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Islands of Sanity

By Peter Damian

Andreas Kolbe’s piece on Wikipedia versus Britannica went down pretty well, except for one commentator, who objected that “The projects in the science, logic, mathematics, and music are islands of sanity”.

 

 

Really? My own specialism is in the history of logic, particularly medieval logic. It’s a disaster area. I wrote last year about some vandalism to the article on the 13th century logician Duns Scotus, which said that in 2011 Scotus received an honour from the University of Oxford, “together with Lawrence of Arabia, Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien and living University members Rupert Murdoch, Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck”. When I wrote that, nearly a year ago, I thought it would be immediately removed. Yet it’s still there. I also mentioned vandalism to the article on William Vorilong. That was removed, but there was more added quite recently, including the bizarre claim that Vorilong studied Japanese medieval philosophy, physics and astronomy. It’s still there, and see also the article on the Chinese Da Ming Hun Yi Tu map.

It can be speculated that one of the first people in Europe who consulted the map was William Vorilong, noted philosopher from England, who was shown the map while travelling with japanese visitor Yoshimitsu Kage.

Retrodeductive inference?

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OK, you object that this is merely boring history, which no one cares about. The real stuff, on modern science and logic and mathematics and so on, is totally reliable. So let’s take a look at some of the articles on logic, starting with the flagship article. Right there in the introduction it says “Avicenna revived the study of logic and developed relationship between temporalis and the implication”.

…continue reading Islands of Sanity

Another wiki-day, another wiki-dollar

File:USPS mailbox.jpgThis week we present an open letter from one of our forum members, Mason (known as “28bytes” on Wikipedia).

Jonathan E. Hochman is the founder of a marketing business specializing in search engine optimization. He is also a long-term Wikipedia participant (since 2005!) and an administrator on the site, where he contributes under the name of “Jehochman”. As he states on his personal Wikipedia profile page, Hochman does not “edit” on behalf of his clients. But truth, on Wikipedia, is in the eye of the beholder. Hochman may not create or contribute to articles about his customers on Wikipedia *now*, but as the following will show, he has done so on numerous occasions in the distant and not so distant past.

28bytes, as the reader may recall, was the most popular candidate in last year’s elections to Wikipedia’s supreme and far from uncontroversial decision-making body, the site’s “Arbitration Committee”. He resigned after having been criticized (especially by Jehochman) about also having an account here on Wikipediocracy, as well as having edited some articles he had a close connection with.

We’d also like to give a hat tip to Mila, who did a lot of research to bring this topic to light. You can see her forum post about Jehochman here.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JEHOCHMAN

Dear Mr. Hochman,

I am sure you recall leaving a message on my talk page six weeks ago asking that I resign from the arbitration committee for not disclosing to the Wikipedia community that I had (and have) an account here on Wikipediocracy. This was one of about two dozen messages you left on my talk page within a period of a few hours, many of which made the claim that not disclosing this fact

…continue reading Another wiki-day, another wiki-dollar