Eric Barbour on KNSJ radio station

[Kingsindian]

Interview airs Thu 9pm California time. Streaming online at knsj.org.

[thekohser]

KNSJ's website has an Alexa ranking of about #4,900,000. The San Diego Arbitron ratings don't even flag the station, so it gets no more than 0.1% share rating.

So, if we assume that at 9:00 PM, about 5% of San Diego's 2.8 million people are listening to any radio at all, then that means possibly 140 people will hear this broadcast on the airwaves.

Sorry, Eric. Hopefully this will give the "sucks" board something to write about, though. You know, how evil I am for dismissing this broadcast (which I am setting up Audacity to auto-record at the designated hour, even though I'll be asleep). Haters gonna hate!

[Zoloft]

KNSJ's website has an Alexa ranking of about #4,900,000. The San Diego Arbitron ratings don't even flag the station, so it gets no more than 0.1% share rating.

So, if we assume that at 9:00 PM, about 5% of San Diego's 2.8 million people are listening to any radio at all, then that means possibly 140 people will hear this broadcast on the airwaves.

Sorry, Eric. Hopefully this will give the "sucks" board something to write about, though. You know, how evil I am for dismissing this broadcast (which I am setting up Audacity to auto-record at the designated hour, even though I'll be asleep). Haters gonna hate!

So if you post the recording here, you will double Eric's reach. Why not?

[milowent]

KNSJ's website has an Alexa ranking of about #4,900,000. The San Diego Arbitron ratings don't even flag the station, so it gets no more than 0.1% share rating.

So, if we assume that at 9:00 PM, about 5% of San Diego's 2.8 million people are listening to any radio at all, then that means possibly 140 people will hear this broadcast on the airwaves

lol. that's a sick math burn!

"This interview will focus on Wikipedia, and on the still-unsold book I coauthored about Wikipedia's history."

now i want to be listener 142, i do hope you record it.

[SB_Johnny]

KNSJ's website has an Alexa ranking of about #4,900,000. The San Diego Arbitron ratings don't even flag the station, so it gets no more than 0.1% share rating.

So, if we assume that at 9:00 PM, about 5% of San Diego's 2.8 million people are listening to any radio at all, then that means possibly 140 people will hear this broadcast on the airwaves.

Sorry, Eric. Hopefully this will give the "sucks" board something to write about, though. You know, how evil I am for dismissing this broadcast (which I am setting up Audacity to auto-record at the designated hour, even though I'll be asleep). Haters gonna hate!

So if you post the recording here, you will double Eric's reach. Why not?

Please do. Speaking Eric really gives you a greater understanding of typing Eric. He's really fun to listen to.

[Randy from Boise]

Eric provides the full measure, that's what I will say of him.

Take that however you want, whiskey or weasel piss...

RfB

[Vigilant]

Eric provides the full measure, that's what I will say of him.

Take that however you want, whiskey or weasel piss...

RfB

The full monty.

[tarantino]

The goofball Stierlitz/Strelnikov is the person interviewing him.

[Midsize Jake]

The goofball Stierlitz/Strelnikov is the person interviewing him.

He's not doing a bad job, but still, that might explain the sudden change in direction from "early history of Wikipedia" to "Wikipedia's pedophile problem."

[milowent]

no audio archive?

[thekohser]

no audio archive?

I captured the first 45 minutes of the talk. Nothing after that. I'll post later, if I can get permission to do so.

[Midsize Jake]

I missed the first 6-7 minutes or so, but overall they did a decent job. They could have used some jokes, though... the general tone was really grim.

Eric also made it sound like the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident (T-H-L) was the most significant contributory factor in the explosive-growth phase from 2004-2006, but that didn't happen until late 2005 and they were almost at the peak of their growth curve at that point. He didn't even mention Google's change to their PageRank algorithm to favor WP, which happened in the 2002-2003 period, and then the (IMO, major) role of Slashdot in referring tech people to Wikipedia shortly thereafter. But other than that he did OK, especially since it's now clear that he has an even lower opinion of Dave Gerard than I do.

[Kingsindian]

He didn't even mention Google's change to their PageRank algorithm to favor WP, which happened in the 2002-2003 period, and then the (IMO, major) role of Slashdot in referring tech people to Wikipedia shortly thereafter.

Is there something on this in more detail somewhere? I found this, but is there something else?

[Midsize Jake]

Is there something on this in more detail somewhere? I found this, but is there something else?

You could read Andrew Orlowski's version of the events, and while I differ with Orlowski on the timing aspect of the story (I happen to believe Google started favoring Wikipedia well before 2005), most people would presumably be more inclined to believe his version since I'm nobody in particular and he's a well-known tech journalist.

That said, in his version, something (presumably Slashdot, ars Technica, and similar sites) started driving traffic to Wikipedia before Google did. This began the growth phase, but it only became "explosive" after Google noticed what was happening and started doing their thing with the PageRanks sometime in 2005, in order to cure their problem with automated blogspam. The Seigenthaler incident would have been more of an early consequence of that, since the Kennedy assassination material was inserted in May 2005.

Needless to say, Google is not going to publicly document changes to their PageRank algorithm, so a fair amount of this is deniable on their part. Rather than admit to whitelisting (which would make a lot of people very angry, even after all these years), they've "suggested" that the favored rankings were incidental, and "might be" due to a sharp increase in incoming links and/or the popularity of Wikipedia clicks within Google itself - the latter obviously being a black box. But later on it became clear that other sites running MediaWiki were getting higher PageRanks than their own overall traffic rankings would indicate - ask Greg Kohs about this, among others - so the likely explanation is that Google changed the algorithm to favor a "site profile" common to MediaWiki installations, and which would have made explicit whitelisting unnecessary.

[iii]

I missed the first 6-7 minutes or so, but overall they did a decent job. They could have used some jokes, though... the general tone was really grim.

Eric also made it sound like the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident (T-H-L) was the most significant contributory factor in the explosive-growth phase from 2004-2006, but that didn't happen until late 2005 and they were almost at the peak of their growth curve at that point. He didn't even mention Google's change to their PageRank algorithm to favor WP, which happened in the 2002-2003 period, and then the (IMO, major) role of Slashdot in referring tech people to Wikipedia shortly thereafter. But other than that he did OK, especially since it's now clear that he has an even lower opinion of Dave Gerard than I do.

Interesting. I'd always described to friends at cocktail parties that the Seigenthaler biography incident was what heralded the end of the growth phase (something like an inflection point). The argument being that before that point, the Wikipedia invited skepticism that was coupled with the dubious Web 2.0 claim that, "weirdly, it works" (thank the prestigious journal Nature for pumping that bit of pop wisdom into the aether). The Seigenthaler Incident was a case study that this laudatory view was not the full story, and did so in rather stark terms from a philosophical, ethical, and even legal perspective. I claim that the prevailing understanding of Wikipedia began to change at that point from being an amazing crowdsourced project that documented humanity's knowledge into a flawed and manipulable first-stop cliffnotes outfit.

Wikipedia's current reputation is somewhere between casually useful and funny text-based relic.

[Randy from Boise]

I'd always described to friends at cocktail parties that the Seigenthaler biography incident was what heralded the end of the growth phase (something like an inflection point). The argument being that before that point, the Wikipedia invited skepticism that was coupled with the dubious Web 2.0 claim that, "weirdly, it works" (thank the prestigious journal Nature for pumping that bit of pop wisdom into the aether). The Seigenthaler Incident was a case study that this laudatory view was not the full story, and did so in rather stark terms from a philosophical, ethical, and even legal perspective. I claim that the prevailing understanding of Wikipedia began to change at that point from being an amazing crowdsourced project that documented humanity's knowledge into a flawed and manipulable first-stop cliffnotes outfit.

Wikipedia's current reputation is somewhere between casually useful and funny text-based relic.

I think you are generalizing and projecting your own views here. Wikipedia's reputation is good and improving: between "casually useful for settling bar bets" and "excellent quick start and finish for serious information queries." Moreover, with the Google knowledge box effort, or whatever we are calling those things, the impact is far ranging, bordering on ubiquitous.

I don't think that 98.9% of the users of information from the site, directly or indirectly, give even a moment's thought over whether it is an "amazing crowdsourced project" or a "flawed and manipulable first-stop cliffnotes outfit." It is there and it is used, like a bridge or a road. There may be potholes, the bridge might need paint, but that's no more than half a second's worth of distraction as the car motors by...

RfB

[Jim]

Wikipedia's reputation is good and improving

{{cn}}

[Poetlister]

Wikipedia's reputation is good and improving

Jim

And you think I'm a Wikipedian!

[EricBarbour]

Eric also made it sound like the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident (T-H-L) was the most significant contributory factor in the explosive-growth phase from 2004-2006, but that didn't happen until late 2005 and they were almost at the peak of their growth curve at that point

B U L L S H I T

[thekohser]

It is there and it is used...

Same can be said of Twitter. And Redtube.

[Zoloft]

It is there and it is used...

Same can be said of Twitter. And Redtube.

Ashley Madison too.

[Zoloft]

...

Hey Eric, I wanna hear your interview. Is it up on YouTube or somewhere?

[Midsize Jake]

B U L L S H I T

Okay, okay... Jeez, no need to get all huffy about it!

Still, you know I've never put much stock in new-user or "active-editor" counts coming from Wikipedia, as opposed to article counts; the former don't take things like sock-puppetry and quality-of-edits into account. If you go by article counts, you can see that with the exception of a few short spikes later on, the peak was essentially reached in early-mid 2006. And I'm not saying the Seigenthaler business didn't help them at all, I'm just saying that (and various other publicity-garnering incidents) didn't help them anywhere near as much as Google did.

[Randy from Boise]

It is there and it is used...

Same can be said of Twitter. And Redtube.

Exactly!

Fully 98.9% of Twitter users don't know or care if it is a for profit cash cow backed by a legion of anal retentive censors in a massive office building in Topeka, Kansas or a public cooperative staffed by "Kumbaya"-singing volunteer hipsters. They don't obsess about its limitations or dream of its possibilities... It is there and they use it because it is there and it works.

RfB

[TungstenCarbide]

... he did OK, especially since it's now clear that he has an even lower opinion of Dave Gerard than I do.

Oh man, I want to hear that. I'd be surprised too if someone had a lower opinion of Gerard than myself, as if it were even possible.

[Poetlister]

Fully 98.9% of Twitter users don't know or care if it is a for profit cash cow backed by a legion of anal retentive censors in a massive office building in Topeka, Kansas or a public cooperative staffed by "Kumbaya"-singing volunteer hipsters. They don't obsess about its limitations or dream of its possibilities... It is there and they use it because it is there and it works.

RfB

Twitter doesn't compare with Wikipedia. Nobody goes to Twitter to get detailed impartial information on the history of the Crimea, say.

[Hex]

That "final decline" graph again... long tail, Eric, when are you going to get it?

[Textnyymi]

Fully 98.9% of Twitter users don't know or care if it is a for profit cash cow backed by a legion of anal retentive censors in a massive office building in Topeka, Kansas or a public cooperative staffed by "Kumbaya"-singing volunteer hipsters. They don't obsess about its limitations or dream of its possibilities... It is there and they use it because it is there and it works.

If many people are not willing to research more about the companies which make the products they use, no one can help them. But if they get determined to learn more about the products and the people behind the companies, then who can stop them?

[thekohser]

It is there and it is used...

Same can be said of Twitter. And Redtube.

Exactly!

Fully 98.9% of Twitter users don't know or care if it is a for profit cash cow backed by a legion of anal retentive censors in a massive office building in Topeka, Kansas or a public cooperative staffed by "Kumbaya"-singing volunteer hipsters. They don't obsess about its limitations or dream of its possibilities... It is there and they use it because it is there and it works.

RfB

Exactly! So, ignorant users are also the source of Wikipedia's success! (And remember, the Wikimedia Foundation gets a tax exemption from our government, because of all the good things they're doing in the field of Education!)

[Randy from Boise]

It is there and it is used...

Same can be said of Twitter. And Redtube.

Exactly!

Fully 98.9% of Twitter users don't know or care if it is a for profit cash cow backed by a legion of anal retentive censors in a massive office building in Topeka, Kansas or a public cooperative staffed by "Kumbaya"-singing volunteer hipsters. They don't obsess about its limitations or dream of its possibilities... It is there and they use it because it is there and it works.

RfB

Exactly! So, ignorant users are also the source of Wikipedia's success! (And remember, the Wikimedia Foundation gets a tax exemption from our government, because of all the good things they're doing in the field of Education!)

Not "ignorant" — "oblivious, apathetic, practical users."

As you know, it is pretty easy to structure things on a non-profit basis. WP isn't a tough call, a slam dunk as far as that goes... This doesn't mean that they don't squander donor dollars by the suitcasefull, because they do...

RfB

[Jim]

Not "ignorant" — "oblivious, apathetic, practical users."

As Spock might have said, "a difference that makes no difference is no difference."

[Randy from Boise]

Not "ignorant" — "oblivious, apathetic, practical users."

As Spock might have said, "a difference that makes no difference is no difference."

However we describe the mass of readers using the big book of synonyms, the fact remains that the enormous majority of WP users don't know and don't care a whit about the backstage politics of Wikipedia. The encyclopedia has steadily improved over the last 10 years in both size and quality of content and it is held in esteem by a massive number of users, as demonstrated by the annually escalating bonanzas of small donations that WMF is able to shake loose.

If WP were descending into ridicule an disuse, we would likely see an oppositely sloped fundraising curve.

RfB

[Textnyymi]

We have to understand what people get out of reading Wikipedia pages, and what parts on those pages get read the most.

[Vigilant]

Fancy pictures snipped

To what do we owe this honor?

[SB_Johnny]

Fancy pictures snipped

To what do we owe this honor?

Dead thread in the other place.

I second/third/etc. the request for a recording.

[Jim]

I second/third/etc. the request for a recording.

Fourthed.

[lilburne]

Not "ignorant" — "oblivious, apathetic, practical users."

As Spock might have said, "a difference that makes no difference is no difference."

The encyclopedia has steadily improved over the last 10 years in both size and quality of content and it is held in esteem by a massive number of users, as demonstrated by the annually escalating bonanzas of small donations that WMF is able to shake loose.

We've thoroughly shown that to be hope over experience. The thing is expanding, yes, is its expansion meaningful, hell no. Are the crap articles improving, no. What were once partially acceptable articles are decaying into putridness.

If WP were descending into ridicule an disuse, we would likely see an oppositely sloped fundraising curve.

Not necessarily people give it more credence than it deserves because 1) it is free, 2) they don't have to do any thinking to get a sound bite, 3) they don't care about its accuracy, 4) if they discover that the accuracy is pants - well its free.

[Zoloft]

I looked again on the KNSJ site for a recording - Eric, do you have a recording yourself?

[EricBarbour]

Fancy pictures snipped

To what do we owe this honor?

[Vigilant]

Fancy pictures snipped

To what do we owe this honor?

Sorry, did I trigger you?

[Midsize Jake]

Sorry, did I trigger you?

Well, at least he wrote it out in a nice calligraphic script, instead of one of those hasty scrawls with a magic marker like we usually get from people.

[thekohser]

I e-mailed content-at-knsj.org seven days ago about getting permission to publish a recording. No response. I've just now pinged them again.

[TungstenCarbide]

Sorry, did I trigger you?

Well, at least he wrote it out in a nice calligraphic script, instead of one of those hasty scrawls with a magic marker like we usually get from people.

Hey, don't go disrespecting sharpies.

[SB_Johnny]

I second/third/etc. the request for a recording.

Fourthed.

Notice I left the twelfth wide open for you this time.

[10920]

I e-mailed content-at-knsj.org seven days ago about getting permission to publish a recording. No response. I've just now pinged them again.

they obviously don't care...

[Vigilant]

I e-mailed content-at-knsj.org seven days ago about getting permission to publish a recording. No response. I've just now pinged them again.

they obviously don't care...

Holy NecroThread, Batman!

[10920]

just amazed that we waited 3 years for the audio and no one would post it

Did Kohs think the radio station would take action against him or something? They don't give a damn.

Odd.

[Poetlister]

Is anyone still interested?

[Dysklyver]

Is anyone still interested?

Probably.

[10920]

Is anyone still interested?

I think the count is up to six!

kohs seems to have vanished from WO, though.