Posted by William Pietri at Mon Jun 14 01:52:23 2010
Hi! A minor correction: we'll be rolling the new code on the 14th, but Pending Changes won't be activated on the English Wikipedia until the 15th.

Posted by Joseph Reagle at Mon Jun 14 07:32:15 2010
Good point, and of course people are still debating whether the community needs more time to prepare! :-)

Posted by Peter Damian at Sun Jun 20 11:04:40 2010
Hello Joseph I only just found out about your work.  I have some comments here.

http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/06/vaknin-and-reagle-on-wikipedia.html

Posted by Geoff from Postalgold at Mon Jun 21 05:25:26 2010
I am looking forward to see what happens with this, of course questions of authenticity and reliability have always surrounded wikipedia, and I still have mixed feelings on whether it is a useful site or not. This could potentially save wiki, in terms of it being a recognised source of information.

Posted by Joseph Reagle at Mon Jun 21 07:27:27 2010
Hello, Peter, the point of the "Is WP Neutral" is to argue that, in a sense, that is the wrong question with respect to NPOV. NPOV is not about content but contributors and the intentional stance they ought to take.

Geoff, I too hope the "pending changes" test goes well.

Posted by Peter Damian at Mon Jun 21 12:32:06 2010
Thank for your comment but I am a long way from understanding.  Your essay was entitled 'Is Wikipedia Neutral?'.  You now say that is the wrong question. Why entitle an essay with a question that is not the right question.  (Sorry, I really am lost).

Posted by Peter Damian at Mon Jun 21 12:47:17 2010
And surely NPOV is about content. NPOV is a content policy which together with ‘verifiability’ and ‘no original research’ determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia.


Therefore it is not about contributors but rather a rule or principle that contributors must follow.  Which is a separate issue, in any case, from the question of whether these principles do ensure that Wikipedia is neutral.

Posted by Joseph Reagle at Mon Jun 21 15:16:13 2010
Peter, it is a provocative title so as to explore what it even means for something to be called neutral, why there's so much confusion about it in the WP context, and then to ask "Is 'Neutral' Even the Right Word'?" as I do in the last section.

Posted by Peter Damian at Tue Jun 22 03:38:37 2010
In which case the title is a little misleading.  Anyone seeing would expect a discussion concluding with 'yes' 'no' or 'maybe' or something like that.

Not wishing to seem overcritical, I did feel that the serious issues about neutrality were left untouched.  You mentioned the 'systematic bias' project but did not mention whether it was successful.  My view is that Wikipedia is still incredibly and systemically biased from the fact that the majority of contributors are American teenagers, leading to a disproportionate number of articles on manga, comics, television, the Internet, and many tasteless and entirely unencyclopedic subjects.  The humanities subjects, as I commented in my blog post, are a complete and unqualified disaster.

Posted by Peter Damian (banned editor) at Thu Jul 15 16:45:40 2010
More comments here

http://ocham.blogspot.com/2010/07/cult-of-amateur-lessig-vs-keen.html