Thursday, May 06, 2010
Vote cast
My voting card has been torn into the smallest pieces I could manage and deposited in our outdoor compost heap, underneath the yesterday's contribution from the kitchen. Not that this act prevents me voting should I change my mind in the next 8 hours, but it does mark the occasion. One up from just snoozing in front of afternoon telly, tuned to something at least slightly more interesting than the election.
Been pondering this morning about the fact that whatever I chuck at Wikipedia, it seems to come up with something. Like the Isaac Watts of yesterday. There must be a lot of people out there happy to populate the thing.
Which prompted me to think that for those who prefer meta-knowledge to knowledge and fancy a bit of FE, one could dream up all sorts of worthy investigations into the content of Wikipedia. Coverage, accuracy, spelling. Comparisons with older sources such as Chambers Encyclopedia. How much of Wikipedia is actually put there by people paid to do it by someone with an interest? How many Wikivandals are there out there? How long would it take to find some nook of knowledge which has not been properly covered and where one might make a contribution?
And then there is meta-meta-knowledge for the even fainter hearted. One could dream up various honours based around Google and Wikipedia. Orders of the Gog and orders of the Wick. Google might be persuaded to run bashes for the higher orders. Invites to silver service dinners at Mountain View for those at the top of the heap, regular dinner at a Marriot Hotel in London for those in the middle, finger buffets at the Holiday Inn at Chessington for those at the bottom. Plus a free pass to the World of Adventures (low season).
The general idea with Google, for example, would be the amount of stuff about a person visible on Google and the ease with which it could be found. So if, for example, a search on name alone without title or affiliation, results in the person appearing in the top 10 hits for 10 out of the last 12 months you get an expiring Order of the Gog, third class. By expiring I mean that the order is only good for so long. It is confiscated if the person falls out of the rankings.
So the task is first to devised an honours system along such lines for Google and Wikipedia and then to persuade the two organisation to throw some money at awards ceremonies. Google would be rewarding attainment and Wikipedia would be rewarding effort; a throwback to my school reports which had one column for the one and another for the other. They tried to persuade us that effort was the more worthy of the two but I am not sure how many of us were convinced.
# posted by Jim @ 5:50 AM 
