nail, meet head.

I guess. This kind of critique gets pretty old. The whole point of moving away from "THE TRUTH" was to suggest that no one editing on wikipedia has access to "THE TRUTH". I'm not an expert. You're not an expert. Sure, we probably have our areas of expertise, but they aren't verifiable in a pseudonymous editing environment. In the absence of that verification, we have to trust references, not people. If I say "believe me, this is THE TRUTH", the right response is "Wikipedia isn't interested in THE TRUTH, do you have a source for that."

It's cute to twist that around, but neither you nor I are Steven Colbert. We won't make it anywhere near as funny. To misread it to think "Oh, wikipedia is only interested in groupthink" is to miss the point. Lots of so called experts come on wikipedia and demand that people listen to them on the basis of their alleged expertise. When people (rightly) refuse to listen to them, those people storm off to /., their blog, or their cat and declare that Wikipedia is only interested in groupthink. Lots of time groupthink does grip wikipedia--just like any other organization. People see comments from editors they know and trust and respond accordingly. New people are often distrusted. These aren't features unique (or even uniquely salient) to wikipedia. They are features found in any community, large or small. Conflating the existence of groupthink with some underlying community desire> to govern through groupthink is inaccurate.

Really, we don't mind the truth, so long as it has a little blue superscripted number after it.

Lulz. "He's the big problem" should read "Here's the big problem. I fail at previewing.

Larry Sanger, the expert at making an online encyclopedia. We love to talk shit about Wikipedia here on /,; talk about how Knol is going to beat it or how Citizendium is better or how you wouldn't use it as a source (duh). But when push comes to shove, do we have any good competing models of how an online encyclopedia should be made?

Do we have any good reason to trust Sanger as anything other than a provocateur? What is the meat of the analysis? That open editing and cooperation is what explains wikipedia's success? I'll agree with him there. And that control of articles or processes by internal "experts" is damaging to that open editing and cooperation? I'll take two, please. He's the big problem.

We don't really know how to make a reasonably reliable, open and comprehensive encyclopedia without some deference to "local fiefdoms". We just don't. People don't contribute for money or fame. They don't have marching orders on which articles to keep free from vandalism or improve to featured status. They control their own production. Where that is the case they will bring themselves to edit on subjects they like and edit those articles in order to bring the distribution of coverage to their liking. We have to allow a little of that because it is those people who keep it from being a nuthouse. Those people spend 20-30 hours on wikipedia a week. They watch recent changes to keep subtle vandalism out. They fight back against civil POV pushers. They are an absolute necessity.

To they come with drawbacks? Hell yes. There are probably thousands of people who have avoiding wikipedia as editors because their first edits were reverted--even though they might have been productive. I find lots of those reversions and usually don't get a cooperative attitude from editors when I call them on it. Those people make subtle cultural distinctions (I like this and not that). Those people form cliques and cabals. Those people make processes and bureaucracy.

But I don't have a better way of organizing all of that free labor. Does Larry? Do you?

Re: the Sturgeon quote, I don't think we can ever be sure. It is misquoted more often than it is quoted. I'll stick to bunk. Re: Meridian 59: sure, it's less sophisticated than WoW, but it is a little different for that to be on a console in 1995. But it had (more or less), PvP, 3d graphics, character customization, and more. If you look at Birth of a Nation, all you may see is a racist black and white movie about Klansmen. But it was one of the first movies to use visual techniques that are common today: closeups (though arguably preceded by Griffith's earlier movie, The Lonedale Operator), jump cuts, tinting, tunnel vision. Remember, like movies, these games are notable for ludic, technical or narrative advances. It doesn't just have to be "Great story ZOMG". Half life has a so-so story, but the execution and technical prowess of the dev team shines through.

...you need to push things along. It has taken a long time for comic books to be accepted as an capital "A" Art form, almost 2 generations (or three depending on how we date things). I don't see a good reason why games will be accepted more quickly. There is the general reason of "cultural change happens faster now", but that comment is usually unaccompanied by argument or data so I take it with a grain of salt. We are 30-40 years into the history of video games and ~25 years into their entrance into the mainstream. I have no idea what arc they will take, but I can almost guarantee that it will travel through acceptance as an art form at some point. Will they be subject to an independent resistance against big studio control (a la the movie business in the late 50s to 1970s?) Will they await some major change in creation overhead before artists move into the genre? Are we too far in late capitalism for that to happen? No one knows.

But I can tell you one thing. Most of these game designers aren't helping. Sure, Ted Sturgeon can tell us that 90% of everything is bunk, but we really are reaching into the crapper for most of the content here. There are some wonderful games out there. There is some deep work going on in the business, both in writing and in the design of a game experience. But most of these guys are pushing out undifferentiated games with middleware populated by Mary Sues and John Does. The studios (just like movie studios) don't care and honestly neither do the fans (in most cases). Where a game is a rare combination of artful, AAA, and well promoted, it will make bank. When it is two of the three or (worst), only artful, it will usually sit unloved. Like I said, this is not a problem unique to the gaming industry. For every truly wonderful film out there we have a dozen Dane Cook rom-coms that make you despair for humanity. But simply making that comparison leaves us with an incomplete picture. Those movies that we consider artful and important all took risks. They all represented serious investments of time, blood and money from their creators. They came about (at least in the case of Hollywood) from bitter fights and internecine warfare. Some of the works we think of today as powerful and compelling were almost eliminated (or mutilated) by studios interested in formulaic crap. And for every Kubrick or (young) Lucas or Scott there were hundreds of equally talented souls who just didn't make it. Who said the wrong thing to the wrong guy. Who pushed too hard or didn't push hard enough. Who said "fuck it" and decided to make Disney movies for the rest of their career. Game designers have to be willing to take those risks--the studios aren't going to do it themselves.

Surprise, surprise, striving for legitimacy and respect involves...striving for legitimacy and respect. You don't get to be respected as an "artiste" until you make some games that can seriously be considered artful. Meridian 59 is pretty god-damn good. But most people don't have games like that under their belt.

They all claim to be slimmed down and non-monolithic when they are in the development cycle. But when the rubber meets the road they have to contend with feature creep, backwards compatibility, turn-key (as it were) operation of heterogeneous devices and a finicky userbase. Sure, some of the formerly installed components can be offloaded to the download/update sites and some variations on a theme can be sold. And sure Linux distros can ship with widely varying functionality (at the cost of out of the box support for server functions). But to content that MSFT and APPL will substantially shrink their OS footprints is to be at variance with the last 15 years (or more) of software history.

Just a note, the (C) in CRS stands for "Congressional". It operates under legislation, not executive order, so changing its policies requires a little more than changing who is president.

Most of the RAND studies commissioned by the government which are not classified are available free from their wesbite. Just search around or browse to the topic area that interests you.

What's up with that?

They make me feel better about the level of discourse here at /.