Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

I’m horrified to learn that we recently eclipsed the 8 trillion dollar mark for the United States national debt, according to Bureau of the Public Debt. I’ve read with earnest several reports from economists who believe the debt isn’t a problem, but it goes against intuition and common sense. After all, I can’t go around spending more than I earn without eventually paying the tab, so how does the government pull this off? I have yet to see a compelling explanation for why it is acceptable for our government to behave like a teenager with a charge card.

I’ll readily admit that I’m a simple person who lives below his means, so macro-economic policy may bear little resemblance to my habits. If someone has a good explanation of the situation for the lay-person, I would like to hear of it.

Larry Sanger, the former co-founder of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has begun to admit some quality control issues with the experiment. A Register article notes his displeasure with how Wikipedia has alienated established subject authorities. The piece goes on to describe the process whereby wiki fans rebuff such critiques:

Traditionally, Wikipedia supporters have responded to criticism in one of several ways. The commonest is: If you don’t like an entry, you can fix it yourself. Which is rather like going to a restaurant for a date, being served terrible food, and then being told by the waiter where to find the kitchen. But you didn’t come out to cook a meal - you could have done that at home! No matter, roll up your sleeves.

As a second line of defense, Wikipedians point to flaws in the existing dead tree encyclopedias, as if the handful of errors in Britannica cancels out the many errors, hopeless apologies for entries, and tortured prose, of Wikipedia itself.

Thirdly, and here you can see that the defense is beginning to run out of steam, one’s attention is drawn to process issues: such as the speed with which errors are fixed, or the fact that looking up a Wikipedia is faster than using an alternative. This line of argument is even weaker than the first: it’s like going to a restaurant for a date - and being pelted with rotten food, thrown at you at high velocity by the waiters.

Not so long ago I wrote with glee that Wikipedia planned to tighten its editorial rules, but it turned out to be an unsubstantiated rumor. While I think the decentralized approach has produced a tremendous volume of content and permitted anyone to add to the collective wisdom, the project inevitably must reckon with its position as an authoritative source. It seems perfectly reasonable to “graduate” articles to a level where contributors should meet some degree of authority when making revising the material.

Imagine that you, a seasoned Astronomer, had taken the effort to craft or improve an article about the doppler effect of red shifting and galaxies. Now suppose that Joe Shmoe comes along and “improves” the content with all good intents, but in his naivety he confuses the issue and distorts well accepted facts. Would you feel inclined to keep contributing? Maybe for a little while, but if it keeps happening (as it does now) you would eventually opt for other venues where people respect your contributions.

This isn’t to say that experts have all the answers, but I doubt that Wikipedia can make the leap from quantity of information to quality of articles unless it embraces a second tier of peer-reviewed submission. These two aims hardly seem at odds and I’m puzzled why it is met with such resistance in the wiki community.

Update: (24 Oct 2005): Vika Zafrin, on the Humanist mailing list, raises a compelling counterpoint to what I’ve written. From her perspective as a scholar she sees immediate value in the knowledge domain of informed persons who may not come from the academic tradition. I quote:

Since when are known experts the only people who “know what they’re talking about”, and what subjects are in question? If I want to know about l3375p34k, I’d rather ask teenage netizens with actual experience than a scholar. Again, it’s a matter of what you want to know. Wikipedia is a fount of colloquial as well as academic knowledge.

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” These are the words spoken by Edward R. Murrow, who anchored See it Now on CBS, when he toppled the tyranny of Joseph McArthy. A new film, Good Night, and Good Luck, about the courage of Murrow and the malaise of the Red Scare will be released in metropolitan markets in October. It looks fantastic and may well be a useful reminder of why open government works best for the people.

I think the integrity of the situation is best summarize by David Strathairn, the actor who plays Murrow:

He was a real spokesman for the common man. He was a person who lived by an adage I heard the other day: It is your duty to always take care of those who are less powerful than you and always question those who are more powerful.

Murrow’s own words in 1958 sadden me that the quality of news reporting has degraded almost to the point of being unrecognizable.

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is–an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.

…

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. It is not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice-presidents, and at the same time– frequently on the same long day–to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.

A CNN article summarizes an AP poll which came to the unsurprising conclusion that Americans are becoming more rude. To quote:

A slippage in manners is obvious to many Americans. Nearly 70 percent questioned in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The trend is noticed in large and small places alike, although more urban people — 74 percent — report bad manners, then do people in rural areas, 67 percent.

These things take time to reverse, but I hold out hope that the culture of entitlement will give way to one of social consciousness.

A CNN interview with Kevin Mitnick reveals a truth that bears repeating:

A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted. It’s essentially meaningless.

He goes on to explain that computer security hasn’t made much progress since he was convicted of theft (hacking) in 1995. The weak link are people who are in charge of systems and passwords.

It isn’t often that a movie premier comes to Charlottesville, but this Saturday evening The Confederate States of America will be shown. It is a what-if style documentary about modern America, supposing that the South had won the war among the states. The topic is quite sensitive, but I hope that level heads prevail.

Most likely the film is already sold out, so my waffling may have made the decision whether to nor to attend the event. I hope it raises some good topics for discussion, but I’ll keep my predictions to myself until I’ve had a chance to see it.

Update: (10/4/05) The link above goes to a perplexing parody site called eslave. If you click through anywhere you will go to the actual movie website.