RE: [xml-dev] Recent allegations about me

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

I don't agree it is a tempest in a teapot.  I think it is the first whorl of
many to come because there are forces driving it that are organic to the
systems put in place to gather and publish information on the web and then
to gather search results to them via positive feedback.

No, this is real.  If you want things to improve, it is time to look at them
squarely and out the forces at work.  I think there is a lot of Spy Vs Spy
in the press coverage, and that is a condition of a ravenous press that
feeds on controversy, but beneath that is the credibility of the web itself
as a publishing medium which at one time or another has had 'moral majesty'
attributed to it and at other times considered garbage at light speed.

Remember, this isn't the first time that Microsoft or others have paid for
print.  That is quite common.  This is one of the times that much has been
made of that.  When Tim Bray was beaten up, he was an editor of an important
specification and it was MS doing the beating.  This time it is a well-known
expert editing a wiki, and a lot of press and even Tim are stepping forward
to apply the lash.   One would hope Tim would step back and reexamine it.  I
think the press will become more evenly divided.

But the fact is, OOXML and ODF will still be there.  How high a quality do
we want the documentation in the central place, WikiPedia, to be and who can
tell the difference?  Mike says he can.  I probably can.  

Is this just a case of pile on for political points?  If so, it unjust and a
contributor to the Great Lie.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Marshall [mailto:rjm@zenucom.com] 
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 10:32 PM
To: Len Bullard
Cc: 'Amelia A Lewis'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Recent allegations about me

This discussion seems to have forgotten some of the alleged facts

Microsoft isn't allowed to edit the entry in question (never quite 
understood that point)
At any rate an independent person seemed to be a fairer way to do it

Q. Do you want the independent person to be an unpaid zealot or a paid, 
well regarded member of the industry?
The implication is that Microsoft wants to bend the truth and at any 
rate can't be trusted. That's not black and white - the courts have 
already determined Microsoft can't be trusted on all matters, but not 
this particular matter.

Q. How do we know the other entries haven't been paid for?

Q. When we edited the wikipedia entry  for Roger, the work was done by 
daughter - what if I said I paid her (a student) to do it? Does that 
make the entry tainted, or did we just encourage a young engineering 
student to take an interest?

Storm in a teacup.

Keep up the good work Rick.

Rick

Len Bullard wrote:
> Where I live, lowly Alabama, Wikipedia cannot be used for high school
> research papers.
>
> That's unfair too but is that the only alternative to being unable to
> distinguish good from bad sources?  What would be the advantage to
multiple
> resources?  
>
> len
>
>
> From: Amelia A Lewis [mailto:amyzing@talsever.com] 
>
> Interestingly, the one study that I saw cited on this subject 
> indicated that academics and professionals generally counted wikipedia 
> as sufficiently accurate in their own fields, but doubted its accuracy 
> in other fields.
>
>
>
>
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