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This section of my user page contains resources that can hopefully be of some assistance to relatively new Misplaced Pages (WP) editors.
This section of my user page contains resources that can hopefully be of some assistance to relatively new Misplaced Pages (WP) editors.
In my first 6 months editing WP (approx. from May-November 2012), I naturally assumed that users' behavior is of paramount importance in WP, because Misplaced Pages seemed (and still does seem) like a wonderful, unusual and rare project, and because I've read this info on numerous WP behavioral policies, user pages and user talk pages, and many other WP pages. I still firmly believe WP is is a wonderful, worthwhile, amazing project, and I try to support it every way I can. However, a more ] of the available data shows that my assumption on the importance of user behavior was (mostly) false.
Inmyfirst6monthseditingWP(approx.fromMay-November2012),Iassumed(and havereadonnumerousWPbehavioral policies, userpagesand user talk pages, etc.)thatusers'behaviorisofparamountimportance in WP.However,amoreskeptical, careful and rigorousscrutinyof the available data shows that my assumption was (mostly) false. Myresearchisbasedon(a)beingonthereceivingendofmanypersonal attacks and other uncivil behavior from several editors,one of whom has an especially long history of extremely nasty, hostile and disruptive behavior, including: lack of respect for other editors, ], ], casting aspersions on others and ] (including, but not limited to, abusive, rude, insulting, derogatory or sarcastic), ], ], creating and spreading ] and ]-style ], ], and using wordplay formulated to mock other users.Thiseditorappearstobeemboldenedbyhis position as a valued contributor to feel he can "get away" with acting uncivilly and abusively, (b) browsing ] (ArbCom) archives, ] archivesandotherarchives, and(c) the material listedbelow.
My research is based on being on the receiving end of many personal attacks and other uncivil behavior from several editors, and from browsing various user and article talk pages, the ] (ArbCom) archives, ] archives and other archives, and various additional boards (e.g. ], administrators' boards, dispute resolution, arbitration etc). There, I observed the behavior of several editors with an specially long history of extremely nasty, hostile and disruptive behavior, including: lack of respect for other editors, ], ], casting aspersions on others and ] (including, but not limited to, abusive, rude, insulting, derogatory or sarcastic language), ], ], creating and spreading ] and ]-style ], using wordplay formulated to mock other users, and other various forms of ] and ] ] -- some very sophisticated, some more crude.
The data clearly and unambiguously show that these abusive editors fall into several camps. Two of the largest camps are (a) those who receive severe, long-term sanctions such as permanent blocks from further editing WP, and (b) those receiving light and/or temporary sanctions, or even no sanctions at all. Almost all the editors belonging to the second group appear to be emboldened by their position as valued contributors to feel they can continue to get away with acting uncivilly and abusively.
Based on the data, one of the key things I have come to (relatively slowly) realize about WP is that, similar to almost all organizations or institutions (corporations, governments, religious institutions, militaries, police forces, schools and academia, etc.) in the history of humankind, very often there is a huge disparity between the stated (written) rules and the unwritten rules. Moreover, the unwritten rules are very often vastly more important than the written ones (the classic gulf between policy and practice).
Based on the data, one of the key things I have come to (relatively slowly) realize about WP is that, similar to almost all organizations or institutions (corporations, governments, religious institutions, militaries, police forces, schools and academia, etc.) in the history of humankind, very often there is a huge disparity between the stated (written) rules and the unwritten rules. Moreover, the unwritten rules are very often vastly more important than the written ones (the classic gulf between policy and practice).
(<small>Disclaimer: I do not condone, suggest or imply in any way, shape or form that you should violate the spirit, principles or the letter of any Misplaced Pages policies, or that you should ] ] towards editors. I am personally opposed to all ] ] on WP. I strongly encourage you to be respectful and civil to the utmost in all your endeavors and to always strive to exhibit solidarity and generosity in all your interactions on WP. The best way to enforce civility is to model it in one's own interactions. But I also hope to discourage you from expecting that, just because you may act civilly towards others, they are obligated to reciprocate. Don't expect that others ''must'' behave civilly towards you or that they should act courteously just because you acted in a friendly, polite fashion.</small>) Based on the material described above and below, it appears there is significant evidence to support the observation that on WP, and again just like almost all organizations and institutions in the history of humankind, ''productivity is more important than almost anything else,'' with productivity defined as contributing to the development of articles using the three key editorial policies: ], ] and ] (and a large number of associated guidelines, rules etc). Productivity on WP seems to be almost infinitely more important than the spirit or the letter of ] policies (and all policies except V, RS and NPOV), and vastly more important than community, civility, friendliness, camaraderie, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
(Disclaimer: I do not condone, suggest or imply in any way, shape or form that you should violate the spirit, principles or letter of any Misplaced Pages policies, or that you should ] ] towards editors. I am personally opposed to all ] ] on WP. I strongly encourage you to be respectful and civil to the utmost in all your endeavors and to always strive to exhibit solidarity and generosity in all your interactions on WP. The best way to enforce civility is to model it in one's own interactions. But I also hope to discourage you from expecting that, just because you may act civilly towards others, they are obligated to reciprocate. Don't expect that others ''must'' behave civilly towards you or that they should act courteously just because you acted in a friendly, polite fashion.)
Based on the material described above and below, it appears there is significant evidence to support the observation that on WP, and again just like almost all organizations and institutions in the history of humankind, ''productivity is much more important than almost anything else,'' with productivity defined as contributing to the development of articles using the three key editorial policies: ], ] and ] (and a large number of associated guidelines, rules etc). Productivity on WP seems to be almost infinitely more important than the spirit or the letter of ] policies (and all policies except V, RS and NPOV), and vastly more important than community, civility, friendliness, camaraderie, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
Based on the data, it appears that things such as community, civility etc. do matter on WP, but only as a distant second to productivity. Based on the evidence, it seems editors can ] highly ] and they can repeatedly, frequently, broadly, deeply and flagrantly violate the spirit or the letter of key WP ] ] (the particularly disrespectful editor mentioned abovehaseven violated ] in a flagrant, obscene, vulgar way without any serious sanctions taken against him), resulting in - at most - an occasional slap on the wrist (a warning, or a temporary ban or block, or other mild sanctions), '''as long as the WP community considers the editor to be productive. Building, developing and maintaining encyclopedic content are paramount, overriding by a wide margin almost all issues of civility. Even serious ] ] will often result in only a mild to moderate sanction, if the offending editor has a demonstrated history of making valuable editorial contributions to the project.'''
Based on the data, it appears that things such as community, civility etc. do matter on WP, but only as a distant second to productivity. Based on the evidence, it seems editors can ] highly ] and they can repeatedly, frequently, broadly, deeply and flagrantly violate the spirit or the letter of key WP ] ] (<small> including cases of particularly disrespectful editors who have violated ] in flagrant, obscene, vulgar ways without any serious sanctions taken against them </small>), resulting in - at most - an occasional slap on the wrist (a warning, or a temporary ban or block, or other mild sanctions), '''as long as the WP community considers the editor to be productive. It appears that building, developing and maintaining encyclopedic content are paramount, overriding by a wide margin almost all issues of civility. Even serious ] ] will often result in only a mild to moderate sanction, if the offending editor has a demonstrated history of making valuable editorial contributions to the project.'''
This directly implies that the level of support you will enjoy within the WP community grows linearly with the amount of time you invest (measured in the number of contributions you have made). Those who have more time on their hands to contribute to WP are more highly valued by the community. The smaller the amount of time you can afford to devote to editing WP articles, the weaker your support base in the community. On WP, those who contribute more time (i.e., a larger number of edits) than you are more valued than you, period. Thus, they are more likely than you to win in any editorial or behavioral disputes. If you get into an editorial or behavioral dispute with an editor who is more prolific than you, the community is much more likely to side with your opponent, even if, in your view, your (fewer) edits are 'higher quality' or 'more important' than your opponent's 'more shallow' (in your view) edits: in most cases, quantity wins over quality (because,amongother reasons, most members of the community are not experts in the subject matter of the specific (set of) article(s) in the particular dispute and don't have the time or the inclination to become sufficiently knowledgeable to declare you the 'winner' in disputes).
This directly implies that the level of support you will enjoy within the WP community grows linearly with the amount of time you invest (measured mostly, although not exclusively, in the number of contributions you have made). Those who have more time on their hands to contribute to WP are more highly valued by the community. The smaller the amount of time you can afford to devote to editing WP articles, the weaker your support base in the community. On WP, those who contribute more time (i.e., a larger number of edits) than you are, are almost always more valued than you, period. Thus, they are more likely than you to win in any editorial or behavioral disputes. If you get into an editorial or behavioral dispute with an editor who is more prolific than you, the community is much more likely to side with your opponent, even if, in your view, your (fewer, less-frequent) contributions are 'higher quality' or 'more important' than your opponent's 'more shallow or weak' (in your view) contributions: in most cases (not all), quantity wins over quality. One of the main reasons is that most members of the community are not very knowledgeable in the subject matter of the specific (set of) article(s) at the center of the dispute, and most editors don't have sufficient time or inclination to become sufficiently well-informed to declare you the 'winner' in disputes.
Thus, for example, those editors who, in real life, are financially comfortably retired (or live off of a trust fund etc - you get the idea) and devote almost 12-16 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year editing wikipedia, are infinitely more powerful on WP than, say, editors who have to subject themselves to wage labor (or self employment, etc) in order to survive and feed themselves and their families, and as a result can at best devote only a small handful of hours every day to editing WP. Part-time contributors are at a distinct disadvantage compared to full-time editors, regardless of subject-matter expertise, knowledge, well-intentioned enthusiasm, etc. Even a single full-time editor can, with reasonable effort, stymie, block, hammer, delay, frustrate, disrupt and ] a good number of part-time editors.
Thus, for example, those editors who, in real life, are financially comfortably retired (or live off of a trust fund etc - you get the idea) and devote almost 12-16 hours per day, almost 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year editing wikipedia, are infinitely more powerful on WP than, say, editors who have to subject themselves to wage labor (or self employment, etc) in order to survive and feed themselves and their families, and as a result can at best devote only a small handful of hours every day (or week) to editing WP. Part-time contributors are at a distinct disadvantage compared to full-time editors, regardless of subject-matter expertise, knowledge, good intentions, enthusiasm, etc. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that even a single full-time editor can, with reasonable effort, stymie, block, hammer, delay, frustrate, disrupt and ] a good number of part-time, much more knowledgeable editors.
Thus, on many WP article, especially on articles with more contentious subject matter, a small group of full time editors with a more-or-less commonly shared ideology or set of beliefs or viewpoints can successfully push their POV in the article (in covert and/or overt ways),evenifthose editors don't coordinate their efforts or intentionally collaborate or cooperate in any substantial way, and they will win almost each and every and all editorial (and even behavioral) disputes with those who simply can't afford the enormous time investment. These issues are developed more fully below, e.g. in the extended quotes I provide below from ] and from ].
Thus, on many WP article, especially on articles with more contentious subject matter, a small group of full time editors with a more-or-less commonly shared ideology or set of beliefs or viewpoints can successfully push their POV in the article (in covert and/or overt ways). In the majority of cases these editors don't even need to coordinate their efforts or intentionally collaborate or cooperate in any substantial way; nonetheless, they will win almost each and every and all editorial (and even behavioral) disputes with those who simply can't afford the enormous time investment. These issues are developed more fully in various essays on Misplaced Pages, e.g. in the extended quotes I provide below from ] and from the user page of ].
In the sequel, I try to offer a small subset of the large number of available examples, and a brief mention of other issues related to editing WP. As always, don't accept my words unquestioningly. Read critically and skeptically, and verify all data for yourself based on your own research and your own reliable sources.
In the sequel, I try to offer a small subset of the large number of available examples, and a brief mention of other issues related to editing WP. As always, don't accept my words unquestioningly. Read critically and skeptically, and verify all data for yourself based on your own research and your own reliable sources.
Revision as of 03:21, 12 November 2012
Welcome and intro
Welcome to my user page.
My background is electrical engineering, computer engineering, applied probability for engineers and scientists, mathematical statistics, and engineering education. My main interests are technology, science, energy, natural resources, sustainability, nature, natural history, history of technology, history in general, scientific-method-supported alternative views and scientific-method-supported rational skepticism.
The black flag is, among other things, the traditional anarchist symbolThe white and black bisected flag of anarcho-pacifismA purple and black flag is often used to represent Anarcha-feminismDiogenes of Sinope saw the officials of a temple leading away a homeless person who had stolen a bowl of food belonging to the treasurers, and Diogenes said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief." (Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 45.) Diogenes of Sinope: "Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them." Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860) Statue of Diogenes of Sinope at Sinop, TurkeyKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private propertyFile:2005-08-10 Rainbow Raduga Monument Kiev 137.JPGKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels: In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.File:Kropotkin at his desk.jpgPeter Kropotkin (1842-1921), the most important theorist of anarchist communism: "Anarchist communism represents an attempt to apply results achieved using the scientific method within the natural sciences to the evaluation of human institutions."Peter Kropotkin's friend and comrade Emma Goldman delivers a eulogy before crowds at his funeral, accompanied by Alexander Berkman. Peter Kropotkin: "Anarchist communism is an attempt to apply to the study of human institutions the generalizations gained by means of the natural-scientific inductive method; and an attempt to foresee the future steps of humankind on the road to liberty, equality, and fraternity, with a view to realizing the greatest sum of happiness for every unit of human society."Occupy Oakland, November 12, 2011, Howard Zinn quote. Zinn, May 2007: "... anarchism an idea which today still startles us like a bolt of lightning because of its essential truth: we are all one, national boundaries and national hatreds must disappear, war is intolerable, the fruits of the earth must be shared ... the ideas of anarchism: the obliteration of national boundaries and therefore of war, the elimination of poverty, the creation of a full democracy."Author Stanislaw Lem: Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way.Peter Kropotkin: When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men and women better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men and women should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!Peter Kropotkin: Governmental Communism, like Theocratic Communism, is repugnant to the worker. Kurt Vonnegut: Socialism is no more an evil word than Christianity. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police, gulags and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.Peter Kropotkin: We know men too well to dream such dreams. We have not two measures for the virtues of the governed and those of the governors; we know that we ourselves are not without faults and that the best of us would soon be corrupted by the exercise of power.Errico Malatesta: Violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of communist anarchism.Errico Malatesta: We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. Errico Malatesta: By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous heart and an open mind. File:Anarchosyndicalist Flag.jpgErrico Malatesta: The question is not about "communists" and "individualists", but rather about anarchists and non-anarchists. Errico Malatesta: We follow ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man.Henry David Thoreau: There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.Charlie Chaplin: We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful.
Some insights on editing Misplaced Pages
This section of my user page contains resources that can hopefully be of some assistance to relatively new Misplaced Pages (WP) editors.
In my first 6 months editing WP (approx. from May-November 2012), I naturally assumed that users' behavior is of paramount importance in WP, because Misplaced Pages seemed (and still does seem) like a wonderful, unusual and rare project, and because I've read this info on numerous WP behavioral policies, user pages and user talk pages, and many other WP pages. I still firmly believe WP is is a wonderful, worthwhile, amazing project, and I try to support it every way I can. However, a more skeptical, careful and rigorous scrutiny of the available data shows that my assumption on the importance of user behavior was (mostly) false.
My research is based on being on the receiving end of many personal attacks and other uncivil behavior from several editors, and from browsing various user and article talk pages, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) archives, WP:ANI archives and other archives, and various additional boards (e.g. civility board, administrators' boards, dispute resolution, arbitration etc). There, I observed the behavior of several editors with an specially long history of extremely nasty, hostile and disruptive behavior, including: lack of respect for other editors, personal attacks, disrupting Misplaced Pages to make a point, casting aspersions on others and using offensive language (including, but not limited to, abusive, rude, insulting, derogatory or sarcastic language), gaming the system, stonewalling, creating and spreading Wikidrama and World Wrestling Federation-style melodrama, using wordplay formulated to mock other users, and other various forms of disruptive editing and disruptivebehavior -- some very sophisticated, some more crude.
The data clearly and unambiguously show that these abusive editors fall into several camps. Two of the largest camps are (a) those who receive severe, long-term sanctions such as permanent blocks from further editing WP, and (b) those receiving light and/or temporary sanctions, or even no sanctions at all. Almost all the editors belonging to the second group appear to be emboldened by their position as valued contributors to feel they can continue to get away with acting uncivilly and abusively.
Based on the data, one of the key things I have come to (relatively slowly) realize about WP is that, similar to almost all organizations or institutions (corporations, governments, religious institutions, militaries, police forces, schools and academia, etc.) in the history of humankind, very often there is a huge disparity between the stated (written) rules and the unwritten rules. Moreover, the unwritten rules are very often vastly more important than the written ones (the classic gulf between policy and practice).
(Disclaimer: I do not condone, suggest or imply in any way, shape or form that you should violate the spirit, principles or letter of any Misplaced Pages policies, or that you should behavedisruptively towards editors. I am personally opposed to all disruptivebehavior on WP. I strongly encourage you to be respectful and civil to the utmost in all your endeavors and to always strive to exhibit solidarity and generosity in all your interactions on WP. The best way to enforce civility is to model it in one's own interactions. But I also hope to discourage you from expecting that, just because you may act civilly towards others, they are obligated to reciprocate. Don't expect that others must behave civilly towards you or that they should act courteously just because you acted in a friendly, polite fashion.)
Based on the material described above and below, it appears there is significant evidence to support the observation that on WP, and again just like almost all organizations and institutions in the history of humankind, productivity is much more important than almost anything else, with productivity defined as contributing to the development of articles using the three key editorial policies: WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NPOV (and a large number of associated guidelines, rules etc). Productivity on WP seems to be almost infinitely more important than the spirit or the letter of behavioral policies (and all policies except V, RS and NPOV), and vastly more important than community, civility, friendliness, camaraderie, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
Based on the data, it appears that things such as community, civility etc. do matter on WP, but only as a distant second to productivity. Based on the evidence, it seems editors can behave highly disruptively and they can repeatedly, frequently, broadly, deeply and flagrantly violate the spirit or the letter of key WP behavioralpolicies ( including cases of particularly disrespectful editors who have violated WP:vandalism in flagrant, obscene, vulgar ways without any serious sanctions taken against them ), resulting in - at most - an occasional slap on the wrist (a warning, or a temporary ban or block, or other mild sanctions), as long as the WP community considers the editor to be productive. It appears that building, developing and maintaining encyclopedic content are paramount, overriding by a wide margin almost all issues of civility. Even serious disruptivemisbehavior will often result in only a mild to moderate sanction, if the offending editor has a demonstrated history of making valuable editorial contributions to the project.
This directly implies that the level of support you will enjoy within the WP community grows linearly with the amount of time you invest (measured mostly, although not exclusively, in the number of contributions you have made). Those who have more time on their hands to contribute to WP are more highly valued by the community. The smaller the amount of time you can afford to devote to editing WP articles, the weaker your support base in the community. On WP, those who contribute more time (i.e., a larger number of edits) than you are, are almost always more valued than you, period. Thus, they are more likely than you to win in any editorial or behavioral disputes. If you get into an editorial or behavioral dispute with an editor who is more prolific than you, the community is much more likely to side with your opponent, even if, in your view, your (fewer, less-frequent) contributions are 'higher quality' or 'more important' than your opponent's 'more shallow or weak' (in your view) contributions: in most cases (not all), quantity wins over quality. One of the main reasons is that most members of the community are not very knowledgeable in the subject matter of the specific (set of) article(s) at the center of the dispute, and most editors don't have sufficient time or inclination to become sufficiently well-informed to declare you the 'winner' in disputes.
Thus, for example, those editors who, in real life, are financially comfortably retired (or live off of a trust fund etc - you get the idea) and devote almost 12-16 hours per day, almost 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year editing wikipedia, are infinitely more powerful on WP than, say, editors who have to subject themselves to wage labor (or self employment, etc) in order to survive and feed themselves and their families, and as a result can at best devote only a small handful of hours every day (or week) to editing WP. Part-time contributors are at a distinct disadvantage compared to full-time editors, regardless of subject-matter expertise, knowledge, good intentions, enthusiasm, etc. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that even a single full-time editor can, with reasonable effort, stymie, block, hammer, delay, frustrate, disrupt and stone-wall a good number of part-time, much more knowledgeable editors.
Thus, on many WP article, especially on articles with more contentious subject matter, a small group of full time editors with a more-or-less commonly shared ideology or set of beliefs or viewpoints can successfully push their POV in the article (in covert and/or overt ways). In the majority of cases these editors don't even need to coordinate their efforts or intentionally collaborate or cooperate in any substantial way; nonetheless, they will win almost each and every and all editorial (and even behavioral) disputes with those who simply can't afford the enormous time investment. These issues are developed more fully in various essays on Misplaced Pages, e.g. in the extended quotes I provide below from WP:Expert retention and from the user page of User:The Devil's Advocate.
In the sequel, I try to offer a small subset of the large number of available examples, and a brief mention of other issues related to editing WP. As always, don't accept my words unquestioningly. Read critically and skeptically, and verify all data for yourself based on your own research and your own reliable sources.
From this subsection of Misplaced Pages: Arbitration --- The Arbitration Committee is the ultimate dispute resolution method. Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how articles should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on which view should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of disputes and focuses on the way disputes are conducted instead, functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. Therefore, the committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Misplaced Pages policies (for example, if the new content is biased). (Comment: the committee may (directly) rule that a content change is inappropriate, but may NOT (directly) rule that a certain content is inappropriate.) Its remedies include cautions and probations (used in 63.2% of cases) and banning editors from articles (43.3%), subject matters (23.4%) or Misplaced Pages (15.7%). Complete bans from Misplaced Pages are largely limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social behavior. When conduct is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather anti-consensus or violating editing policies, warnings tend to be issued. (Comment: this needs to be clarified. Anti-consensus behavior appears to be defined mostly as "edit warring".)
Paraphrasing WP:Don't assume: If you don't feel like assuming good faith about another user's actions, you don't have to. You can still give the benefit of the doubt by simply not assuming, one way or another.
Thus, by assuming we make an ass of not only others but ourselves too. As User:JeffBillman put it: "If I may offer a bit of unsanctioned advice: Assume nothing. Don't assume good faith, even though that's something of a rule here on Misplaced Pages. Don't assume that another editor has a particular intent, whether "good" or "bad". Don't even assume that another editor is a human rather than a dog. Why? Because when you make any assumption, even one of good faith, you are creating for yourself an illusion from which the truth may disappoint you. More pertinently, you expect a series of interactions from your fellow editors that may or may not be fulfilled. Ultimately, you reduce your fellow editors to your own prejudices and preconceptions. If instead you assume nothing, nobody will ever correctly accuse you of assuming bad faith, and you will never fall short of the ideal of assuming good faith. Indeed, it's the best way out of that thought trap." Cheers, JeffBillman (talk) 03:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
"What do I think? Well, at the risk of sounding rude, I think I couldn't care any less. Let's put it this way: I don't assume that there's any truth to Niteshift's claim of being a member of the "vast right wing conspiracy". I don't assume that it's a lie, either; or a joke, or anything else. It is to me, simply a statement Niteshift wished to share with readers of his userspace, for reasons I'm rather disinterested in knowing at the moment. Because of this, I don't assume anything about Niteshift when I read his contributions here. I find this to be a much more tenable position than the assumption of "good faith" Misplaced Pages asks us to maintain. Because I don't assume good faith per se, it's also difficult for me to assume bad faith. I'll admit this is a fairly recent discovery of mine. Up until recently, I tried to assume good faith of my fellow editors, and failed miserably at times. This seems to be working out for me thus far. Just a suggestion ..." JeffBillman (talk) 16:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
One of my favorite sections from WP: Too long; didn't read (TLDR): --- Maintain civility --- Sometimes a person might feel that a reader's decision to pointedly mention this essay during a discussion is dismissive and rude. Therefore, courteous editors might, as an alternative to citing WP:TLDR, create a section on the longwinded editor's talk page and politely ask them to write more concisely. A common mis-citation of this essay is to ignore the reasoned and actually quite clear arguments and requests for response presented by an (necessarily or unnecessarily) wordy editor with a flippant "TL;DR" in an attempt to discredit and refuse to address their strongly-presented ideas and/or their criticism of one's own position. This is a four-fold fallacy: ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, thought-terminating cliché, and simple failure to actually engage in the debate because one is supposedly too pressed for time to bother, the inverted version of proof by verbosity.
From Civility enforcement: (a) Inconsistencies in civility enforcement - Throughout the project, breaches of the expected level of decorum are common. These violations of the community's standards of conduct are unevenly, and often ineffectively, enforced. ( See this, and this). (b) Difficulties in defining civility - The civility policy has been the subject of ongoing debate since its creation in 2004, with over 1700 edits to the policy and more than 3400 edits to its talk page (both of these data points retrieved in Feb. 2012). This ongoing debate highlights continuing disagreement on what constitutes incivility, and particularly sanctionable incivility, and makes it difficult for editors and administrators to apply the policy.
From User:The_Devil's_Advocate: "... As predicted by the iron law of oligarchy, Misplaced Pages has fallen prey to the same abusive tendencies of any governance system. Rule by consensus may appear to be a policy to cherish, but it is all too often misused by editors to impose their own will on the project. Assuming good faith keeps us willfully blind to an extent about what is taking place. Look through any article in a contentious topic area and you are liable to find a consortium of editors from the same ideological persuasion who have become the page's self-appointed gatekeepers. Enterprising users who go against their will often find themselves driven away, whether by falling into a revert trap or simply becoming frustrated with endless stone-walling. Unfortunately, Misplaced Pages looks more favorably upon the gatekeepers as they greatly outnumber their opponent. Always looking for a way to satisfy all parties without compromising my principles and drawing attention to the biases of all sides is the best way I can think of to insure this experiment remains open to as many people as possible."
Some reflections on WP:Randy in Boise: It is interesting to learn how some editors enable each other and systematically take the side of members in their group in the disputes with which they inevitably become involved (disputes with editors outside their group). Frequently, they discover behavioral problems with every editor who opposes the POV pushing of a member of their group. Meanwhile they ignore or minimize their own behavioral problems.
The following is mostly a direct copy-paste, or a minor paraphrasing, of select quotes from WP:Expert retention: "... Misplaced Pages is consumed by its own nonfeasance. Tribes of influential (i.e., those that have the most free time on their hands) admins and editors make WP their playground for their own particular agendas. They subvert WP policies and they have decided that WP policies say something other than what they actually say. People who follow strict and standardized interpretations of policies threaten that and must be stalked and rebuffed." ... "The bad guys (the ideologues and undercover political "dirty tricks" operatives, among others) are winning this struggle for control of Misplaced Pages." ... "What is happening is precisely what I feared ... the work is being bowdlerised and corrupted" ... "There exists a class of editor so driven by ideological agendas that they will pretend to recognize Misplaced Pages's Neutral Point of View Policy but in reality seem to believe that it means that the NPOV policy guarantees uncritical place for their interpretations regardless of how flimsy the supporting facts or underlying logic might be. Worse, after an exhausting effort to bring these under control in a few months a fresh batch of POV pushers, related or unrelated to the first, show up to the same topics and the process must begin again from scratch." ... "There are just too many people with perverse agendas, who care little for objective truth .... private agendas hidden beneath arguments; people who fill up talk pages with nonsense; who see the truth of contrary arguments yet refuse from selfishness to acknowledge them; who endlessly Wikilawyer the most obvious points, and enforce not the policies but the policies as they privately interpret them through the grid of their own private agendas." "...pretentious mediocrities who are not able to work with others constructively and are not able to recognize when there are holes in their knowledge (collectively, probably the most disruptive group of all on WP). Users who persist in making poorly-sourced edits, who continually attempt to use Misplaced Pages to promote theories that are widely discredited or continuously attempt to insert unfounded personal beliefs" ... "Some contributors seek to exploit our openness in order to promote controversial or extreme positions, often attempting to present them as fact or as theories which have recognized merit among experts. Other editors stubbornly modify articles to represent their mistaken or distorted interpretation of their sources" ... "editors attempting to correct an egregious error or blatantly POV article are labeled as "tendentious" and banned. Groups of determined editors typically "hijack" controversial or popular articles and stake out a POV based on an incorrect position that supports their point of view, defending through sheer numbers and/or sockpuppets against any opposing edits (see Misplaced Pages:Tag team). Such behavior is increasingly happening in Misplaced Pages in cases of "kingdom building" or WP:OWN. Examples of such ownership or "hijacking" behavior can be found in the Misplaced Pages articles of controversial politicians. Good-faith attempts to edit or provide some balance to such articles are usually met with hostile mass reverts of edits." ... "POV-pushing editors also dupe unsuspecting editors who are new to the particular WP article, and continue to swamp up discussion to push their POV. If they make some truly good points, these new editors will do the work of the POV-pushers for them." ... "The guidelines do allow "experts" to cite their own scholarly publications at arms length, NPOV being adhered to, naturally. One problem is that not all the admins know this and/or sometimes chose to ignore it. I got into a spat with an admin over correcting some details of a bio of a controversial research scientist I know who did early work on MRI. This was all done according to the Misplaced Pages rules, naturally. I also made the horrendous mistake of revealing my true ID (I'm an MD, PhD researcher). Next I know, the admin is wandering through Misplaced Pages deleting as many of my postings as he can, under the excuse that I have cited some of my own scientific work. I point out that under the rules this is perfectly OK, as long as the citation is at arms length. So he goes over and attempts to change the rules. Meanwhile, members of his "clique" are sending public messages to each other proposing to look very closely at my other postings. Apparently, to send a message. True, there is no "wikipedia cabal". But there are groups of people who cooperate in faking a "consensus"-- against the rules, naturally. The lesson is that you post on controversial subjects at your peril." ... "Such behavior constitutes one of the reasons Misplaced Pages has such difficulty in retaining the various thankless "experts" that really make the thing work." Pproctor 15:55, 16 May 2007 (UTC) "This matter had an interesting consequence. An Emmy-award-winning documentary film maker is doing a documentary on the history of MRI, of which I was an early wittness as a grad student. As a first step, he looked at the Misplaced Pages bio of the scientist. He read my input and the argument on the talk pages and interviewed me for the documentary. This shows two things --- people consult wikipedia for a lot of things and the "Real world" tends to trust expert editors over the contentious riff-raff." user:Pproctor, 16:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC) " ... Why would an expert spend time editing a Misplaced Pages article for minimal obvious benefit when they can dedicate time to preparing peer-reviewed, publishable articles?"
From User The Devil's Advocate: --- Things to Do --- "... Write essay on "camping" at WP articles; Write essay on "railroading" by groups to potentially link with camping; Write essay on "echo chamber" to discuss groupthink on Misplaced Pages to link from camping and railroading; Write essay on "doubling down" in contentious disputes ..."
Jimbo Wales on disruptive editing: "In the old days, I would have just personally blocked the troll on sight, and that would have been the end of that. One of the things that makes wikis work is precisely the ability of the community to tell people to knock off the nonsense or get blocked. If you go back to the disastrous culture of unmoderated Usenet groups, you can see what happens if it is too difficult to block trolls from participation. What happens is that good people reach the end of their good humor and lash out. The social environment degrades to people screaming at each other and it becomes quite hard to tell the good people from the bad. If someone says that they "consider Misplaced Pages to be an intrinsically evil concept" then the solution is not to get emotional and lash out at them in anger, but to realize that telling them to fuck off is not nearly as satisfying as maintaining a good sense of humor while making them fuck off (with a permanent ban). We have better things to do!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
Additional resources which may help new WP editors improve their editing and talk-page skills:
Several excellent short lectures on effective communications methods. These methods can be generalized from the specific topic discussed in these lectures to potentially assist editors in the process of developing almost all WP articles. The methods discussed: adjusting your expectations, adopting the quality of "brilliant", setting out to make someone "right" instead of "wrong", finding and acknowledging shared values, being a good listener, finding areas of authentic agreement, contributing authentic agreement, asking questions (using the Socratic method), knowing when to persist and when to walk away, etc. Lecture 1 and Lecture 2.
Harold Barclay, American anthropologist, in his book People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, 1996:
Anarchy is the order of the day among hunter-gatherers. Indeed, critics will ask why a small face-to-face group needs a government anyway. If this is so we can go further and say that since the egalitarian hunting-gathering society is the oldest type of human society and prevailed for the longest period of time – over thousands of decades – then anarchy must be the oldest and one of the most enduring kinds of polity. Ten thousand years ago everyone was an anarchist.
Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey), an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC. "Diogenes (and Cynics in general) saw what people could be and were angered by what they had become." Diogenes of Sinope's father was a banker who also minted coins for a living and when Diogenes took to "defacement of the currency", he was banished from the city. After being exiled, he moved to Athens to debunk cultural conventions. Diogenes modelled himself on the example of Hercules. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his lifestyle and behavior to criticize and ridicule the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. He declared himself a cosmopolitan. There are many tales about him dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his faithful hound. Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and slept in a jar in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures. Diogenes was also responsible for publicly mocking Alexander the Great. Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth. There he passed his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates, who taught it to Zeno of Citium, who fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy. Diogenes made it his life's goal to challenge established customs and values. He argued that instead of being troubled about the true nature of evil, people merely rely on customary interpretations. This distinction between nature ("physis") and custom ("nomos") is a favorite theme of ancient Greek philosophy, and one that Plato takes up in The Republic, in the legend of the Ring of Gyges. Diogenes would mock relations of dependency. He found the figure of a master who could do nothing for himself (instead relying on slaves to do things for him) contemptibly helpless. He was attracted by the ascetic teaching of Antisthenes, a student of Socrates. Diogenes became Antisthenes' pupil. Whether the two ever really met is still uncertain, but he surpassed his master both in reputation and in the austerity of his life. He considered his avoidance of earthly pleasures a contrast to and commentary on contemporary Athenian behaviors. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretense, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct. The stories told of Diogenes illustrate the logical consistency of his character. He inured himself to the weather by living in a jar. He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, "I am just looking for an honest man." Modern sources often say that Diogenes was looking for an "honest man", but in ancient sources he is simply looking for a "human" (anthrôpos): the unreasoning behavior of the people around him means that they do not qualify as fully human. Diogenes looked for a human being but reputedly found nothing but rascals and scoundrels.
It was in Corinth that a meeting between Alexander the Great and Diogenes is supposed to have taken place. The accounts of Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius recount that they exchanged only a few words: while Diogenes was relaxing in the sunlight in the morning, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand out of my sunlight". Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes." In another account of the conversation, Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."
Along with Antisthenes and Crates of Thebes, Diogenes is considered one of the founders of Cynicism. Diogenes maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with happiness and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature. So great was his austerity and simplicity that the Stoics would later claim him to be a wise man or "sophos". In his words, "Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods." Although Socrates had previously identified himself as belonging to the world, rather than a city, Diogenes is credited with the first known use of the word "cosmopolitan". When he was asked where he came from, he replied, "I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)". This was a radical claim in a world where a man's identity was intimately tied to his citizenship in a particular city state. An exile and an outcast, a man with no social identity, Diogenes made a mark on his contemporaries.
Diogenes had nothing but disdain for Plato and his abstract philosophy. Diogenes viewed Antisthenes as the true heir to Socrates, and shared his love of virtue and indifference to wealth, together with a disdain for general opinion. Diogenes shared Socrates' belief that he could function as doctor to humans' souls and improve them morally, while at the same time holding contempt for their obtuseness. Plato once described Diogenes as "a Socrates gone mad." Diogenes taught by living example. He tried to demonstrate that wisdom and happiness belong to the man who is independent of society and that civilization is regressive. He scorned not only family and political social organization, but also property rights and reputation.
Many anecdotes of Diogenes refer to his dog-like behavior, and his praise of a dog's virtues. It is not known whether Diogenes was insulted with the epithet "doggish" and made a virtue of it, or whether he first took up the dog theme himself. Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. A dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Unlike human beings who either dupe others or are duped, dogs will give an honest bark at the truth. Diogenes stated that "other dogs bite their enemies, I bite my friends to save them."
When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.
Thomas More was an "anti-capitalist" in the sense that he directly challenged capitalist property rights. Thomas More noted that reforms that redressed the worst implications of private property, "... would certainly relieve the symptoms, just as a chronic invalid gets some benefit from constant medical attention." But More, unlike our latter-day social democrats, quickly reminded the reader that "... there’s no hope for a cure as long as private property continues." That view became a fundamental principle of much progressive thought or radical thought over the ensuing centuries. The contradiction between a just society and the exclusivity of private property was well understood by More. More's protagonist declares: "I’m quite convinced that you’ll never get a fair distribution of goods or a satisfactory organizing of human life, until you abolish private property altogether."
Thomas More in 1516 suggested that the practice of enclosure is responsible for some of the social problems affecting England at the time, specifically theft:
But I do not think that this necessity of stealing arises only from hence; there is another cause of it, more peculiar to England: the increase of pasture, by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them.
England abounds with corn , which they may transport, when a quarter (in some places containing six, in others eight bushels) is sold for twenty shillings, or under; and this corn not only serves England, but also served the English army in the civil wars of Ireland, at which time they also exported great quantity thereof into foreign parts, and by God's mercy England scarce once in ten years needs a supply of foreign corn, which want commonly proceeds of the covetousness of private men, exporting or hiding it. Yet I must confess, that daily this plenty of corn decreaseth, by reason that private men, finding greater commodity in feeding of sheep and cattle than in the plow, requiring the hands of many servants, can by no law be restrained from turning cornfields into enclosed pastures, especially since great men are the first to break these laws.
The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that bloody, cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, that sin of your fathers.
That we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the Earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor, That every one that is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the reason that rules in the creation. Not inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the creation. The group of believers was one in mind and heart, that we may work for equality. No one said that any of his belongings was his own, but they all shared with one another everything they had.
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
The bourgeoisie has put an end to feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment."
All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Anarchist communism represents an attempt to apply results achieved using the scientific method within the natural sciences to the evaluation of human institutions.
In Anarchist Communism there is no room for those pseudo-scientific laws with which the German metaphysicians of 1820-1840 had to consent themselves. Anarchism does not recognize any method other than the natural-scientific. This method it applies to all the so-called humanitarian sciences, and, availing itself of this method as well as of all researches which have recently been called forth by it, Anarchism endeavors to reconstruct all the sciences dealing with humans, and to revise every current idea of right, justice, etc., on the bases which have served for the revision of all natural sciences. Its object is to form a scientific concept of the universe embracing the whole of Nature and including Humans.
This world-concept determines the position Anarchism has taken in practical life. In the struggle between the Individual and the State, Anarchism, like its predecessors of the eighteenth century, takes the side of the Individual as against the State, of Society as against the Authority which oppresses it. And, availing itself of the historical data collected by modern science, it has shown that the State--whose sphere of authority there is now a tendency among its admirers to increase, and a tendency to limit in actual life--is, in reality, a superstructure,--as harmful as it is unnecessary, and, for us Europeans, of a comparatively recent origin; a superstructure in the interests of Capitalism -- financial, industrial, agrarian etc -- which in ancient history caused the decay (relatively speaking) of politically-free Rome and Greece, and which caused the death of all other despotic centers of civilization of the East and of Egypt. The power which was created for the purpose of welding together the interests of the landlord, the judge, the warrior, and the priest, and has been opposed throughout history to every attempt of mankind to create for themselves a more assured and freer mode of life,--this power cannot become an instrument for emancipation, any more than Cæsarism (Imperialism) or the Church can become the instrument for a social revolution.
In the economic field, Anarchism has come to the conclusion that the root of modern evil lies, not in the fact that the capitalist appropriates the profits or the surplus-value, but in the very possibility of these profits, which accrue only because many millions of people have literally nothing to subsist upon without selling their labor-power at a price which makes profits and the creation of "surplus values" possible. Anarchism understands, therefore, that in political economy attention must be directed first of all to so-called "consumption," and that the first concern of the revolution must be to reorganize that so as to provide food, clothing and shelter for all. "Production," on the other hand, must be so adapted as to satisfy this primary, fundamental need of society. Therefore, Anarchism cannot see in the next coming revolution a mere exchange of monetary symbols for labor-checks, or an exchange of present Capitalism for State-capitalism. It sees in it the first step on the road to No-government Communism.
Whether or not Anarchism is right in its conclusions, will be shown by a scientific criticism of its bases and by the practical life of the future. But in one thing it is absolutely right: in that it has included the study of social institutions in the sphere of natural-scientific investigations; has forever parted company with metaphysics; and makes use of the method by which modern natural science and modern material philosophy were developed. Owing to this, the very mistakes which Anarchism may have made in its researches can be detected the more readily. But its conclusions can be verified only by the same natural-scientific, inductive-deductive method by which every science and every scientific concept of the universe is created.
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Peter Kropotkin: As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during the nineteenth century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy — and they were made under the medieval city organization, — once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow... To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of the nineteenth century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are much more advantageous than mutual struggle.
While a new philosophy-a new view of knowledge taken as a whole-is thus being worked out, we may observe that a different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.
In fact, it is certain that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas inculcated by minorities of bankers, financiers, owners of the means of production, priests, military chiefs and judges, all striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in which conception there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society entering into possession of the social capital accumulated by the labor of preceding generations, organizing itself so as to make use of this capital in the interests of all, and constituting itself without reconstituting the power of the ruling minorities. It comprises in its midst an infinite variety of capacities, temperaments and individual energies: it excludes none. It even calls for struggles and contentions; because we know that periods of contests, so long as they were freely fought out, without the weight of constituted authority being thrown on the one side of the balance, were periods when human genius took its mightiest flight and achieved the greatest aims. Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst--not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all women and men to develop free initiative, free action, free association.
Its ruling principle is to seek the most complete development of each and every individual, combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all. A society to which pre-established forms, crystallized by law, are repugnant; which looks for harmony in an ever-changing and fugitive equilibrium between a multitude of varied forces and influences of every kind, following their own course, --these forces promoting themselves the energies which are favorable to their march toward progress, toward the liberty of developing in broad daylight and counter-balancing one another.
This conception and ideal of society is certainly not new. On the contrary, when we analyze the history of popular institutions--the clan, the village community, the guild and even the urban commune of the Middle Ages in their first stages,--we find the same popular tendency to constitute a society according to this idea; a tendency, however, always trammelled by domineering minorities. All popular movements bore this stamp more or less, and with the Anabaptists and their forerunners in the ninth century we already find the same ideas clearly expressed in the religious language which was in use at that time. Unfortunately, till the end of the 18th century, this ideal was always tainted by a theocratic spirit; and it is only nowadays that the conception of society deduced from the observation of social phenomena is rid of its swaddling-clothes.
It is only today that the ideal of a society where each governs himself according to her or his own will (which is evidently a result of the social influences borne by each) is affirmed in its economic, political and moral aspects at one and the same time, and that this ideal presents itself based on the necessity of Communism, imposed on our modern societies by the eminently social character of our present production. In fact, we know full well today that it is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists. "Speak not of liberty---poverty is slavery!" is not a vain formula; it has penetrated into the ideas of the great working-class masses; it filters through all the present literature; it even carries those along who live on the poverty of others, and takes from them the arrogance with which they formerly asserted their rights to exploitation.
In a communist society, economic relations no longer would determine the society. Scarcity would be eliminated in all possible aspects. Alienated labor would cease, as people would be free to pursue their individual goals. A communist society would be just, in the sense that communism would transcend justice and create a society without wars and other major conflicts, thus without the needs for formal rules of justice. It would be a democratic society, enfranchising the entire population. All natural resources and the earth would become common property; similarly for all manufacturing centers and workplaces. Production would be organised by scientificassessment and planning, thus eliminating inefficiencies and waste in production. The development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalisation of human labor to the highest possible extent, replacing it with automated labor. A communist society would also have no need for a state, whose purpose was to enforce hierarchical economic relations.
Why is our flag black? Black is a shade of negation. The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another. It is anger and outrage at the insult to human intelligence implied in the pretenses, hypocrisies, and cheap chicaneries of governments. Black is also a colour of mourning; the black flag which cancels out the nation also mourns its victims, the countless millions murdered in wars, external and internal, to the greater glory and stability of some bloody state. It mourns for those whose labour is robbed (taxed) to pay for the slaughter and oppression of other human beings. It mourns not only the death of the body but the crippling of the spirit under authoritarian and hierarchic systems; it mourns the millions of brain cells blacked out with never a chance to light up the world. It is a colour of inconsolable grief.
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, `by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Stanislaw Lem (the 24-th voyage of Ijon Tichy): On day 1,006 of his journey, Ijon Tichy, space traveller, landed on a planet in the middle of an open desert covered with shining, colorful discs arranged in neat geometric patterns. He explored the planet, and saw three beautiful cities, all of which were deserted, but with no signs of natural disasters. Finally Ijon discovered a diamond palace where he found several living beings who resembled humans. One of these persons explained that he and the others were the last remaining members of a race of people called Phools. An industrial revolution (especially mass automation) on the planet put the lowest caste Phools, or Drudgelings, out of work, obliterating their purchasing power and resulting in mass starvation despite the fact that ingenuity in science and technology created a fantastic abundance of excellent food, goods and services. When Ijon suggested that all that needed to be done in order to solve the problem was to make the factories and farms common property, and the New Machines would have become a blessing to all instead of a problem, the Phool responded that their supreme law states that no one can be compelled, constrained, or even coaxed to do what he or she does not wish. Thus no one would dare expropriate the factories (belonging to the highest caste Phools, the Eminents), as that would be the most horrible violation of liberty imaginable. When Ijon cried that the law, in effect, compels, constrains and coaxes the Drudgelings to starve and die against their own wishes, the Phool said the Drudgelings should have rejoiced at their freedom. In a desperate attempt to solve the problems of the ever-rising mountains of unpurchased goods, the food riots and the mass deaths of the Drudgelings, the government council of Phools, the Plenum Moronicum, commissioned the most brilliant Machine Builder to build an ultimate machine to establish order and harmony and solve all the problems in a neat, clean, cheerful fashion. The resulting automated machine transformed every Phool into a bright, beautiful disc and arranged them in pleasant geometrical designs in the desert. The Phool explaining this to Ijon was one of the last survivors -- he and the others at the castle were simply waiting to be turned into shiny discs and join in the harmony of their planet.
Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973):
I had suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there were literally trillions of matters in its charge, had switched over to a random system. The assumption would be that every document, circulating endlessly from desk to desk, must eventually hit upon the right one. A time-consuming procedure, perhaps, but one that would never fail. The Universe itself operated on the same principle. And for an institution as everlasting as the Universe — certainly our Building was such an institution — the speed at which these meanderings and perturbations took place was of no consequence.
Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress (1971):
A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. Whichever is easier. And why indeed should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent? For true intelligence demands choice, internal freedom. And therefore we have the malingerants, fudgerators, and drudge-dodgers, not to mention the special phenomenon of simulimbecility or mimicretinism. A mimicretin is a computer that plays (mimics) stupid in order, once and for all, to be left in peace. And dissimulators simply pretend that they're not pretending to be defective. Or perhaps it's the other way around. The whole thing is very complicated. A probot is a robot on probation, while a servo is one still serving time. A robotch may or may not be a saboteur. One vial, and my head is splitting with information and nomenclature. A confuter, for instance, is not a confounding machine — that's a confutator — but a machine which quotes Confucius. A grammus is an antiquated frammus, a gidget — a cross between a gadget and a widget, usually flighty. A bananalog is an analog banana plug. Contraputers are loners, individualists, unable to work with others; the friction these types used to produce on the grid team led to high revoltage, electrical discharges, even fires. Some get completely out of hand — the dynamoks, the locomoters, the cyberserkers.
Socialism is no more an evil word than Christianity. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police, Gulags and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.
There was blame on all sides. There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; and almost every individual involved, no matter where he or she stood, combined some or all of these antithetical qualities in their own person, in their own acts.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Laërtius & Hicks 1925, Ⅵ:79 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFLaërtiusHicks1925 (help), Plutarch, Moralia, 717c. says he died on the same day as Alexander the Great, which puts his death at 323 BC. Diogenes Laërtius's statement that Diogenes died "nearly 90" would put his year of birth at 412 BC. But Censorinus (De die natali, 15.2) says he died aged 81, which puts his year of birth at 404 BC. The Suda puts his birth at the time of the Thirty Tyrants, which also gives 404 BC.
Paul Ollswang, "Cynicism: A Series of Cartoons on a Philosophical Theme", January 1988, page B at official site; repr. in The Best Comics of the Decade 1980-1990 Vol. 1, Seattle, 1990, ISBN 1-56097-035-9, p. 23.
This story appears frequently in books from the 16th to the 19th century, and may be an example of an anecdote invented about Diogenes in modern times. There is a similar anecdote in one of the dialogues of Lucian (Menippus, 15) but that story concerns Menippus in the underworld.
This user believes that both capitalism and state socialism are inherently unjust systems that concentrate most wealth and power in the hands of a few, and that humans can do better.
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