Ce fut aussi bien des journalistes que des "intellectuels" qui s’attelèrent à railler et dénigrer l’encyclopédie libre. Ils ont argumenté en expliquant combien la méthode de rédaction de Wikipédia, à savoir par des anonymes, avait pour résultat une encyclopédie de piètre qualité sans commune mesure avec les illustres et très sérieuses encyclopédies classiques telles que Britannica ou Universalis. A ces critiques, les rédacteurs de l'encyclopédie libre ont inlassablement expliqué que sur Wikipédia, ce n'était pas le diplôme du rédacteur qui comptait, mais bien les sources qui étayaient l'article.

Les encyclopédies classiques sont écrites par des personnes au savoir soi-disant assuré du fait de leurs diplômes. Mais quand deux encyclopédies classiques vantées pour leur sérieux donnent deux informations factuelles différentes, laquelle des deux a raison? Laquelle des deux est plus sérieuse que l'autre ?

Lors de la rédaction de l'article sur Shimon Peres, les anonymes rédacteurs de Wikipedia ont remarqué que, selon les sources, sa date de naissance changeait; dans les sources consultées on retrouvait les très sérieuses Britannica et Universalis.

Tout comme moi, vous vous seriez attendus à ce qu'elles fournissent toutes deux la même date. Et bien non, que nenni, elles fournissent deux dates différentes, à savoir, respectivement, le 16 et le 1er août. On pourrait s'attendre à ce qu'au moins l'une des deux dates soit en accord avec les informations présentes sur les sites gouvernementaux israëliens. Eh bien non, un site du gouvernement israëlien nous informe que M. Peres est né le 2 août. On peut alors se poser une question fort légitime: qui de Britannica, Universalis ou  de Wikipédia a, dans sa démarche de rédaction, le comportement le plus "sérieux" ?

Bien entendu, Britannica et Universalis, tout comme Wikipédia, contiennent des erreurs. La différence est que Wikipédia ne fait pas confiance à un diplôme mais à des faits et cherche donc à sourcer au maximum ses articles,  permettant ainsi au lecteur de vérifier facilement ce qui y est dit. Hélas, en lisant Britannica et Universalis, on se voit obligé de faire confiance au rédacteur.

Il est évident que Wikipédia a des lacunes, possède des articles de culture populaire et comporte des erreurs. Mais c’est également le lot des autres ouvrages encyclopédiques. Les démarches rédactionnelles diffèrent, mais les outils de rédaction également. Chaque démarche à ses forces et ses faiblesses, et il est clair qu’une des grandes forces de Wikipédia est sa possibilité d’être en permanence remise en question et donc corrigée.

La observación más curiosa sobre el particular es la de Dusmel. Apunta que los chistes en latín sobre materias tabú se permitían incluso en publicaciones familiares, y cita en apoyo una ocurrencia de finales del siglo XIX, aparecida en un conocido diario de humor blanco llamado The London Charivari. La ocurrencia se refiere a la muerte, a la temprana edad de diecinueve años, de un joven apellidado Longbottom: Ars longa, vita brevis.

Robert Graves, 'Lars Porsena', or the Future of Swearing and Improper Language

]]> http://healthcaretips4u.wordpress.com/?p=123 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:21:09 +0000 Martin http://healthcaretips4u.wordpress.com/?p=123 1.Scientists say the higher your I.Q. The more you dream.

2.The largest cell in the human body is the female egg.

3.The smallest is the male sperm.

4.You use 200 muscles to take one step.

5.The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.

6.Your big toes have two bones each while the rest have three.

7.A pair of human feet contain 250,000 sweat glands.

8. A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.

9. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.

10.The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the
Encyclopedia Britannica.

11.It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your
stomach.

12. The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.

13. Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis
of the liver than men with hair..

14. At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a
single cell.

15. There is about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

16. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a
gallon of water to a boil.

17.. The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body.

18.. Your teeth start developing (in your gums) 6 months before you are
born.

19. When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, they
do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.

20. Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people.

21. Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

And just like Wikipedia, and Britannica, it's introducing a few new ways to create content.

There is 'moderated collaboration,' for instance. Which sounds a lot like the concept behind the edit pages of Wikipedia. probably less edit wars, since the author has to approve the changes for them to go live. Brave authors could however permit edits without approval. The really daring ones will be able to link their entries with advertising to earn some income via AdSense. I can see that feature alone quickly tarnish the value of this wiki as marketers rush in.

Maybe this is Google2 -- a move to create a parallel search engine that pretends to be a wiki.

Check the wiki-slayer here.

Much speculation exists as to what new science and technology may result from these lines of research. Nanotechnology can be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term. Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology. In the "bottom-up" approach, materials and devices are built from molecular components which assemble themselves chemically by principles of molecular recognition. In the "top-down" approach, nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control. The impetus for nanotechnology comes from a renewed interest in colloidal science, coupled with a new generation of analytical tools such as the atomic force microscope (AFM), and the scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

Combined with refined processes such as electron beam lithography and molecular beam epitaxy, these instruments allow the deliberate manipulation of nanostructures, and led to the observation of novel phenomena.

Examples of nanotechnology in modern use are the manufacture of polymers based on molecular structure, and the design of computer chip layouts based on surface science. Despite the great promise of numerous nanotechnologies such as quantum dots and nanotubes, real commercial applications have mainly used the advantages of colloidal nanoparticles in bulk form, such as suntan lotion, cosmetics, protective coatings, and stain resistant clothing. Modern synthetic chemistry has reached the point where it is possible to prepare small molecules to almost any structure. These methods are used today to produce a wide variety of useful chemicals such as pharmaceuticals or commercial polymers.

This ability raises the question of extending this kind of control to the next-larger level, seeking methods to assemble these single molecules into supramolecular assemblies consisting of many molecules arranged in a well defined manner. These approaches utilize the concepts of molecular self-assembly and/or supramolecular chemistry to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation through a bottom-up approach.

The concept of molecular recognition is especially important: molecules can be designed so that a specific conformation or arrangement is favored due to non-covalent intermolecular forces. The Watson-Crick base-pairing rules are a direct result of this, as is the specificity of an enzyme being targeted to a single substrate, or the specific folding of the protein itself. Thus, two or more components can be designed to be complementary and mutually attractive so that they make a more complex and useful whole.

O conteúdo criado coletivamente e descentralizado já foi questionado pelo seus erros, mas poucas pessoas questionam os erros da produção centralizada e profissional.

Há uns dois anos atrás, a revista Nature fez uma pesquisa comparando os mesmos tópicos na Britannica e na Wikipedia. A surpresa (para alguns) é que a quantidade de erros nas duas eram equivalentes. Eu atribuo isso ao fato de que na mesma proporção que tem as mais diversas pessoas escrevendo, existem as mais diversas pessoas corrigindo. Leigos e profissionais se misturam para lapidar a informação da melhor forma.

Outro exemplo de erro nos meios mais tradicionais foi o recente caso da Globonews. Eles anunciaram que um avião havia caído, mas logo depois a informação se mostrou equivocada. Esse pequeno tempo, em torno de 30 minutos, foi o suficiente para que vários outros meios de comunicação também dessem a falsa notícia.

O efeito viral que se vê nos blogs também existe nas televisões e jornais. Uma fonte confiável gera conteúdo para outros, ganhando ou perdendo prestígio com isso. O modo de se produzir informação continua o mesmo, só mudou a gestão.

O aumento da velocidade da internet e das capacidades de armazenamento derrubaram o monopólio sobre o meio de comunicação. Antes dependia-se de um jornal impresso, uma revista, um livro, um canal de televisão ou emissora de rádio para se transmitir a notícia. O custo para se levar a mensagem para o público era alto e as empresas gerenciavam isso.

Hoje, qualquer pessoa com acesso a internet consegue transmitir informação. Só falta aumentar a penetração no público para deixar a informação ainda mais livre.

Transmita a sua opinião e depois leia:
Ajude a sustentar a Wikipedia
Altos e baixos dos serviços da internet
Você sabe o que é nomofobia?

Wikipedia is in this position now where it's "educating" people with content that may or may not be correct, consistent, or properly peer reviewed.

At first I used to think, "What harm could the free flow of information do?", well it can do a lot, here's why.

Vandalism: This can be anything, from edits that blank the page or replace it with "penis penis penis penis penis" (those are usually fixed quickly), to hard to spot things, like going in and altering an only mildly popular article with some misleading information, like if you mention in the Fidel Castro article that he once visited Yankee Stadium to watch a game being an avid fan of theirs, or more silly but not as lasting stuff, like editing an infobox about George Washington to proclaim that he was the first man on the moon and came in peace for all mankind, or changing scientific equations that most people won't be able to understand to know they are wrong anyway.

Consensus: This doesn't necessarily mean fact, it's just if I think that my edit is right, and an administrator comes along and changes it, it goes to a review council where other administrators decide who's edit stays, and it won't be mine, but there was consensus.

Edit wars: This happens on contentious articles like "Christianity" or "Homosexuality", where a Christian might come along and radically alter the article to suggest homosexuality as a disease that can be cured, I come along and change it back, we bounce it back and forth, until someone runs to an administrator, and depending on what the administrator believes (not which one of you is correct), one of you will be banned.

NPOV: Neutral point of view, meaning they'll neutralize the input of anyone with a point of view that isn't theirs, honestly, how can you write an article on something you don't have any strong feelings about?

Lack of peer review: If anyone can edit the article on Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and some chain smoking hick in Alabama with 14 cats is an administrator, some junk can creep it's way in.

Corporate and government manipulation: Microsoft, Apple, the NSA, Wal-Mart, and ExxonMobile, all with an image problem, are among the many that self edit their own articles to make themselves sound better on Wikipedia.

Unverifiable Credentials: I have a PHD in [insert subject here], it must be so because I put it on my user page....how will you ever know?

Pointless articles: Wikipedia is a dumping ground for useless articles about every variety of Pokemon there's ever been and one time villains from a Super Mario game 20 years ago.

So what good HAS Wikipedia done?

Well, it's spawned Uncyclopedia which was supposedly a parody, but I find to be wildly more accurate than Wikipedia, for example see their article about Wikipedia and then theres the Wiki-Wiki software that is under a free software license for anyone to build a standards compliant website out of, even if they have little or no working knowledge of web markup languages, relegating those horrible WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft Fartpage to history.

About Wikipedia though, you can skim it over to get a basic feel for the content, or link to an article that's basically correct, but nothing you see on it is reliable or trustworthy enough to trust your jewels to it for acedemic reports, get Brittanica or Comptons or something.

Businessweek has called it "an early skirmish in what's likely to become a protracted war over how and where media content is published online." Who knows, one day they may involved in one.

The "AP way," as Jeff Jarvis called it, may go down as trying to establish a top-down business approach in a bottom-up world. Or to put it another way, trying to force 'monetization' through the funnel of 'syndication.'

It's an odd time to try to lock down content and charge for it. I recently tried out Encyclopedia Britannica (and interviewed Tom Panelas) and came to the conclusion that instead of trying to set up snipers on the ramparts of the walled garden, Britannica has basically decided to create a new type of walled garden --leaving the keys to the entrance under the mat, so to speak. If a 240-year company can recognize the value in collaboration not confrontation, a 'younger' content repository like AP could surely follow suit.

If they don't want to take a leaf from the page of Britannica, how about this experiment by David Balter of BzzAgent? He's simultaneously selling and giving away (free download) a book called Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.

"Crazy like a fox, that Balter," says Todd Defren, whose blog PR Squared is one of the venues selected to allow those free downloads.

"Protection is no strategy for the future," says Jarvis.

"Content wants to lose the handcuffs," says little old me.

The first volume is titled The Great Conversation and is not a literary classic like the others, but a preface to the series written by the editors. It's very much a critique of modern education, faulting it for neglecting classical literature--and more importantly, good literature--and instead trying to co-opt children into early career paths:

Since the pupil is not committed to the occupation, the proposition that the occupation that are to be studied are those which are indicated by the needs and interests of the pupil at the time is alarming. Between the ages of six and fourteen I wanted, in rapid succession, to be an iceman (a now extinct occupation), a "motorman" on the horse cars (also extinct), a fireman, a postman, a policeman, a professional baseball player, and a missionary. The notion that what my teachers should have done was to offer me study of these occupations as the fancy for each of them took me is so startling (12-13)...

You should see all the sour faces people make and noises they sound when I tell them I study Latin in college. Their response is always, what are you going to use that for? I never know how to answer, and usually apologize. It's as if somehow, to be educated in academia, is a waste of time. I'm sorry, but most of the branches of higher education are nothing more than trade school. This is fine, but not at the extent of marginalizing the liberal arts.

On June 3rd 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica announced their new vision for their online encyclopedia. Though many comments have centered around how Britannica has collapsed under the pressure of WIkipedia's fame, I don't believe this movement towards a more expansive reference tool is equivalent to the Wikipedia model. Taken from their announcement post:

These efforts not only will improve the scope and quality of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but they’ll also allow expert contributors and readers to supplement this content with their own. The result will be a place with broader and more relevant coverage for information seekers and a welcoming community for scholars, experts, and lay contributors.

One of the main fears, that countless voices echo, is that Wikipedia is unverified drivel created by vandals and impish recluses.  The more immediate truth is that Wikipedia has grown from a volatile collection of obscure popular culture facts to a burgeoning model of how dynamic information creation can be. The community of editors have brokered for more control over substantial articles and have reduced the opportunities for article vandalism to a near minimal concern. But yet many educators pan its possibilities by citing the established comfort of traditional resources. Then this change was introduced.

The interesting thing is that Britannica isn't suggesting that they jettison their core of scholarly knowledge and replace it with "Joe Public's" views on the British monarchy. Instead they are inviting scholars and experts in the field to contribute to their content and supplement the communal resource with their own work. From what I could ascertain from the original announcement, lay users would have contribution rights to a connected aspect of the "core" knowledge base. This means that they most probably wouldn't be able to edit the main entries but would possibly have their own work and commentary be associated with related topics. Though this may not seem like a lucrative endeavor, the ability to have your work be dispersed into the scholarly community could help new authors gain a foothold into their academic endeavors via this new peer review outlet.

The one thing that concerns me is that under the proposed model there is the possibility that each user could be editing existing content, which then becomes a new piece of content separate from the original in some manner. The concept of thousands of slightly altered versions of one piece of information seems rather unnerving to me. Hopefully they can iron out these types of concepts before the full release.

For another model similar to this you may want to check out an earlier posting entitled:

Knol's Fair in Love and Wiki's

Resting on four words, Transparency, Community, Quality and Privacy, it's a very different experience. There's an odd but enticing feature --in the area where you expect to see paid ads-- that allows you to add a URL to the search results. Results are not very accurate, but these are early days.

Wikia Search lets you register a "social profile" adding the social network ingredient to search. "Search requires a strong social and community focus," they say, and they are building it through collaboration --much like Wikipedia. Worth watching.

The new policy was announced via a set of two posts in the Britannica blog. The posts make it very clear that Britannica is not embracing the wiki model to any significant degree. The role of the Britannica staff in policing its content will remain: "We are not abdicating our responsibility as publishers or burying it under the now-fashionable 'wisdom of the crowds.'" The majority of its content will continue to be generated by experts and subjected to editing. The experts and editors, in Britannica's view, "can make astute judgments that cut through the cacophony of competing and often confusing viewpoints." This willingness to interject expert judgement is what will ostensibly continue to separate it from Wikipedia, which is accused of settling, "for something bland and less informative, what is sometimes termed a 'neutral point of view.'" (link)

Here's a nice little article from Britannica about knowledge supposedly independent of particular experiences. They have a feature that you can share full articles with readers once you're signed in:

a priori knowledge

El liberalismo estándar difundido en la red ha querido convertir el debate sobre el Estado en un panorama maniqueo de absolutos morales. Según la nueva Vulgata liberal -en realidad, un refrito de tendencias americanas fusionadas al calor de la revolución conservadora-, la historia económica viene a ser un combate entre una iniciativa privada angélica, responsable de la creación de riqueza, y un Estado que tiende siempre a abarcarla y asfixiarla. Este esquema sentimental obvia por lo general análisis más complejos sobre la naturaleza de los Estados y distinciones como la que hace Fukuyama entre strength y scope, y se inventa una especie de capitalismo taoísta según el cual los mercados se expanden y se mantienen no ya mediante manos invisibles sino por la Divina Providencia. Lejos de plantearse los imprescindibles trade-offs, asume la misma actitud 100% que las impugnaciones del sistema procedentes de la izquierda radical.

En el mundo real, fuera de la "batalla de las ideas", las categorías empleadas en el discurso ideológico pierden sus nítidos contornos, y el análisis ha de tener en cuenta gradaciones y abandonar la escenificación de un férreo moralismo. Por supuesto, no existe tal cosa como una economía liberal o una economía socialista puras, sino economías mixtas en diversos grados. Y si, idealmente, los mercados tienden a funcionar mejor cuanto menos interfiere el poder estatal, es preciso reconocer que su existencia no se debe a una necesidad metafísica, y que su despliegue suele adquirir la forma de procesos e incluso decisiones intrínsecamente políticos. Hasta el punto de que muy a menudo es difícil dilucidar donde acaba lo político y donde empieza lo económico, Estado y Mercado.

El mercado común mediterráneo auspiciado por el dominio romano -la primera globalización- no se materializó hasta que Roma hubo eliminado a sus competidores, singularmente Cartago, ni hasta que Pompeyo y César hubieron acabado con la piratería merced a flotas que, por supuesto, no se reunieron espontáneamente. La segunda globalización, la decretada por la Royal Navy en los mares decimonónicos, dependía de un sistema geopolítico emanado de las Guerras Napoleónicas, que a su vez habían comenzado a decantarse seguramente unas décadas antes, en la Guerra de los Siete Años. Como el lector recordará, este conflicto enfrentó a Inglaterra y Francia en el continente -donde la subvencionada Prusia cargó con la parte principal de la lucha- y en las colonias ultramarinas. Aunque los contemporáneos, en general, no lo apreciaran, este último fue el teatro verdaderamente decisivo: Francia fue expulsada del Canadá y su presencia en Norteamérica se desvaneció con la cesión de la Luisiana a España. Además, los británicos obtuvieron una ventaja en la India que aprovecharían en las décadas siguientes. La guerra marcó el camino de la decadencia francesa y de una hegemonía británica basada en el dominio de los mares. En el último cuarto del siglo XVIII, la independencia de los Estados Unidos pareció interrumpir la tendencia, que, si embargo, se confirmó en el Primero de Junio, Abukir y Trafalgar, las batallas que decidieron realmente el curso de las Guerras Napoleónicas.

Es tentador, por tanto, considerar la Guerra de los Siete Años y las Guerras Napoleónicas -la fase final de la Segunda Guerra de los Cien Años- como momentos decisivos en la génesis de la Gran Divergencia, el proceso por el que Europa Occidental pasó del mundo malthusiano del Antiguo Régimen al orden capitalista-liberal que nos es familiar. ¿Por qué se impuso Inglaterra, la potencia liberal, a Francia, el Estado simbólico del absolutismo centralista? Podemos arriesgarnos a resumir un análisis muy complejo -hacia 1750, Francia cuadruplicaba en población a Inglaterra y Gales, y estaba presente en el Caribe, Norteamérica y la India además de ser el árbitro de la geopolítica continental- con una fórmula sencilla: Inglaterra era un Estado más eficiente. Niall Ferguson:

It was a victory based on naval superiority. But this in turn was possible only because Britain had one crucial advantage over France: the ability to borrow money. More than a third of all Britain's war expenditure was financed by loans. The institutions copied form the Dutch in the time of William III had now come into their own, allowing Pitt's government to spread the cost of war by selling low-interest bonds to the investing public. The French, by contrast, were reduced to begging or stealing.

A su vez, la credibilidad del Estado británico se fundamentaba en una fiscalidad nacional unificada y racionalizada. Tim Blanning:

The 'Second Hundred Years War' was not won at Quebec or Tafalgar or Waterloo, or even on the playing fields of Eton, but in the Treasury in London. (...)

Just because the political nation controlled public expenditure, and just because so many of its members benefitted from it, Parliament was that much more willing to give its consent to new or enhanced taxation. Moreover, in its direct form, it was taxation that was both national and local: national in the sense that it was applied equally to all parts of the kingdom, local in the sense that it was assesed and collected by representatives of those who paid it -the landowners.

Direct taxation -the land tax and taxes on other forms of personal wealth or indicators of status- was not, however, the most important form of revenue, for it yielded only about 42 per cent of the total during the Nine Years War, 38 per cent during the War of Spanish Succession, and went on falling to 18 per cent in the 1780s. Even the introduction of the income tax in 1799 did not raise the share to more than a third. The main burden was carried by customs and excise. After 1660, responsibility for their collection was shifted from private tax-farmers to public officials, bureaucratically controlled. The advantages of indirect taxation were twofold. First, although it bore heaviest on the poor, because it was a tax on consumption, the fact that it was paid at the port of entry or in the manufactory and was incorporated in the price meant that it was relatively invisible. Secondly, it allowed the state to benefit from the expansion of commerce, through customs dues, and from the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century, as excisable commodities such as tea, sugar and tobacco passed down the social scale to become the necessities of the masses. (...) This expansion was accompanied by professionalization. As John Brewer has written: 'Dependent upon a complex system of measurements and book-keeping, organised as a rigorous hierarchy based on experience and ability, and subject to strict discipline from its central office, the English Excise more closely approximated to Max Weber's idea of bureaucracy than any other government agency in eighteenth-century Europe.'

In short, the fiscal system that evolved in England in the course of the seventeenth century was universal, bureaucratic, professional and public.

Como ya vimos en el caso del derecho y las instituciones, la representación de una Francia borbónica monolítica, centralista y omnicomprensiva, de un scope casi ilimitado, enmascara la realidad de su limitada fuerza. Por contra, el Estado británico fue capaz de canalizar una cantidad ingente de recursos sin renunciar a su cultura de la soberanía, la iniciativa y la libertad individuales. Una cultura que se extendió por el globo gracias a la vitalidad y fortaleza de la nación política construida sobre ella.