User:Bmorton3

Wikipedia is a wholly remarkable hypertext, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful hypertext ever to come out of the great publishing houses of .org. More popular than than NPR.org, better selling than Freecycle.org, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, WhereGodWentWrong.org, SomeMoreofGodsGreatestMistakes.org, and WhoisthisGodPersonAnyway.org. It has already replaced the Encyclopedia Brittanica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom in several of the more relaxed civilizations of the West, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the more pedestrian work in two important respects. First it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has that cool puzzle ball thing on its main page.

Seriously with all due respect to the good folks at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/, Wikipedia is bringing alive the crazy dreams of good old Douglas Adams.

Please put any comments or discussion on my discussion page

As of OCT 4 I am now officially on Wiki-vacation until further notice My Chairperson has instructed me to cease working on Wikipedia until such time as my publications are in-line with tenure expectations, so I suspect I will be gone indefinitely

Who am I?
Bmorton3 is Dr. Brian Morton, a professor of philosophy living in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, and teaching at Indiana State University. He is a bit of a generalist, but his strengths are in philosophy of religion and formal logic. He should really be working on his original research rather than working on Wikipedia... GET BACK TO WORK BRIAN!!!

WikiToDo List

 * WORK ON YOUR OR BRIAN NOT ON THIS STUFF!!!
 * Fix the RPG History stuff related to my recent OR
 * Work on Gnosticism stuff, esp Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
 * Work on Philosophy of art

Drafts in my User Space that YOU can help with

 * User:bmorton3/Philosophy of art
 * user:bmorton3/First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
 * user:bmorton3/Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

Wiki Positions
Brian feels that search for ways to enhance stability without seriously compromising open input is an important goal for WP.

Brian feels that WP needs to develop ways to reward writers of copy as well as editors of copy, and feels that being "well written" should be distinguished from being "well edited" in the requirements for FAs, to better acknowledge the importance of both kinds of contribution.

Brian feels that we need some way to attract people to work on the more important "front-page" style pages, as well as the far easier to work on pet project and detail pages.

Admin user:jkelly has my feelings on expertise well, so I will quote him.

Expertise
Wikipedia is an unwelcoming place for the expert. There are a number of reasons for this:
 * 1) As with the internet as a whole, there is no convincing way to exert expertise, other than by making sound arguments. As with the entire internet, sound arguments have less impact than persistence, belligerence and popularity.
 * 2) Experts rely upon original research and sources that cannot always be verified by the public. Neither of these belong on Wikipedia.
 * 3) Experts expect, quite reasonably, to be rewarded for the effort put into acquiring their expertise. There is no reward system in Wikipedia.

So Wikipedia is, and will remain, a great place for hobbyists. One might say that this has little impact on Wikipedia's quality as the treatment of subjects in thirty-two kilobytes rarely demands an understanding of any subject beyond the hobbyist level. There is a loss is in those places in which the popular view of a subject is misleading. Furthermore, an expert has immediate access to reliable sources which may take a hobbyist a great deal of time to find, or elude them completely. I don't see any way to reconcile Wikipedia's mission with supporting expert editors, however. Experts can, of course, contribute to articles on subjects on which they are themselves hobbyists. The side-effect is that hobby subjects get enthusiastic coverage, while drier topics languish, and will continue to do so until fashion touches upon them.


 * 1) I would add that in philosophy in particular No OR and NPOV have a deep conflict

Philosophical Mutterings
Nothing exists.

If anything did exist, it would be inapprehensible.

If anything were apprehensible, it would be inexpressible. (all 3 from Gorgias)

If anything were expressible, any two such expressions would be incommensurable. (from Pyrrho)

If there were a commensuration of expressions, there would be several and they'd all be partial orders over conflicting desiderata. (from Brian Morton)

If there were a totalizing commensuration of expressions, expressions rated decent by it would all be well out of the range of human ability to discover, express or understand. (from Socrates)

If there were a humanly accessible expression which was rated decently by a totalizing commensuration, it would be politically dangerous to express it. (from Socrates' fate)

If there were a safe, humanly expressible, decent expression, it would be understood by few, and of little worldly worth. (from Zhuangzi)

But fortunately, as I may have mentioned, no thing exists.

