RE: [xml-dev] Recent allegations about me

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

I don't disagree, Rick.  Editors have been being paid by their companies as
long as I can remember.   I am told but not first-person aware of 'quiet'
payments made to chairs of committees.   I have seen "Thank You for Not
Smoking" and I am as aware as the rest of the world what these spin
maneuvers have done for global politics.  I am personally and professionally
aware of what they meant to the founding of the web and its evolution ever
since.   This may be the latest whorl in the teapot, but it is not the last
or the largest.  The web like the climate is heating up.

So we are left with the question of how to establish a truth.   It is
certainly the case that where David Megginson and others have come out as
opponents of 'process', they are shown to be wrong.   Where some say that
the 'wisdom of crowds' is always right, they are shown to be wrong.  Where
populist sentiment decries expertise in favor of common input, they are
often shown wrong.   In other cases, they are right.   

Wikipedia as a resource is and always will be an uneven mix of brilliance
and dull trivia.  I would think that teachers making assignments would
inspect resources to determine their adequacy for an assignment.  If they
can't how can we expect them to grade the papers?  We have professional
instructors here at my children's schools who refuse to teach the evolution
texts instead telling their pupils to 'read them and make up your own mind'.
So when a good program comes on the Science channel, or an article appears
in an available resource, I sit down with them and discuss it.

Plutocracy and meritocracy have their place along side democracy.  These are
organizational types for making decisions and it is the decision that
characterizes their valid members, the consequences of the decision, their
form.

People so involved in grammars vs assertion chains for determining the value
of an element or attribute ought to get this.  That they don't or won't may
say something about the compartmentalization of their thinking, the politics
of their jobs or perhaps the dullness of their education.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Marshall [mailto: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.