Horizon

I'd say the World Wide Web is still a common and will remain one as long as it can keep expanding.

The thing about a finite space like a single disputed Wikipedia entry is that there has to be some agreement on how it's managed. Informal cooperation is nice as long as it can be maintained, but if it does break down, the occupants have a choice between acknowledged government by formal structure and de facto government by the unscrupulous.

Maybe no single Internet "place" can realistically last as a common, but if we look at the bigger picture, the WWW itself can still be seen as a common that internet sites can share without taking anything away from each other -- except, I guess, when it comes to destructive behaviors like Google gaming.

The nice thing about the World Wide Web -- unlike, for example, the Wikipedia and the physical Planet Earth -- is that it's easy and realistic to say, "If you don't like this place, go make one of your own."

-MB, nasty, brutish and short.

Right, but the problem with letting a hundred flowers bloom (etc.) is that there's only so much one can accomplish on one's own. No initiative like Wikipedia can possibly work as a solo project, and if collaborative efforts like it break down and we get thousands of competing micro-points of view instead, the result seems to be an Internet even more solipsistic than it is already.

Well, yes. That's where editors come in.

So, I mean, the huge number of micro-points makes the function of editorial selection so important on the Net, helped by Google as imperfect-but-useful meta-arbiter of popularity and/or authoritativeness -- except of course when Google is gamed, as the Salon article discusses.

Here's one: do you think the ever-greater reach of Google brings us closer to the sense of all living in one pond (or on one common), and if so does that have drawbacks?

Here's one: do you think the ever-greater reach of Google brings us closer to the sense of all living in one pond (or on one common), and if so does that have drawbacks?

I think the ever-greater reach of Google makes it even more difficult than before to decide which of the multitude of links it proffers are reliable. Which is why I yearn for a single (but non-centralized) resource like Wikipedia to turn to for reference.

Well, then, Wikipedia needs editors. And people will only rely on it if the editors have a consistent standard that they trust.

Kind of depend on what you mean by editing though, doesn't it? Style and formatting are one thing; fact-checking quite another. If the editors take on responsibility for guaranteeing the accuracy of articles, then they may as well cut out the middle men and write them themselves ... plus the sheer volume of amendments and additions to Wikipedia precludes on practical grounds I suspect a comprehensive editorial policy.

It sounds like they have done something sensible by setting up an appeals process, such that people can fact-check each other and go to appeal only if they disagree irremediably. After all, quite a few people *are* helpful and decent and interested in accuracy for its own sake.

It is a little creepy, though, isn't it, to think of facts being established by a political and not an empirical process?

Dunno. I suppose any big organization or process really depends on the good faith of the people involved.

It is a little creepy, though, isn't it, to think of facts being established by a political and not an empirical process?

I think the problem is (as with so much of life) not so much the literal truth of the situation as it is the selection and arrangement of "the facts" to make an argument. Wikipedia's policy of sustaining a neutral point of view is about as sensible a compromise as one can expect, though neutrality can make for plodding and uninspired prose.

If Wikipedia can define "neutral point of view" they will have outdone a whole passel of sociologists who can't.

But I've actually tried to achieve full journalistic neutrality and beyond a certain point it's a bad idea. Think about it too much and it'll tie you up in knots for years.

Sooner or later you just have to forget the theorizing and write what seems fair to the positions that you respect enough to take seriously.