User:Andrew Dalby/The World and Wikipedia
- Current events not unrelated to The World and Wikipedia
I'll be using these details in an article here or elsewhere. Corrections and relevant additions welcome! See also User:Andrew Dalby/The World and Wikipedia/Editors whose work is mentioned in the book
- 25 September 2009 : publication in UK [1]
- 30 September 2009 : Law, who had recently and controversially unblocked User:ChildofMidnight, was shown to be an alternate account of user The undertow and was compelled to resign administrator tools. Soon afterwards it was revealed that several members of ArbCom had known of this double identity at the time when Law became an admin while The undertow was subject to a ban. On these events see Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-05/Sockpuppet scandal.
- Law and The undertow are not mentioned in the book, but ChildofMidnight's work features significantly, from Turducken and Bacon mania to the Obama article debates. There's also mention of his contribution to Criticism of George W. Bush, one of the last before that article was deleted. The reasons for its deletion are explored on pages 12-13
- 8 October 2009 : David Shankbone, "What I’m reading: The World and Wikipedia" at [2]
- 18 October 2009 : The article David Shankbone is started. Almost immediately the article is marked for deletion by MZMcBride. Hidden behind the deletion debate (which brings out the worst in some of us: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Shankbone) is a discussion on Mount Olympus. The discussion is closed-to-keep a bit too fast by Hersfold, reopened and closed-to-delete by Jake Wartenberg (ditto: see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/David Shankbone), arousing an immediate Deletion Review (ditto: see [3] with a quick glance at [4] and [5]). What fun we Wikipedians have!
- Shankbone features in the book not for his work on Wikipedia but for his significant writing elsewhere on the subject, including the prescient statement "Internet cruelty is easy. We do not have to look at the people we hurt."
- 22 October 2009 : The World and Wikipedia is reviewed by David Cox in the London Evening Standard. Andrew Dalby, says Cox, "is careful to keep his enthusiasm in check. To enable us to evaluate the monumental resource confronting us, he provides a meticulous and judicious examination of the way it is put together. An extraordinary world is unveiled, in which doggedness and obsession are involved in an endless struggle with falsehood ... As it turns out, the good drives out the bad ... Once recognised for what it is, [Wikipedia] is as worth citing as any other source, in spite of the widespread warnings against doing so. After all, even highly qualified Britannica authors can make mistakes and fall prey to bias. When they do, no army of invigilators is available to put things right. The truth isn't out there, anywhere. Nonetheless, this book shows Wikipedia to be as useful an approximation thereto as humanity can currently hope to come by."
- 26 October 2009 : publication in US [6]
- 1 November 2009 : a thread is started on Wikipedia Review. There are claims of Dalby sockpuppets (but no mention yet of my alter ego in Salt Lake City -- for which see "Poor Man's Checkuser"). Very little becomes clear about the book (described unexpectedly by one as "fluffier and puffier than a Hello Kitty plushy"). The description "a serious, scholarly account of Wikipedia (complete with reference to the peer reviewed literature)" also occurs ... but the writer seems confident that's what The World and Wikipedia isn't.
- I can't complain. From The World and Wikipedia, p. 76: "Wikipedia Review is a forum populated by Wikipedia editors, whose attitudes range from fairly happy to extremely disgruntled. Like all forums you aren't involved in, the Review is penetratingly boring; which must be why I scan it and, as you'll see, cite it."
- 2 November 2009 : David Shankbone posts a review on his blog "Shankbone: strange realms of the spirit". He finds the layout offputting ("difficult to enjoy until I hit Chapter 3 (Why they hate it)" but he likes the perspective.
- Shankbone quotes me on the historical reason why -- when articles are deleted -- deletion discussions are preserved: it seems natural now, and it's very handy for the Wikipedia historian, but it goes back to a particular Wales-Sanger dispute in late 2001. The quote includes the sentence "If there's no consensus, the article survives by default." When I wrote that sentence it was roughly true. Shankbone doesn't say so, but the deletion of his own biography is a sign of how rapidly that particular policy has shifted (yes, it even shifted while the deletion discussion was in progress).
- Shankbone observes that the book's index of Wikipedia usernames is "practically a social register". I suspect this raised hackles at "Wikipedia Review", whose regulars don't like Shankbone, aren't in the register, and don't seem too pleased. Did I make a social blunder here ...?
- 4 November 2009 : Shankbone follows up with his standard five questions. I'm a member of a pretty eclectic list.
- 9 November 2009 : Debate warms up (briefly) at Wikipedia Review. "How did this drivel get published"? Was there an "attempt to deceive"?
- 14 November 2009 : Review appears in Cam, the Cambridge alumni magazine, on page 46 for those with the patience to watch this file download.
- A nice review; admittedly the reviewer seems to confuse my WP biography with my user page, but that's not her fault. Other non-Wikipedians have been caught in similar confusions, something that the interface fails to prevent. And, after all, "whether this entry is to be believed, and who gets to change it, are two of the questions Dalby is most interested in". I'll go with that.
- Did I call Wikipedia a "virtual nation"? She's right, I did, though possibly with a hint of irony:
- "It's a virtual nation, or rather a virtual world. Jimmy Wales, in the interview just quoted, spoke of us as 'the people' and then corrected himself to 'the community'. No correction was needed. We, the people of this virtual world, can be as shy and anonymous as we like, and yet our work, good and bad, is listed and others can explore it. We may seldom speak to one another, yet our paths cross unforeseeably. In this book, although I avoid naming some of the vandals and their nemeses, I always name the [other] editors whose work I happen to mention, because these people really have contributed to the building of the greatest (well, the biggest) encyclopedia in history. Wikipedia doesn’t write about itself, or not very much, but we know that inside the virtual world, behind the anonymous, public, encyclopedic face of Wikipedia, our labours are – virtually – recognised."