User:ChrisG/test

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 ToDo I'm tremendously excited by the vision of Wikipedia. It is the most exciting project I have seen since I have started using the Internet. I intend to become a regular contributor. I have a wide range of interests - Philosophy, New Age, Psychology, Politics, Religion, Science Fiction, Soccer and Information Systems - so who knows where I shall contribute.

My Vision for Wikipedia[edit]

My vision of Wikipedia is that in a time of ever increasing information overload on the internet there is a need a free and neutral source of information that is not afraid to tackle controversial topics and is independent of the systematic biases created by state, economy, and religion. Currently on the internet the best way to find information is to use Google and then use your own judgment to identify a useful article. Wikipedia can solve this problem and serve to direct you to other articles within its information space, but also in its exploration of issues direct people intelligently to other sources of information on the internet.

The problem will be ensuring the trustworthiness of information to the external world. I agree that the anarchic process advocated will work most of the time and in the long term; but many people will not trust it, because they will not know if the article has been recently re-edited in a poor or biased way or just defaced; which would prevent Wikipedia from becoming an authority in some eyes.

As such then some form of Trusted Wikipedia or Wikipedia pages will be necessary for such concerns. Many users on the Internet will prefer to surf the approved pages and only go to the unapproved and developing pages for current information and to see if the debate has changed. This Trusted Wikipedia should not interfere except positively with the ongoing Wikipedia project. It seems obvious that such a 'trusted' Wikipedia, though obviously it won't be a Wiki, will evolve out of the Wikipedia 1.0 project.

Personally I am against any Trusted Wikipedia which comes to rely on people with the best academic qualifications. How many people in the world have even a degree? I would like intelligent contributions from anyone, whatever their qualifications or age. The people who approve articles - the trusted -should be the people who somehow evolve out of the system. There needs to be a process whereby people earn trust and status through their actions.

The beauty of this schema, is that people who are anarchists will be happy that Wikipedia remains as it is with only some subtle approval mechanism going on.w While those people who value order can have their own Encyclopedia that uses the Wikipedia as the source of its articles, but of course approves them as suitable and appropriate.

Current Contributions[edit]

I shall list all pages that I make a contribution to content here, so people can see what I have done if they should be so interested.

Politics and sociology of Wikipedia[edit]

Frank Herbert[edit]

My favourite author of all time. I shall endeavour to achieve NPOV, while at the same time creating a great resource in Wikipedia. I've noticed the stub article on Frank Herbert was already on the second page of Google, so as a challenge I'm going to aim to get this article to Number One. I will also work on Dune (novel), because that will be the most common search on Google, and so will need to be an excellent article itself.

SF - General[edit]

Philosophy[edit]

Controversial issues[edit]

Obviously the test of Wikipedia is the difficult subjects. I'm very interested to see how this process works, so I shall be contributing to some of these 'dangerous' topics. One particular thrust of mine will be to try and compensate for the systematic Western and American bias of some of the articles.

Currently contributed to:

  • Feminism
    • no controversy so far. This page actually could do with a person who really cares about the issue to stir it up, and add content.(24/11/03)
  • Jesus
    • Some initial conflict, but the pages looks good now, since user:WhisperToMe refactored it. It was too long and he reduced it to bear bones moving the extra text to sub articles. The level of conflict in the article immediately went down, I suspect because level of interest was now split and the main article suddenly became less controversial in terms of balancing all the perspectives. (24/11/03)
    • Its interesting how the preface was the main cause of conflict. Everyone seems to care about that real estate the most. Real fights about what should be allowed in the preface. (24/11/03)
  • Dolphin brain/Dolphin intelligence
    • This page became dolphin brain because it was a rather New Ageist article that wasn't scientific or balanced. It went the other way to minimalistic fact reporting, but is now progressing on a firmer footing.(24/11/03)

Useful links about Wikipedia[edit]

Help using Wikipedia[edit]

Status Quo[edit]

The politics of Wikipedia[edit]

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