Andy H.

Since reading cola's recent post I've been thinking again about how a lot of people become disillusioned with or (as she says) prejudiced against wikipedia. The usual reason, and one of the most compelling reasons, seems to be that wikipedia is an environment where, if you're determined enough, bullying, and being so obnoxious that others give in so that they don't have to deal with you anymore, are pretty effective tactics for getting your way.

So, mostly what I want to talk about (especially since I'm not hugely knowledgable about wikipedia as a specific community; most of my information on the subject comes from watching Rachel) is this tactic, and how, unfortunately, it's actually pretty difficult to set up a discussion environment where it isn't effective. ( Trolls and other disruptive posters; the possibility of keeping those in line by appeal to some governing authority figure, like a moderator or an admin; the alternative possibility of effecting changes in culture, which is hard. More musing than conclusion. )

So in fact I don't have an adequate solution; sorry, internet. Now I'm going to go home and eat.

Asked to vote for the best, I was able to whittle the first week of the "Gold-Foil Man" art contest down to four favourites - Pandora, Balloon Trip, OMG!, and Fuu - but thereafter found them so difficult to choose between that I eventually just rolled a 4-sided die. (I remember when I could do that without actually getting out my physical dice. Poor wiflbot!) The random element neatly circumvented my concern that if I ended up choosing Rachel's - which, as it turns out, I did - I wouldn't be able to tell if it was favouritism.

Also, I finally went through and cleaned up my website so that all the internal links work regardless of the current eccentricities of WIFL's URL. A lot of the non-weblog content remains at least slightly out of date (though, in the case of the writings, not really as out-of-date as I'd like).

Okay! I originally wanted to post this, complete, as one piece, but that's getting ridiculous, so since I finally have a fair section done, I figure I may as well post that much. With luck, more shall follow.

( o/~ Here comes part one, doo doo doo doo... )

I'll leave the footnotes outside the cut, to tantalize you:

[1]: Alpicola, Rachan, Shannon and codepoetica.

[2]: Though not nearly as black-hearted and cantankerous as the one we encountered going out, who among his scowling at us and probably putting special marks on our customs declarations so that we'd get pulled aside and our bags searched later, asked in a tone of genuine incredulity, "Why would you want to go to Detroit?" The people who did the actual bag-searching were very pleasant, though, and one let me borrow his stapler.

[3]: These would be important later.

[4]: The actual construction of these, though, would be accomplished by J. alone over the long car rides to come. Well, alone if you don't count the scissors, gluestick, and eyeglasses, with which, there is a compelling argument, he is actually a sort of cyborg.

[5]: Which were interesting - I'd had very little experience with the medium before - but none of which were magnificent. I suspect that I'd have enjoyed the event rather more if I hadn't been seated next to strangers.

[6]: Has anyone not yet heard the statistic that J. is 6'5", and weighs the same amount that I do? I am absurdly proud of this, as though he were my own work.

[7]: It turns out that not only will I answer easily to Garran, but hearing it come up in conversation is enough to wake me from a minor doze.

[8]: For some reason, I saw something like five people from Florida.

[9]: After cola and I, ten minutes later, had realized that the reason we couldn't find _Quinn and J. was because they'd been ushered efficiently outside by staffpeople who somehow missed us, and _Quinn had given us a baffled look. Oh, and there was a brief interlude before that while the registration lady stared at my shiny BC driver's license in something like awe.