Life In 19x19

We may want to differentiate signed contributions (as in SL) with signed contributions (as in L19x19)

In SL they are respected when the page is an essay, an opinion piece, a review, a personal research presented as such etc. or may end up overhauled in a WME to a unified text in a page on a particular move by Yi Se-tol or a dispute on what a specific go term means. In L19x19 the signature is technically enforced (you have to login to write anything at all) and usually the contribution is never altered if not admins sense something bad in it. Both systems have their merits, but obviously an enforced signature system, with no later altering of content will not bring about a unified presentation but a discussion thread. The only case were strictly attributed content, without later altering results in unified presentation is by assigning tasks to single editors as common in printed encyclopedias. Remember they offer a strong incentive by payment and reputation in your academic field. This, however, would not be a wiki at all, whose strength is in collaboration, this obviously allows for single authored pages, but often enough other contributors have additional insights to offer. Also remember, SL is not limited to presenting knowledge, there is room for much beyond that (wishlists, ongoing games, announcing your local tournament, news etc. etc.)

I recognize that there must have been bad blood about the removal of signatures on WME'ed pages, sth. Dieter afair considered as library work and I took up from him, where it was a really long list of contributors so it didn't really felt like a meaningful attribution of content to editors anymore (with one or two contributors, at least I usually kept the names). Not doing much on the page, but removing the names seems not to be the best library work to do looking back now, it hurt feelings but had no inherent value in itself. But I never got the impression there was a policy on this, just a lack of debate and different individual approaches to that matter. (Again, I am present at SL only since 2007.)

What I have in mind since a while is a set of "Best Practice XY" pages, which set an example on what to remember when writing a page on a certain topic, again, this is not technically enforced, but a standard to measure your contribution on. It has the special merit that it doesn't need a software change. A try to start these didn't show much feedback, so I stopped. (http://senseis.xmp.net/?BestPracticeJoseki)

Thanks to all to turn this thread into a useful discussion after all, especially judicata for injecting some helpful distinctions.

Search: Full text search turns into a powerful tool if you exercise it with all the add-ons offered by the AdvancedFindPage, limiting to keywords, including page difficulties etc. etc.

RecentChanges: You can customize RecentChanges to not show certain keywords/page types, e.g. excluding Homepages, Humour and Online Go pages from your personal Recent Changes is easy. Explanation here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?UserPreferences ... entChanges

Go Seigen: The edit mentioned by John on the upcoming book, may well be by someone he knows very well, who is related to the publisher of the book. (The IP edited only Slate & Shell related pages so far.)

This was just posted in the British Go Association gotalk forum and seems worth a mention here.

QUOTE
As a further service to the Go world we have now started providing a number of Book Reviews online as part of our website. They are available as the Books and Software Reviews link (http://www.britgo.org/bookreviews.html) in the Books and Sets section.

These will typically be copies of reviews that have been previously published in the British Go Journal (BGJ), but have now been brought together in one easy accessible place.

Initially we have started with 9 recent ones, but it is our intention that older ones and any reviews of software or services that are produced will be added to these when available.

We solicit reviews of books, software etc. from anyone, but reserve the right to reject and/or edit them as necessary to conform to our website guidelines. Typically we will wish to publish them in the BGJ first, so in the first instance please contact the BGJ Editor.
UNQUOTE

Bill Spight wrote: Do you want to eliminate it from SL because it is not Wiki enough?

No. I'm not sure what I said that would make you think that--I've said in each of my posts that I'm not trying to say what SL should or should not be (at least I think I said that).

As I said in my last post, I am a little unsure what people have in mind when they refer to "signed contributions." When that is said, I envision a page with several separate comments, with a signature, of each person's take on the subject instead of a collaborative article.

Also, as mentioned in my last post, I think it makes sense to cite individuals as sources of information in footnotes, since (as has been mentioned here) sources will rarely be available otherwise.

judicata wrote:

Bill Spight wrote: Do you want to eliminate it from SL because it is not Wiki enough?

No. I'm not sure what I said that would make you think that--I've said in each of my posts that I'm not trying to say what SL should or should not be (at least I think I said that).

This is what I was responding to:

judicata wrote: But I do not think a single person should be responsible for an article, paragraph, or sentence.

I was also responding to this:

judicata wrote: But if you take a wiki-based platform (open editing, community contributions) and try to shoe-horn in controlled content and limited contributions, you will end up with more frustrations than either adopting or rejecting the wiki concept wholesale.

It seems to me that SL, as originally conceived and practiced, does just that, with control and limitation through signatures. And, IMX, that is quite workable.

Bill Spight wrote:
This is what I was responding to:

judicata wrote: But I do not think a single person should be responsible for an article, paragraph, or sentence.

Ahh, okay. I should clarify, I think. Of course anyone can set up a website however they want. But in community-based projects to have someone bearing sole ownership over an article or section of an article, stifles contribution. And by sole ownership, I mean someone drafts an article or paragraph, and after that any edits must be made by that person. If the goal is to have a place for several individual projects, rather than one community project, that's fine.

That isn't to say there shouldn't be people who "adopt" or maintain articles or pages--to the contrary, it is very important. That also isn't to say people should make contributions on a whim without thought or discussion--that is what discussion pages/sections are for.

John Fairbairn wrote:This was just posted in the British Go Association gotalk forum and seems worth a mention here.

http://www.britgo.org/bookreviews.html

This is very good, but unusable for me as a book seller. Which includes my customers.
Another site that cannot be reached simply, eg by (easilly implemented) the publishers code or at least the title (may cause problems, eg sometimes "the" is omitted and sometimes not).
Instead of a link "here you'll find a review" I'd have to write "go to this site and search for the book".
3-4 clicks away may seem like nonsense, but it actually turns people off.

/Mats

mohsart wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:This was just posted in the British Go Association gotalk forum and seems worth a mention here.

http://www.britgo.org/bookreviews.html

This is very good, but unusable for me as a book seller. Which includes my customers.
Another site that cannot be reached simply, eg by (easilly implemented) the publishers code or at least the title (may cause problems, eg sometimes "the" is omitted and sometimes not).
Instead of a link "here you'll find a review" I'd have to write "go to this site and search for the book".
3-4 clicks away may seem like nonsense, but it actually turns people off.

/Mats

Seriously? It's too much trouble for you to copy the links and put them on your website on the pages for the books you sell?

kirkmc wrote: Seriously? It's too much trouble for you to copy the links and put them on your website on the pages for the books you sell?

There are about 300 books in stock, about 10 places that gets reviews posted on.
If I can add code like Review on xxx is found here

I have for example the following code on my site
{if $product->manufacturer_name == 'Yutopian'}
<p>
<a href="https://www.yutopian.com/yutop/cat?product=PA{$product->supplier_reference|upper}&category=PAY" target="_blank">Yutopian{l s='\'s info on the book'}</a>
</p>
{/if}
Which provides a link to the Yutopian book on yutopian.com
Of course I could have copied and pasted the information but then it would have been stationary, and would have had to be redone to be current.

/Mats
Edit: and this was made ONCE, for all Yutopian books

judicata wrote:But in community-based projects to have someone bearing sole ownership over an article or section of an article, stifles contribution.

Not in my experience, and I have been online and involved with online communities for a long time.

And in this specific instance, if I had not "owned" by signature that subpage, I doubt if I would have bothered to post it. Humans and communities are complicated.

Helel wrote:A text should be judged on it's own merits, not on those of it's author. Some famous research scientists have been found to publish fraudulent papers, why should famous go writers be any more trustworthy? I think it makes sense not to trust authority any more than you strictly have to.

On the other hand, if a text is lucid in it's concepts, states references for any verifiable claim and makes it possible for the reader to follow and understand it's reasoning, does it really matter if it is written by Bozo the Clown?

To me, there are a few factors that make something credible--its source is among those factors. Just because a source isn't infallible doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered.

The author definitely matters. I think people say otherwise because they assume that regardless of the author, you can just check their reasoning--they've either proved their case or not. But this isn't necessarily possible, and when it is, it's impractical.

Do I really have time to look up every fact in an article? No. Can I even do that? Not really, if those facts are squirreled away in journals that cost $5000/year per subscription. Not in principle, if they're saying "Barack Obama told me he would give every American a pony[/i]." I can ask Barack, but maybe he will be evasive because he realized that was a bad idea.

Even where there's no empirical questions to answer, we don't reconstruct an author's reasoning all that fully. If I read that every equation of a certain form has a solution, I might not be able to understand the proof, but if it's in my textbook, I can probably trust the claim. Even if I can understand the proof, do I necessarily need to read it? Depends on my purposes. If I just need to solve the equation, I might not.

Consider go: if a professional says that a sequence works, I can't necessarily verify that for myself.

A good author does what he can to demonstrate care, so that this trust is earned. And he does what he can to make his reasoning explicit, so the reader has to rely on his trust less often. But there's no way around deciding whether to trust an author or not.

Related: see this lovely post about "one way hash" arguments. http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/04/06 ... fallacies/

The author is only important to me if I know who he is. If I do, then I know a bit about what to expect. If I don't, then surprise me. If I'm interested in Haengma for example, and there is an article there by somebody I've never heard of, I'll read it anyway and do my best to try out the ideas. For me it's not a matter of trust. It's just a matter of whether the ideas are presented in a way that appeals to me.

Textbooks have errors. So does my own judgment. In fact, I can only think of one subject where I'd trust my own judgment better than the average textbook--and that's going out on a limb.

Challenging the textbook is a good learning exercise. And authors do toss out examples with little thought. If I spend hours on what the author wrote in thirty seconds, I can definitely have grounds for trusting my take better than theirs. Nobel laureates sometimes do a sum wrong. But does this imply that in general, I can check everything in the textbook so well that I'm not basing my opinion on trust? I think not.

The analogy between maths and go is pretty striking. If I need to extend a proof, I had better understand every aspect of it. If I want to play a sequence in my games, I had better know what to do if my opponent deviates. But if I just need to say "that equation can be solved" or "that move is good", I don't. It's often reasonable to say "this is true, but I don't know why."

Lastly, I don't see any principled difference between trusting a community and trusting an individual. When Bill, Araban, Magicwand and Fredrik all say a sequence is good, that's better than hearing it from just one of them. But that's because I trust each of their opinions to some extent.

I agree with Helel but as with most things it all depends.

If I'm reading an article on combinatorial game theory authored by John Horton Conway, I trust that what Conway is claiming is at least competent in its content and likely insightful due to who he is. Conway's authority in this area of scholarship was not something arbitrarily bestowed. He earned it in the way that Helel describes - on the merits of his work over time. Conway is a reliable source today because he's done the work, proven his trustworthiness and expertise, and been judged by his peers to be one of the top mathematicians in the world.

But what if I have no idea who Conway is? I have limited background on combinatorial game theory but I'm reading Conway's article nevertheless. The guy sitting next to me at the Jiffy Lube says that the article is complete nonsense. I ask him why and he goes into detail about all the mistakes that Conway has apparently made in this article. Since my background is limited, I have very little basis on which to make a judgment. So I ask him if he's a mathematician. He says - "Not quite. I'm a sophomore at Podunk University and I just switched my major from sociology to mathematics. But, I recently took a course on game theory."

Now this person sitting next to me at the Jiffy Lube may be spot on in his critique, but I have no idea. So for the moment I'm left having to judge between the words of a Princeton mathematician, which is all I know about Conway, and an undergraduate from Podunk University who recently took a course on game theory.

Who would you choose and why?