User:Geo Swan/opinions/Six degress of article separation

In late July of 2007 I had several exchanges about three articles about WTC survivors with User:Titanium Dragon when they nominated those articles for deletion. I was going to put all these comments in a note on User talk:Titanium Dragon, but, instead I have placed most of today's comments in my user space.

Comments on the future direction of the wikipedia and "good faith"
Several of your comments imply that you are a big fan of deleting or merging small articles, in favour of larger, omnibus articles, that cover a number of seemingly related topics. I offered what I thought were some reasoned criticisms of that approach.

IMO the future growth of the wikipedia would be much better managed if it were informed by reasoned discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of the various competing visions. Without a reasoned discussion there is no possibility of a compromise. Without a reasoned discussion we won't have the best vision rising to the top, instead we will only get the most popular one rising to the top. And that rise will not benefit from any tweaking or adjustment that might have happened if its proponents had listened to its critics.

You aren't the first person to whom I have raised my concerns about the implications of their vision of the wikipedia's future. You can be one of the few to reciprocate and give a reasoned reply.

I don't know if I should repeat this. I wasn't trying to be insulting when I told you that editing an article, after you nominated it for deletion, gives the appearance of bad faith. I'll repeat that I don't actually think your edit, after your afd, was in bad faith. I don't know if I need to repeat this again, but I think there is a big difference between telling someone I think they acted in bad faith and saying I think their actions gave the unfortunate appearance of bad faith.

Orio Palmer
I mentioned Orio Palmer in my note on most recent comment on Talk:Survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I am considering starting an article about him, the leader of the team of firefighters that climbed highest in the Tower that fell first.

If I understood your position I think you would argue that he too was NN. If I understood your position I think you would argue that if Orio Palmer deserved any coverage at all in the wikipedia, it would be in the "main article". I am willing to try to comprehend you position more fully, if you have any further arguments beyond those you have expressed already, or if you think you can express them differently after thinking about the issues for a couple of days.

The way I see it your "main article" approach has some serious weaknesses. Your main article approach, where you would have stuck all of what you consider the important details of Clark and Praimnath's stories, is based on the assumption that there is only one "main article" under which their stories belong.

As you may have noticed, from some of the references and external links I added to the Brian Clark article, not all of those articles are primarily about the WTC attack. Several of the articles are primarily about designing buildings to better survive disasters. And others are primarily about designign better procedures to evacuate building to maximize survival. They aren't about really about the WTC attack. Clark and Praimnath's mention in these articles concerns the lessons they drew, or the lessons that can be drawn from their unique experience in the WTC disaster.

The wikipedia may have articles on designing for disaster, evacuation procedures for disaster; or communications procedures during disasters. Wikipedia contributors may want those articles to talk about Clark, Praimnath, and Orio Palmer. That would be very difficult if you, or guys like you, succeeded in deleting the articles about them to the "main article" about the WTC attack. The details you think are worthy of coverage in your WTC "main article" are not going to be the same details needed for those other articles.

Far better, IMO, to have the articles that draw on Clark, Praimnath or Palmer's experiences have relatively brief accounts, that are too the point, but provide links to the articles devoted solely to Clark, Praimnath or Palmer.

Six degrees of article separation
There is a meme, generally called six degrees of separation, that addresses the connections between all the humans currently living on Planet Earth. According to the meme there are just six people between us and every other person in the world.

One of the possibly apocryphal anecdotes that accompanies this meme describes a speaker introducing this concept to a large auditorium that included a lot of skeptics. When he suggested that there would be six links between him, and Emporer Haile Sellassie of Ethiopia many in his audience hooted with laughter. But one audience member stood up and said, your link between you and Haile Selassie is even shorter than that. I know you know Joe, up in the front row; and Joe knows me; and I have met Haile Selassie.

Is it true? I suspect it is true sometimes, but that there are pockets of poorly connected pepole who require more jumps. But I believe the principle is basically sound, that if you trace enough links you can find multiple paths between any two people on Earth. While the Haile Selassie story may be apocryphal, I think that it does reflect that surprising links do crop up sometimes.

And I believe the same is true of the Universe of human knowledge. I believe if you follow enough links there are multiple paths between every item in the Universe of human knowledge and every other item in the Universe of human knowledge.

Are you familiar with the work of Ted Nelson? Nelson coined the term hypertext, and, with Doug Engelbart is one of the two thinkers credited with the invention of the concept of a hypertext. The World Wide Web is a hypertext -- but a kind of crappy one. All the links being uni-directional being a big weakness.

Nelson wrote about the Universe of human knowledge, and the best ways to traverse it. He wrote "all hierarchies are essentially arbitrary". I am strongly convinced that this is a profound insight. Paper documents are essentially linear. And using essentially linear paper documents reinforces the use of linear hierarchies, hierarchies some of which deserve deprecation or retirement.

If the wikipedia were to follow the vision I have which is strongly influenced by Nelson's, then most articles would be small, focussed articles that tried to talk about just one thing.

The strong advantage this would have for our readers is that they would no longer be imprisoned in the hierarchies that others were trying to arbitrarily impose on them. Under your approach it would be a lot harder for someone who used google to look up Brian Clark, Stanley Praimnath or Orio Palmer to find the links between these individuals and the lessons to be drawn from their experiences in various fields.

To the extent the wikipedia is made up of small focussed articles readers are able to jump from link ot link in the order that best serves their needs. This is much more empowering for the reader.

Cheers! Geo Swan 15:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)