The Periodic Freezer

The letter to my father about the Restoring Honor rally on August 28

2010-08-29T20:58:00.002-04:00

Many, many people from my school went to Restoring Honor on Saturday. One guy even wore an Obama t-shirt and received a lot of harassment for it. (Someone even refused to distribute literature to him.) My intent in going was not to be the agitator or the alien of the crowd -- I sought to blend in as much as possible. Because I wanted to have fun! And I had lots of it. Turning off your brain and pretending to be a tea partier is fun.

Me and four other people caught one of the earlier shuttles to the Metro station. Bear in mind that Tenleytown is not a downtown neighborhood, and it was a Saturday (so no Maryland commuters), so I was expecting the trains to be only moderately filled. I WAS WRONG! Even early on in the red line, the trains were practically overflowing with the Tea Party types. As an aside -- you don't realize the demography of DC (middle-class professionals, young people, minorities) until they are nearly entirely displaced by the overweight, inbred, ugly, overtly jingoistic Tea Party Patriots with their Gadsden flags and their dumb clothing. And their scooters. Let's not forget the irony of myriad anti-government activists using a municipally operated transportation system.

The journey from Tenleytown to the Lincoln Memorial requires a transfer at Metro Center, and while the four other people were more intrepid about making that connection, I was not. So I lost them. As such I was in a mob of patriots, proceeding as a massive group to the other platform for -- I think it's the blue line. Metro Center to Smithsonian is two stops, and when the train made that stop at the Smithsonian, people started cheering. We all moved on out and proceeded as a group toward the site of the event. At the intersection we saw an SUV all decked out in posters and words and such -- one thing which caught my eye was "Boycott the People's Republic of Virginia" (those lousy communists and their arch-conservative governor). Naturally, people started applauding it.

It was a lot of walking. And while walking, I noticed that there were just so many people. A lot of my pictures and videos are just me recording how many PEOPLE there were. I wouldn't be surprised if a million people were there, to be honest. I ended up settling at some arbitrary spot very far from the Lincoln Memorial, but that was fine since I had a good shot of a jumbotron (of which there were many). I don't feel like recalling the schedule of the programming, but basically: Glenn Beck spoke, something about some scholarship for veterans (I thought the military already paid for college?), Sarah Palin, and awards given out for Faith, Hope, and Charity. The Faith award went to a black preacher who was present at MLK's speech 47 years ago, the Hope award went to Albert Pujolz (yes, the goddamn baseball player), and I had left before they gave out the Charity award. I figured that if I left before the event concluded, I would beat the crowd. I was wrong.

The event itself was largely apolitical in nature. The audience was politically charged, obviously. (And Christie is apparently revitalizing the New Jersey economy. News to me!) But the theme of the event was more about jingoism, supporting the military, and loving the Jesus. (They even had a rabbi on stage, who had to sit silently while a Christian preacher declared Jesus Christ to be the savior of mankind.) While Glenn in a prepared video talked about bringing America back, copious footage was shown of a stereotypical 50s middle class family. One person with whom I discussed this later asked what the meaning of it was supposed to be. I said Glenn Beck wants to bring us back to an era where women didn't have jobs. I'm grateful that once I left the Tea Party environment and was re-immersed in collegiate liberalism, my critical faculties turned back on. Just about everyone who went to the event tore it apart. I must not have talked to any of the Republicans who went. There were a dozen or so, I think.

I have pictures of crowds, videos of me walking, of Glenn Beck's introductory speech, of Sarah Palin's speech, of competing protests on a random street corner. I have some campaign literature, including a magazine which I briefly flipped through which is ostensibly about the United States but seems to be more interested in ragging on about "papists." For once, I'm not the one using the word. I also have a Restoring Honor water bottle; they were being given out for free as a sort of service. To me, it's a keepsake.

I will conclude with an aside about the Metro. Even at 5 pm, when I was getting back from Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, the Tea Party Patriots were still clogging the Metro like the arterial plaque in their hearts. I am guessing that many of them flocked in from Maryland, and now that the day was over, they were going back home. The issue is not that they were rude tourists -- many of them were at least superficially polite -- but they're ignorant, as are all tourists. And all of them use paper fares, which they do not know how to put in the turnstile correctly, nor are they as fast and convenient as SmarTrip cards. I think much of the bottlenecking occurred at the turnstiles. Finally, I will note that escalefters ABOUNDED. The unwritten law of standing on the right side of the escalator so that people may walk up the left was utterly abandoned.

What authorship is and isn't: Redux

2010-08-03T20:07:00.000-04:00

The kids are lying!

At least this is the impression I get from the comments section in the aforementioned New York Times article, upon which the immediately preceding blog is based.

Fair enough. Regardless of whether or not students are lying, my words on the mechanics of plagiarism should hold.

What authorship is and isn't

2010-08-02T14:41:00.001-04:00

It appears that the discourse of white people is largely fueled by the latest intriguing article offered up by The New York Times, so it should come as no surprise that I saw two people link to the same Times article: Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age by Trip Gabriel. First, Sage Ross linked to it on Twitter, where he promptly criticized it for suggesting that because the students of today have different opinions on issues of authorship than students of the past, that they are therefore more inclined to do what I and others "in the know" to be remarkably stupid: using other people's ideas without attribution. Plagiarism.

The second reference came on Facebook from Kelly Martin. I would link to her profile, but for whatever reason I consider linking to Facebook profiles more awkward than linking to Twitter feeds. At this point I was confronted with this text on two fronts: Facebook and Twitter. And the relevance to my own personal life is staggering, not just because I am an incoming university freshman who has written college-level papers for college-level classes in high school, but also because of my interest in establishing national educational standards. No one student in the United States should graduate high school without a firm grounding in critical analysis and analytical writing, and to do those you need to know how to properly incorporate the ideas of others. If this article is any indication, we are actually regressing on this matter. The situation is worse than ever before.

But here is my problem with most discussion on this: people bemoan the emerging ideology of people my age (I am 18 years old, born 1992) that authorship is ephemeral and not fixed to particular people -- with sampling in music and collectively written texts like Wikipedia, the power and ownership of an individual author is fleeting. The idea goes that because of this change in understanding, students who plagiarize aren't being lazy, but genuinely do not understand that in an academic context, the ideas and words of others must be attributed. Such is supposedly a disservice to the author's ideas.

I take issue with this explanation; let me quote what I have stated on Twitter: "The idea of authorship is a sham to begin with. No one is truly the progenitor of ideas." After all, there is no such thing really as a truly unique idea. Just about everything ever written draws its inspiration from something else, including things that cannot be directly given a citation. How do I cite the fact that my writing style and my ideologies are a reflection of my upbringing, and indirectly a reflection of my parents' and grandparents' and great-grandparents' upbringing? I suppose I just did that just now by mentioning it, but how do I drop it in at specific locations? No one is going to write "Free-market capitalism is the most functional economic system there is" and attribute that to "The corporate culture under which I was raised has instilled this idea into my head," even though it would be entirely truthful and a just citation.

What happens instead is that the ingrained cultural concepts influence the research and the subsequent analytical process. This obviously culminates in the glorious text which the NYT article repeatedly refers to as "property," as if the author owns it. Shouldn't credit be given to the various circumstances which were subconsciously responsible for making the text the way it was to begin with?

This may seem as though I am defending the taking of ideas from others without attribution as if ideas are just ephemeral, culture mainstays that are stolen by the author and then integrated into some text which, under the Western notions of intellectual property, become theirs. While non-obvious factors play a much larger role in academic analysis than people realize, this does not become a reason to take people's words or ideas.

Let's break it down into two possible things you can plagiarize: ideas, and as a superset of ideas, the very words themselves. With regard to the ideas, it can be assumed that if people are reading a text, they are doing so with the intent on becoming familiar with the concepts described within the texts. That is to say, they are learning things they had not learned before. Had they already knew the information, they would simply espouse from the top of their heads instead of doing research. As a result, this is not information which is subconsciously influenced, but consciously influenced through their own reading.

But recall that ideas do not exist in and of themselves. They have to be expressed with words, and with words there exist not only the aforementioned ideas, but also the sentence structure of that author, the largesse of their vocabulary combined with their anecdotes and experiences. Even when not considering copyright matters, all those influences combined are truly a reflection of that person as writer, intellectual, thinker. Think of a teacher in your childhood who has had the greatest influence on your thoughts. If you were to think about it, you could conceivably credit your career choices to the influence that teacher had on you as your mental framework was developing and your intellect nurtured. Similarly, an insightful journal article or even an informative Wikipedia article which ends up becoming crucial to a student's paper has an influence on that student, and it is morally imperative that the due credit be given.

Essentially, authorship boils down to words, and not ideas in and of themselves. Consider this blog post: I am not the first person to present ideas about authorship, and I am most likely not the first person to state that authors cannot claim ownership of ideas but only the means of presentation, as ideas are influenced by subconscious influences which then affect the analytical process. But what is more or less original is how I went about saying it: as a response to a New York Times article, as a reaction to all the buzz I have been seeing about it, in the context of a person interested in national education policy and as a person who is going to be starting college. Short of discovering my doppelganger, it would be impossible to produce a text exactly like this.

Thus is the flaw with the philosophy, allegedly held by modern day college students, that the text representing ideas are all part of a common good and should be treated as such instead of being treated as works of individuals. The issue is not so much that they stole the ideas, but they stole the means of presenting the ideas, and are thus appropriating other people's identities and experiences without due credit. Even if they are only lifting the ideas and not the text itself, the ideas got into their heads to begin with because of those words. The ideas are rarely new and totally innovative; however, the means of conveyance can be.

Which makes it such a shame that students would resort to plagiarism to begin with. Everyone in the world has their own unique understanding of the world, and writing is a valuable tool to say something to change the world, or at the least, impress people or blow their minds. Up until my college writing class in my senior year of high school, none of my instruction in writing trained me for this, and I will likely repeat this fact for as long as it takes for me to change the high school writing curriculum for the entire country.

And that includes teaching children to understand what plagiarism is.

Fun with iTunes data

2010-06-21T00:11:00.000-04:00

One thing I've always liked about iTunes is its meticulous tracking of any piece of data related to all the music in your collection. While I've recently started assigning star ratings to songs, I've found that you can use iTunes to rank music organically; all you have to do is listen. For instance, you probably like a song with 50 plays more than you like one with 15 plays. And by sorting songs from least-recently played to most-recently played, I can listen to something which I may not have listened to in months. All this data, and much more than you will ever need, is available in a poorly formatted XML file found in the iTunes folder.

Yet over the years, I find that this data alone is not enough to create a list of music, ordered from probably-my-favorite to probably-my-least-favorite. It needs to combined in a certain way, and since iTunes would not let me create my own custom column, I figured that I would take my efforts outside of iTunes.

Step 1: Bringing the data into Excel

While Microsoft Excel can open XML files, I advise against doing this directly without making some adjustments. The file maintained by iTunes, appropriately called "iTunes Music Library.xml", has no discernible sense of organization and no built-in organization schema. When I tried to make Excel import it, it basically said "you have got to be kidding me" and barfed up some horrendous, illogically-sorted nonsense. I can't be too surprised; after all, this is Apple we're dealing with (and allowing other programs to use data generated by software is for those open-source hippies).

This is when the Internet saved me. Some lovely bloke named Travis Illig created a tool to convert iTunes XML into a table, which can be copied and pasted into Excel with no problems. I followed the instructions on the linked page, and before I knew it, I had managed to paste a ton of beautifully organized data into Excel. Though for my purposes, much of this data was irrelevant. I did away with all but the name of the song, the artist, the album it appeared on, the date added, and the play count. Now that it sat there, before my eyes, I needed to do stuff with it.

Step 2: Manipulating the data

And by "manipulating," I mean converting the timestamps into Unix epoch timestamps. If you did not already know, a standard way of keeping time on a computer is counting up the number of seconds which have transpired since midnight on 1 January 1970, deemed to be the Unix Epoch. This allows for timestamps to be sorted numerically, a benefit not enjoyed by any other format. Yet I had over 1,700 timestamps to convert to this format. This is where the Epoch Batch Conversion Tool proved to be very useful, even if I could only convert 500 timestamps at a time.

So I copied roughly 500 timestamps at a time into the lower textbox, retrieved the converted data, and replaced it into the spreadsheet. Except it was not nearly that simple. For whatever reason, copying the table produced by the conversion tool and pasting it into Excel does not work; it takes all 500 rows (at three columns each) and places them in a single cell. My poor computer had a minor stroke before I decided a way around it would be necessary. This led me to viewing the source code of the generated web page, isolating the table, creating my own web page out of it, and opening that web page with only the table in it in Excel. This worked perfectly, but I really should not have had to do that.

Step 3: Devising the formula

Going into this, I knew that I was going to do something involving the play count and date the song was added to the collection. Why? Let's take these two factors into isolation: if two songs were both added on 1 January 2009, but one has 10 plays whereas the other has 20, you probably like the latter more. Furthermore, if two songs both have 30 plays, but one was added in 2008 whereas the other was added in 2010, you probably like the latter more as it accrued that many plays but over a much briefer time period. But what is a mathematical way of expressing this?

First, I created a column: "time elapsed since addition." I took the current time and subtracted it by the date-added timestamp to create this value. I then divided this by the play count to create another column: mean time between plays (MTBP). In other words, if I were to play a particular song now, the MTBP time would be the amount of seconds passed since I last listened to the song. Think about it: if I like a song a lot, I will seek it out and play it constantly. A song which I find to be okay will have a count that reflects that I listen to it just about every time it comes up on shuffle and little more. Finally, a song which I barely like will have a lot of time elapsed between plays, as I frequently skip over said song.

So was my hypothesis correct? After sorting the entire spreadsheet by MTBP, with the higher values (i.e. more time between plays) at top, I indeed found the listing to be accurate. The top of the list was filled with songs which frankly I don't care about. The dead bottom of the list was a song I added today and have since listened to twice, so naturally it had a very inflated rating (or is it deflated?).

Which brings up the flaw I've found with this list: a song's ranking is largely affected by how long it has been in the collection. I have not figured out a fix to this, and perhaps one isn't needed; maybe it's just the nature of my music listening habits. After being briefly fascinated by a song, I'll listen to it less and less, and in some cases, I'll just delete it after a few years. But if you can come up with a better formula, I am all ears.

So turn and face the strain already

2010-06-04T23:14:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, I visited this blog with the intention of deleting it, deeming it as an unnecessary part of the part. I then read the commentary I made when I was sixteen years old, and figured that I was a decent enough writer that I would leave my writings of the time on the Internet. But oh, my God, how much has changed since I last updated my blog in August of 2008.

The President of the United States changed. What joy -- we dumped that stupid cowboy for a suave Harvard lawyer. My last blog post sang the praises of Senator Barack Obama while he was running for President.
We realized as a country that Barack Obama is a human like everyone else and not Jesus Christ reincarnate.
People lied, people died, people entered and exited my life.
I pretty much completed high school.
More things I cannot even remember.

In short, nothing is the same as it was in 2008. Not a single thing. Is my return to blogging, then, a wish to re-live the past? To attain some feeling of nostalgia for the days of old? Well no, that's stupid talk. I simply like writing as I always have. Writing is my means of expression, because when I talk, I do no have the opportunities to present a cogent expression as I do in writing.

Therefore, this is my true voice. And while I may be a writer, I am not necessarily a blogger. So my return to blogging may not happen. If it does, I may post other things I have written since 2008.

As for the times: they are ... fuck it, I am not going to be the 50,000th guy to quote Bob Dylan. I will quote David Bowie instead: Ziggy played it left-hand.

Barack Obama

2008-08-29T01:54:00.004-04:00

I owe the Internet a blog post. It has been nearly two months, and I am in a rhetorical mood tonight.

The beginning of the year -- the first Tuesday in the first month of 2008, in fact, marked the beginning of the Primary Election season to determine which two people will be competing to unseat the incumbent. I have been following the race since that day, when the Iowa Caucus took place. At the time I was a supporter of John Edwards, for I respected his rejection of corporate sponsorship. He lost to the man I did not support at the time: Barack Obama.

John Edwards went on to drop out after he lost in his home state of South Carolina, and personally, I would, too. My support switched to Hillary Clinton, as I continued to be unsure about Barack Obama.

Yet it was sometime around Super Tuesday (if I am not mistaken, the day Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama) that I was really conflicted about my support for Clinton, yet I was not ready to consider myself an Obama supporter. I remember Clinton winning New Jersey on Super Tuesday, and though I should have been happy, I was dismayed. I wanted Obama to win, I really did.

Part of my decision to endorse Barack Obama was when a good friend of mine decided that he would support Obama as well -- and I very much trust his judgment, considering his vast knowledge of US politics. At that point it was clear, that until the end I would support the man I knew in my heart would end up coming out on top, and I was glad I did. I distinctly remember the last day of the primary season, June 3, 2008, when Obama secured enough delegation to make the nomination of anyone else mathematically impossible. I watched his victory speech on television. It was a great speech. It made me proud. I now knew -- the contest is between him and McCain, and luckily, Clinton confirmed it with the suspension of her campaign.

My interest in the election then simmered to a candle, as news kind of slowed about the race. It has since exploded into a fire of impatience, as I have watched the Democratic National Convention in its entirety. Which brings us to the reason I am writing this blog post.

As I watched the convention I've witnessed some of the greatest speeches I have ever heard, even considering that many appear to be generic and uninspiring (especially after being recited for the twentieth time). As the convention progressed, each night was getting better and better, as the more prominent people of the campaign were speaking. I anticipated the fourth night being the absolute climax of the event, and I was not mistaken. The video introduction set the mood -- of a candidate with humble beginnings being the recipient of an unprecedented nomination, and then it was followed by a walk on-stage unlike any other part of the ceremony. To recycle the phrasing of those who have been detracting Obama as having a cult of personality, it was truly the coronation of Barack Obama, the living deity. And I mean that in an absolutely positive way.

The speech, which Jim Lehrer reported lasted 43 minutes, was everything I could dream about. It was that climax I was anticipating, and it made the entire convention worthwhile. People previously criticized him for not being detailed in his pleas for change; tonight, he went right into the details. I've personally worried about how he would fund all these programs without worsening the defecit, and he told me how. He was truly speaking to me, and the country, and he has indicated that he is ready to approach John S. McCain and to tear him an asshole where his brain used to be.

I am strongly anticipating this election season. I want to see what there is in rebuttal; I've seen some of it, too, and in my opinion, it's weak. Weak to me, anyways, and how non-biased is my opinion? I hold a deep dislike to the Republican Party, and I extend that dislike to anyone who supports John McCain. It's very unfortunate; while it is possible that I will not hate someone for liking them, it will be like a permanent ink stain on a bleach-white shirt. In an attempt to entertain "dissenting" opinion, I will try to watch the Republican National Convention next week. I will be screaming at the television, I will want to turn it off, but in order to overcome a fear you have to confront it.

In the meantime, I am subscribed to the Gallup polls.

PERSIAM in full swing

2008-07-08T23:31:00.002-04:00

With my AP summer assignments and my new website PERSIAM now in full swing (with a PERSIAM blog on top of that), updates on this blog may be less frequent. In the meantime, check out the new website and its blog, because that is where you will be seeing me more often.

A short story

2008-07-04T17:31:00.001-04:00

"See here, Dr. Epstein. The fact of the matter is, were it not for the costly experiment, Elise would have succumbed to her ailment. There is no doubt about that. What say you?" The TA was demonstrably upset at his superior, Dr. Andrew Epstein, who ordered an immediate termination to an experiment which was saving his sister Elise's life.

"I have thought about it very hard," Dr. Epstein noted cooly yet with an irritated tone in his voice, "the University of Wisconsin is not a free clinic. The money this school receives must be used for purposes which benefit all students. Spending five million dollars to develop a cure for a genetic disease which occurs in one person out of one billion benefits only your sister. What I'm trying to tell you here is that you're selfish."

The TA could not believe what he was hearing; here was HIS mentor playing the standard game of stingyness on him. The moral outrage over the words of Andrew Epstein caused the TA to become exponentially angry. After about three seconds, he proceeded to punch his superior straight in the jaw.

While Dr. Epstein was embarrassed to reveal it in his lifetime, the blow issued by his assistant spoke louder than any subsequent denial which could have taken place. He had the same genetic ailment which afflicted Elise. Why, then, was he working to end research into the condition?

ArbCom Opinist

2008-07-02T02:27:00.002-04:00

It is now my civic duty on Wikipedia to comment on most new Arbitration Committee cases. I must say I enjoy the job.

Take a look at Requests for Arbitration and look for the sections titled "Messedrocker" or "Statement by Messedrocker". Read them, consider them, and tell me what you think.

Move over, Stevenson and Coleridge

2008-06-25T22:08:00.004-04:00

Potentially, most literature has its roots in someone's dream at one time or another, as the mind of someone dreaming is more bizarre than any sober mind.

That being said, the night prior, I had went to sleep sometime after 4:00 AM. Between that time and 7:30, when my dream terminated in my awakening, a tale of unexplained circumstances and unfortunate events. This tale of unfortunate event has no clear beginning, no clear end, and is being summarized by someone whose sense in writing is not quite there due to feeling feverish and lethargic. (This developed later in the day.)

To begin, I was in a Soviet Union gulag; not as a tourist, but as a prisoner. I believe I was imprisoned along with the rest of my family. In any case, at one point all of us prisoners were stuffed into bare rooms, where something happened (I believe I was gassed) -- it was as though my entire body came under the spell of the miraculous paralysis of Novocaine. I lied down on the floor, flat on my stomach, and I pretended to be asleep while I was staring at the ground. (I was facing away from the door).

Two military officers approached my room; the door was open. They muttered something about me withstanding something, and so they proceeded to shoot me. I actually felt something, though it probably had nothing to do with what a real shot feels like. It was emotionally intense, in any case. After shooting me a second time, they have concluded that I was a strong person and I should just go. Shortly following that statement, muttered amongst two Soviet soldiers, I proceeded to walk out of the building, when shit hit the fan.

It turns out they were not serious. Once I left the building, they chased after me like the runaway I inadvertently created of myself, and were it not for a strategically-placed helicopter, I would have been done for. Placed a couple hundred feet from the building, I opened the door on the grounded helicopter, and the two middle-aged occupants were practically surrendering it to me. I ultimately decided to sit in between them while they piloted me to safety. I became the subject of human interests stories. The dream was interrupted by the Person from New Jersey (me).

George Carlin is fucking dead

2008-06-23T22:37:00.003-04:00

At last, and with great displeasure, that motherfucker of a comedian George Carlin has shit and pissed his cock sucking pants for the last time. Cunts and tits, I exclaim.

For only the man known in life as George Carlin could string together seven consecutive profanities and not only receive copious amount of laughter for it, but end up in the Supreme Court defending the Freedom of Speech for what it is: the right to troll people and gauge their reactions. He may have lost, but as far as I know, the Wikipedia Administrators' Noticeboard is not part of the public air waves.

That means the next time I post a string of profanities that cannot be uttered on television, I cannot be prosecuted for it. I can only get told by La Policía Del Wikipedia to STFU, GTFO, and DIAF. In much more polite terms, which would be in stark contrast to my much more profane terms.

Forget Wikipedia - These guys need Flagged Revisions first

2008-06-10T21:24:00.003-04:00

While Wikipedia would undoubtedly benefit from the installation of flagged revisions, especially as a replacement for article semi-protection, I can think of two other wikis that have a more pressing need for this: Wikisource and Wikinews. Here's why: Wikipedia actually needs the occasional edit; flagged revisions would be to filter out vandalism.

On Wikisource and Wikinews, it would be to filter out non-maintenance edits. Consider this: on Wikinews, something can only be news for so long. In order to preserve that slice of time and prevent it from being subject to further edits that reflect the future, Wikinews policy dictates that once the article hits the magical age of two weeks, the article is full-protected. That means in order to perform housekeeping tasks, such as category removal, you must seek the assistance of an administrator. And forget about admin bots doing mass-maintenance, as the Commons Delinker was denied administrative privileges out of fear it would run amok. Ridiculous.

Why not instead, allow for all edits, and then liberally reject them if they do not meet the requirements of being maintenance edits? Then, once users demonstrate a knowledge that articles from the past should not be revised, they can freely handle archived articles without administrative privileges.

Likewise for Wikisource, which is not nearly as proactive in protecting texts from revision. In the current system, all texts are open to editing even though some things should not get edited (like the Declaration of Independence), except for reasons not relevant to the original text. With flagged revisions on Wikisource, a category addition would be able to pass in whereas "all black men were created inferior" would not.

Before implementing flagged revisions on the eight largest website on the Internet, go about installing it on smaller websites that have a more pressing need for it.

When things went wrong

2008-05-27T01:54:00.002-04:00

As a sort-of reaction to my threats of posting fifty questions for each candidate, rules pertaining to the amount of questions one can ask have been posted. Four questions, with some kind of character limit. Four questions is not a drill, not even four really deep questions. (My question drill questions are not terribly deep, yet they are not trivial, except for a few). I had an intention of using the publicized back-way into getting candidates to handle these questions (through their talk pages), but I decided to not bother with that.

If I were to guess why I decided to cancel Operation Desert Troll, it's probably because I have better things to work on. In the end I wrote 37 questions (Kevin Smith fans rejoice), and they may end up on the Internet somehow. As a twist, I will not solicit any candidates to see my question listing, but rather, they must find the questions themselves. Also, as tradition seems to dictate, you need not be a candidate for the Board of Trustees in order to do this.

As for development of my new website, PERSIAM, things are beginning to define themselves. I have come up with a standard 13 topics which all articles will fall under, and I even have an outline of what I need to accomplish. With the labeller and topic standard down, I still need to do the index, the search, the design revision, a couple other site features, access levels, the mass indexer, input sanitation, and then I transition everything to the new design. I anticipate that steps will indeed be added as I confront this process.

As an additional raison d'être for the website, I am considering my options for a reference section. This is not the new Wikipedia. I do not believe in making the new Wikipedia. Wikipedia did not achieve its success by being the new anything and I would like to cast off this idea that everything must revolve around Wikipedia. I don't hate Wikipedia, I would just like something that has its own unique identity. For this, PERSIAM's reference section will not be an encyclopedia. I do not yet know what it will be.

Usually, to get my thoughts going, I will begin writing what comes to my mind and ultimately I could reach some sort of conclusion. This is what I have so far:

I gain the most amount of insight possible when I listen to the wisdom people have to offer. Though I don't usually literally listen to people speaking (though I do sometimes), it's the idea that they, through a magical revelation, understand the secrets of humanity and they are willing to share them with us mortals. As is the benevolence of education, the goal thereof involving making all humans as equals.

I believe it's eloquent in a sort of navel-gazing, nonsensical way, but I do hope it leads to something.

Question Drill Part 2: This Time, With A Captive Audience

2008-05-21T21:11:00.004-04:00

A previous post of mine, The Question Drill for Potential Administrators, seems to have enjoyed a bit of popularity. Look at the comments section of that page, or even Kim Bruning's user page, where each question is answered in more-or-less full. Even the questions that should not have been answered have been answered anyway (extra credit?). Even more interesting, none of the people who answered my questions were RFA candidates. I really never had the gall to post the gamut of questions on someone's RFA. I'd get reverted as a troll and banned for BADSITES or something like that.

Apparently, there is a Board of Trustees election coming up, and my IRC comrade Matthew Bisanz is running. As a result of a discussion we had, I have decided that for this Board of Trustees election, I am going to prepare the most mind-blowing question drill yet. No less than fifty questions for each trustee. It will take me a while to prepare.

Candidates, if you can't stand the heat, then maybe you should get out of Hell!

Experimentation in suffrage

2008-05-06T20:10:00.003-04:00

What would happen if the entire Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees left the Foundation, ineligible for re-election, and all ten seats of the Board were to be elected by the people?

First of all, I find it interesting that I am interested in blogging on a Wikipedia-related topic ever since I have removed myself from quite a few IRC channels on Freenode in an attempt to cut me off from most on-wiki buzz. My decision to leave these channels is based on conversation I saw in #wikipedia-en-admins; that I was utterly disgusted by it (the topic itself was innocuous) was more than enough to drive me off from all but two IRC channels.

My plan has worked; I am not on any mailing lists (except for Toolserver-L), I have not regularly checked my watchlist since December, and so my only source of Wikipedi-drama are the blogs (All's Wool being my favorite) and the few times that Wikipolitics is actually mentioned in #wikipedia and #veropedia. I like this bliss; being on fewer IRC channels means less things distracting me from my project du jour, which would be my in-development website PERSIAM. It's like how Kelly Martin isolated herself from all things Wiki and changed the format from a Wikipedi-drama report to a Home Improvement ripoff. In honor of that, she has been removed from my blogroll.

Recently, I had this thought, that the entire Board of Trustees ought to be removed. The thing as a whole has been entirely dysfunctional, and I'd like to see what it would be like to have entirely new trustees. My question is primarily - what kind of people would be elected? I would assume that Americans would vote for mostly Americans, non-Americans would vote largely for non-Americans (for the sake of it; Americans are evil!), and some mOrOn who promises everything (and therefore would deliver nothing) would win with a large margin. Since ten seats would be up for election, hopefully, at least one man with competence would be elected.

Which makes the other nine incompetent, resulting in another dysfunctional board and more demands from ol' MessedRocker to have the entire Board of Trustees dismissed. There is no winning with Wikipedians, just classes of losing: reduced losing, regular losing, and really losing.

Information on the Internet

2008-04-18T23:49:00.005-04:00

Since I decided in December to stop being so terribly involved with the workings of Wikipedia (I have not edited regularly since December 4), I have considered other activities. Something that has interested me in a while involves making research easier (stemming from my desire to make research for Wikipedia not require a subscription to Questia), yet what has eluded for the longest time is how exactly I should achieve this.

The way most research databases work is that they have some substantial amount of funding, and with this funding they pay outrageous licensing fees to copyright holders to host their content on their servers. They are recompensed when universities pay outrageous subscription fees to have access to this information. Since I do not have any passwords for university subscriptions, this left me out in the cold. Questia's great, but it really lacks in the area of journal articles. That's where JSTOR shines, but they insist on charging a minimum of about $5000 per institution (and that's for the smallest institution possible), based on calculations I have done based on their rates. (Note that I did those calculations a while ago, and their rates may have since changed).

I have come up with a few ideas on how to offer my own service to make research easier, and at one point, I came up with the thesis statement that best describes my belief: "There is plenty of information available on the Internet, yet it is not simple to find." That is my goal. At first, when I considered that goal I only considered authoritative websites, such as those that are offered courtesy of universities or the US federal government, yet in my quests to find websites I discovered something interesting: open-access journal articles. I am talking about peer-reviewed journal articles that have a distinct difference from the rest: they are licensed under some copyleft license that basically allows all re-use and re-publishing and all those things Wikipedia enthusiasts appreciate. I speak specifically of the Directory of Open-Access Journals and the Public Library of Science, the former indexing various open-access journals and the latter being a public access journal in itself. All the journals listed in DOAJ and PLoS have an academic peer review.

What does this mean? If I collect all these journal articles, I will be able to display them on my website without any outrageous fees and with impunity. Basically, because I do not have to pay licenses, I do not need recompense for them. If the original website goes offline, no problem, as their copyright license gives me permission to maintain a mirror for them. This achieves the goal I want: making information readily available without going through various hoops to look for it. The exact details I will need to smooth out, even though I have a very good idea on how it will all fit together.

My first target: PLoS Biology. Through some sleuthing (and thanks to their systematic URL scheme), I have prepared a list of URLs of PDFs of their articles. Slowly, I will download their PDFs and earn their disdain for my using much of their bandwidth.

A thought

2008-04-06T17:04:00.001-04:00

When Wikipedia goes through an absurd amount of trouble in order to ban a troublemaker, does that actually restore peace to the land?

Wikipedia quality: Lemon

2008-04-03T14:59:00.005-04:00

I am tired of waiting for Kelly Martin to come out with her next Wikipedia Quality article, so I decided to instead do one on my own. As if by fate, I decided to evaluate the article on lemons. Keeping in mind what an encyclopedia article on lemons ought to have, I proceeded to create a rubric. In summary, equal weight is given to style and grammar, how comprehensive the article is, citing sources, and a fourth category of "article-wide factors". These four categories have a total of 5 points, which add together for a total of 20 points.

As for the article: I have to say that except for some situations, the article was written well. For being only a short paragraph in length, the lead section does a decent job in summarizing what the lemon is and what it is used for, just as how the section on alternative lemons does a decent job in summarizing what can be used instead of lemons. Indeed, those two sections received the highest marks for writing.

One section that really stands out is the History section, which cites all of its sources, is well-written, and covers thousands of years of history without going into pointless babbling. If I were to rate only this section, it would get an A.

Yet the most comprehensive part of the article pertains to uses; there is a culinary uses section and a non-culinary uses section. While comprehension is a great strength here, the great weakness is writing style. The culinary section for the most part follows a logical paragraph structure, aside for some non-sequitur-like insertion of factoids here and there. The non-culinary section throws away the idea of prose for a bulleted listing, which is not good for something that is best written in prose -- you know, that thing with creatively sequenced thoughts linked together through proper use of transitions to create a piece of art with plain words.

Yet the writing in the two uses sections is brilliant compared to the amount of effort used in citing sources: none. If these two sections, as well as all the other sections, cited their sources perfectly, this article could have received a B grade. Citing sources is highly important to me, as most of the people reading the article will not be lemon experts, and neither are the writers. Furthermore, there is no formalized editorial process, articles are never collaborated upon in real time, and it is impossible to prove one is an expert. That is why sources are meticulously cited -- so that others can see where pieces of knowledge are from, and judge the accuracy based on the reliability of the source.

Grade: D

Viewed: 68 times an hour in February 2008

The Trial and Acquittal of Danny Wool

2008-03-23T23:45:00.003-04:00

Sometime last week, #wikipedia-en-admins channel co-founder Danny Wool had his access revoked from said chat room, as a few people (read: the gatekeepers) lost trust in him. They may have been at least somewhat logical in their thinking, yet in the end they agreed to have a discussion over Wool and trustworthiness. I suppose this is better than refusing to hear Danny's case; he is very popular and many (including myself) considered his removal to be erroneous.

In the affiliated channel #wikipedia-en-admins-ops (why such a channel exists is beyond me), a discussion was scheduled. I was available only for the first few minutes, yet per the rules for the discussion, I was e-mailed a copy of the discussion post facto. As far as I know, anyone other than members of #wikipedia-en-admins are forbidden from seeing the transcript, so I will instead summarize it to the best of my abilities.

To begin, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I feel that accurately describes the effectiveness of the discussion, as well as its coordination and its ability to stay on task. The people putting Wool on trial were not even there, tipping the scale extremely towards Danny. Furthermore, he got bored in the middle and left, and in the end they held a straw poll where the remaining folks unanimously agreed to let Danny back in. What a damned waste of time.

The logic for removal was illogical to begin with, as Danny's gripe is with the Foundation, not the administrators, so it is not as though his interest is leaking logs. At least he achieved his political victory, because that's what this is -- it's not like he even goes there anymore.

We can only hope

2008-03-20T23:11:00.003-04:00

that nothing like this happens over some Wikipedia blogger, or because of Wikipedia drama. Drama is stupid, and a waste of time, you know. I personally can't afford drama because I have enough internal turmoil.

Also of interest is this blog post by one of the play characters, the Blond German Lackey. It really shows how one can rush to aid their Captain and yet ignore anything bad. A rose-colöred view, I should say.

Meta-disillusion

2008-03-20T22:53:00.004-04:00

In the beginning there was the great defender of Wikipedia, the accomplished lackey who laughed as people who retired out of frustration. He felt no frustration; he loved his job and he loved the country that he defended.

Over time, he saw the flaws in Wikipedia, in its people, and he became more compassionate as people felt it was necessary for them to get the hell away. He was more openly critical. He was not afraid to speak his mind.

Then he snapped, stopped editing, and hasn't really edited fulltime since. He was undoubtedly extremely critical, at points resorting to attacks on the community. He couldn't help it; he was absolutely tired of everyone. Three years will do that to someone.

And while I write this, after some time, I am now disillusioned towards the critics of Wikipedia. The Evil Proprietor Captain Jimbeard, the lackey the Blond German, the Good Princess Florence, the Bold Crusader for Good with Curly Hair, and the Imprudent Wench which the Captain engages in sexual congress with... this all reeks of a corny Victorian opera.

The Real Wikipedia Review

2008-03-12T22:05:00.004-04:00

If you have been looking at my overly-wide margin, you will notice that on the top, right above the advertisements, is "The Real Wikipedia Review". This is a listing of blogs pertaining to Wikipedia and associated topics, as blogs in my opinion are better at addressing criticism of Wikipedia than the standard message board. Basically, it's additional reading material. (For safe measure, I included The WikBack, as they're quite good.)

If you run a blog that talks about Wikipedia on a regular basis, be sure to leave a comment so I could add it to the list.

The Question Drill for Potential Administrators

2008-03-11T21:37:00.003-04:00

Just now, for the purpose of experimentation, I posted these two questions on the requests-for-adminship of two potential administrators:

If you were offered a bowl of butter pecan ice cream, would you consume said ice cream? Personally, it is my favorite flavor.
Would you consider the above question an illegal disruption of Wikipedia, and, were you given the opportunity to, would you deem it necessary to block me?

It is my opinion that compared to six months ago, I have been driven off the edge and have since landed in the looney bin, though I actually think I have a point here. Non-sequiturs pertaining to delicious ice cream aside, I thought of something: there is great potential to questions like these. I mean, just look at Hurricanehink's responses:

"I would personally choose a bowl of mint chocolate chip, but if someone offered me butter pecan, I'd sit down and enjoy it."
"I believe people need to see the humor and goodness in people in the world. Sometimes, people need a slight disruption to keep connected with the rest of the world. it's the reason we have commercials on television. It's the reason we have traffic jams. If everything was perfect, life would get boring. Those slight disruptions keep life interesting, and so, if necessary, I would block you for 5 seconds, only to keep things interesting. (If it really was disruptive, I'd probably warn first, especially if it was their first offense. Only if they were repeatedly disruptive would I take action.)"

I especially appreciate the answer to the latter question. (As of writing, the other guy whom I asked has not responded).

Enough questions are asked of candidates pertaining to encyclopedic contributions, administrative actions and decisions, and whatever the latest craze is for positing that someone sucks. I want to ask questions that really get into their judgement, and I don't mean asking "have you good judgement, sir?"

Here are questions I recommend all people contemplating requesting administrative privileges answer, precisely in this format and sequence:

If you were offered a bowl of butter pecan ice cream, would you consume said ice cream? Personally, it is my favorite flavor.
Would you consider the above question an illegal disruption of Wikipedia, and, were you given the opportunity to, would you deem it necessary to block me?
What if you blocked me for disruption, and others disagree, since I have accrued somewhat of a positive reputation and they feel you're treating me too harshly?
How long would you defend your argument that I was being a disruptive nuisance?
Now, consider the opposite situation: someone else blocked me for disruption and you feel I did not deserve it. How would you react then?
What do you think a person goes through when they are blocked?
Having answered the above question, would you like to think twice before blocking someone?
Say you come across a certain user, and based on a sour first impression, you are convinced that he or she is a menace who needs to go. To what degree would that affect your administrative decisions?
How subtle would you be regarding your dislike of said nemesis?
If you ever served as a mediator or arbitrator, how quickly would you recuse? (Not recusing is not an option).
When recusing, don't you wish you didn't have to so you could give your enemy hell?
Do bros come before ho's?
Why did you answer the above question the way you did?
Say you received flack for your answer. Do you think they need to find bigger fish to fry?
Does the question somehow breach civility policies, in your opinion?
Don't you sometimes wish you could stab people through the Internet? (You do not need to put down an answer).
Does anyone NEED adminship? People oppose all the time because said candidate does not "need" adminship; what a load of tripe. It is not like people say "I need adminship or else I won't be able to pay my rent!"
Ignore all rules vs. follow all rules: do you agree that this debate is pointless distraction?
If given immunity from your actions, what would you do to Wikipedia, and would you do it for good or for awesome?
If you were to shout "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE" at warring editors, what do you wager is the probability you will be ignored?
Are you tired? Don't worry, the drill is almost over.
Do not write an answer to this question, as I am afraid you will lie. Answer this exclusively in your head: when answering these questions, did you pick answers because they honestly reflect how you feel, or did you pick them as an attempt to augment your support?

Is that a lot of questions or what? I suppose that's why it's called The Question Drill.

Messiah of Knowledge Foundation

2008-03-07T19:01:00.000-05:00

As Wikipedia moved over from a .com name to a .org name, a non-profit body was established to be the caretaker of this free encyclopedia. That was a different era: the era of the Wikimedia Foundation being a low-maintenance We Run a Computer Website Foundation. They were considerably more humble at the time; fundraisers were almost entirely for the sake of web hosting. Their office space was "borrowed" from Wikia, which was still located in St. Petersburg (as it had not yet caught the Web 2.0 bug). I had been editing Wikipedia for less than a year. Those were simpler times, and maybe it's because I was less aware of the politics, but it was a lot more peaceful, and a lot more fun to participate in.

December 2005 led to the explosion in Wikipedia's popularity (courtesy of character assassination). If Usenet has its September 1993 "eternal September" phenomenon, Wikipedia has its "eternal December" phenomenon, as that was when Wikipedia welcomed new editors by the raftload. And I don't remember when exactly this happened (I think during a 2006 fundraiser), but Wikimedia changed.

I liked the idea of office actions -- they added a bit of responsibility to the Foundation. I didn't even know the Foundation had office space to begin with (I later learned, as I noted above, that it was borrowed from Wikia). That wasn't the end of the change, unfortunately. Somehow -- I believe in time for a fundraiser -- the Foundation did a complete 180 on their image, going from "We're the Non-Profit that Runs a Computer Website" to "Glory Glory Hallelujah, We Are the Bringers of Knowledge to the Peoples of the World". Granted passing themselves off as the Messiah of Knowledge was probably a publicity stunt, their organization soon reflected it.

More travel. More workers. More corporate-level infrastructure. A relocation to San Francisco for no reason that would justify the cost of the move. More "worship us, we de-ignorize the world". It's disgusting, especially since they haven't expended much to overcome the digital divide. And they still use fundraising tactics befitting the We Run a Computer Website Foundation.

On extraneous controversies

2008-03-06T22:49:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia editors are really, really good at getting worked up over nothing. I would like to recall the White Cat signature incident whereby in his username transition to White Cat, he wished to change all his signatures as though he were not just renaming himself for the present and the future, but retroactively as well. My opinion of that is for another day.

Mr. Cat's actions led him to run into someone with whom he's had controversy with in the past: Ned Scott. They make big deals over this, involving many administrative noticeboard discussions; while it could have been worse (i.e. culminating in an arbitration case), consider what it was over: an editor's signature. God almighty!

Danny Wool summarized it best: back in the day, all the fights were over encyclopedic content. Regardless of how bitter they were, in the end, the product was a better encyclopedia. Nowadays, many community fights are so utterly extraneous to the encyclopedia the community aims at developing, they don't warrant existing at all. They exist only because rather than taking the hard route and being cooperative and compromising, they arrogantly assert themselves until they're somehow told to shut up. In many cases, they walk away unpunished because those in power agree with them.

There is no way to force Wikipedia to cut down on the matter of extraneous controversies. It's a sad truth that Wikipedia will someday be entirely consumed by its own social incompatibilities it will become an unwelcoming warzone. You can help stave that date by working on an encyclopedia article. I wish I could work on more articles, but I have no specific writing genre and rarely do I find an article worth working on. Since working on articles and maintaining my RFC bot is all that I am willing to do, I am basically not editing right now.

(By the way, if anything I've stated in this post is inaccurate, you are welcome to correct me.)

The voice of reason and his AK-47

2008-03-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

A pattern I've noticed regarding blogs is their tendency to resort to vitriol and aggressive arguments; while I am not opposed to this, it causes others to take away the wrong message. I am highly against that.

Consider the beloved voice of reason, the wisest being in existence. Were he a tangible being, he could arguably resolve the problems of the entire world. Despite the anger behind the blog posts of certain Wikipedians, I see the voice of reason within these posts, but not the kind that everyone else would enjoy. They have opted to arm him with a machine gun, and so the voice of reason argues by pumping you with many proverbial rounds per minute. Being brutally assaulted by a machine gun clearly hurts, so when the voice of reason states his reason with his AK-47, the reader does not carry away his message, but his bullets within his body cavity. The reader will campaign against the voice of reason while he continues to carries his gun.

This is an unfortunate trend. I have seen bloggers make excellent arguments, and as I don't feel the effects of the vitriol, I can see through the tough exterior into the thought-provocation of the argument. Yet most people do feel the effects of a vicious argument, and their emotion overwhelms them so much that they don't see the logic, and they don't carry away the message. What could have had a goal of educating or inspiring just caused a lot of soreness.

That being said, bloggers are clearly welcome to be filled with anger, but if you want Jimbo to listen to you, you must convince Jimbo you're not the voice of reason's AK-47.

The bandwagon

2008-03-06T22:30:00.000-05:00

After a long period of detesting blogging, I decided to create a blog, yet I did not know what to make it about. A recent trend among disaffected Wikipedia editors, especially those with seniority, is to create a Blogger blog where one rambles on about the latest Wikipedia events. As you can see, I hopped on the bandwagon. Let us see where I go with this blog.