Re: [xml-dev] Recent allegations about me

[Rick Marshall <rjm@zenucom.com>]

Every business pays for print. Whole 'trade' magazines are nothing more 
than reprinted 'press' releases which are written by marketing companies 
(and accompanied by bribes). That's why I stopped reading the trade 
press a long time ago. Academic jobs rely on being published; getting 
published means conforming to the rules of the publishers; it means 
beating (usually conservative and often hostile) peer review; and 
outsiders have no chance.

Wikipedia hasn't changed any of this and so whether or not someone is 
paid (and most academics contributing are effectively paid by their 
institutions) or not is a non-issue.

I suggest a review of "Thank You For Smoking" before proceeding to see 
just how ridiculous this can get.

I still think it's a storm in a teacup because this has to have been 
going on since the start. I don't think it's good or bad - it's just 
what happened and is happening.

Len Bullard wrote:
> 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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>
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