton’s Vox Populi paper?
Not that it even matters, because you refute yourself without even noticing:
the top 1% of bloggers, eventually achieve or exceed the quality of the articles in the magazine, who due to their heavy editing, often lose a lot of their edge
Are you seriously suggesting that everyone who adds to wikis is as good as the top 1% of essayists and journalists whose writing is so good that editors would dull rather than improve it? Because, of course, what Graham also says (on which you did not quote him) is that the other 99% of writers do actually benefit from an editor brushing up their work.
Guess which group most people adding to wikis belong to?
Allow me to now invoke my corrolary to Godwyn's law, as applied to Perl-related discussions: whenever people start to criticse the personal character or behaviour of Shlomi Fish (= me), then every discussion is over, because it has deteriorated and will only deteriorate further.
I'd like to thank the first three top-posters, and others who kept this discussion on the original topic (i.e: a wiki editing pattern and good wiki netiqutte), without throwing personal accusation of me or anything. But it is obvious that at least two people here (you can tell who they are by their comments), who I otherwise have high respects for, could not help but going into personal attacks of mine.
Thanks for playing!
Re:Godwyn's Law of The Perl World
Aristotle on 2007-05-30T13:36:35
Wait, what? You start a rant criticising others’ editing, and expect to get no criticism in return? And the colour of the sky in your world is what, pink?
Corollary to Godwyn’s Law of The Perl World: whenever Shlomi Fish goes on a rant, the discussion is over before it started.
Re:Godwyn's Law of The Perl World
chromatic on 2007-05-30T17:37:03
If your behavior is part of your argument, it's fair game for the discussion... that is, if you want explanations of why people react the way they do.
Re:Godwyn's Law of The Perl World
Aristotle on 2007-05-30T17:45:58
Meh, thank you chromatic. I should really wait until my exasperation subsides before I reply, sometimes.
Re:Godwyn's Law of The Perl World
hex on 2007-05-31T14:57:00
Wait a minute. By adapting Godwin's Law to refer to yourself, doesn't that imply that you are, in a sense, equating yourself with Hitler? I think you just managed to Godwin your own discussion.
When you asked me why I made the change I wrote:
(15:30:24) jarich: rindolf: Saying that it's surprising someone knows Perl and UNIX "pretty well" is offensive, because it suggests that the default assumption should be otherwise.
(15:30:47) jarich: since you don't link to photos for the others, I think it's odd to link to a photo just because it's of a female
(15:31:11) jarich: I'm not quite sure the diva bit needs to be mentioned at all
[comment from other user]
(15:36:15) jarich: well "beth" is likely to be female.... If the channel has some sort of importance associated with the idea of the "channel diva" then it's relevant and should stay. If Beth gets the title just because she's the best (or only) known woman then.... it's probably being sexist.
(15:37:04) jarich: sorry: not "it is relevant" after all it's "unofficial", maybe "it may be relevant"
You didn't respond at all... until now.
I didn't say you were patronising; or even that you're implying that her skill is surprising just because she's female. I didn't mention her real life interests, although another channel user did. But I'm happy to respond anyway.
You wrote in another comment:
"diva" is much nicer, and sounds more sexy.
Are you aware of how ick that sounds? Most people are not "sexy" professionally (or they shouldn't be). When dealing with people in a technical context I never want to be viewed as "sexy" just because I'm a woman. I don't even want to be viewed as sexy because someone has seen photos of me. I want to interact with my technical peers in a professional, technical way. I'd like to think that they have both hands on the keyboard at all times; that it'd be nice (rather than unpleasant or scary) to meet them in real life. I would be uncomfortable to find out that a photo of me was used as a wallpaper for a technical peer of mine who I'd never met in real life.
It's a wiki and you can fix it. So can other Freenode #perl users. As you said above, this matter doesn't really deserve such a long rant. Be aware though that every time you edit a page on perlnet you are warned:
If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly [...] then don't submit it here.
I will continue to edit all and any articles on PerlNet where I feel I can improve them.
jarich
I told [Jarich] that I originally found this photo on beth' site, and downloaded it to my machine so it was temporarily used as a wallpaper [....] (And in case you're wondering and haven't clicked on the photo yet, Beth is fully groomed there.)
That is a very creepy paragraph to read. Beth is probably taking precautionary measures, like carrying pepper spray on the off chance that you show up on campus one day for an unexpected stalker visit.
This has nothing to do with some general trend toward blandness and political correctness of edited content. It would be one thing if you were good friends with Beth, and had a rapport where you could joke around with her, but I have the impression that this is not the case at all, however desperately you want it to be, and that you're creeping her (and Jarich) out.
I also agree with others that "Surprisingly, she knows her Perl (and UNIX) pretty well. Due to her knowledge and good looks, she had been unofficially considered as the channel diva" sounds really condescending. "surprisingly", "pretty well", "due to
