User talk:Tmtoulouse/niche

To do list

Sounds good. So how to get the n00bs in? Are the community policies n00b friendly or hostile? Are the locals n00b friendly or hostile?

Our Google page rank was fucked by the .com->.org change, but then again it's not like we're selling Google ads. I'm linking our go-to articles across my personal monkeysphere, in the hope of attracting general contributors and organic links.

I alienated all of LessWrong with cryonics, but frankly they deserved it - sceptics are quite good at making really very fetching mincemeat sculptures of religion, new age and quackery, but science woo desperately needs it too. Part of my inspiration for writing about truly ridiculous woo is to be the first to tell my social circle of something as thoroughly stupid as biofield flower therapy.) Getting our cruftier front page features back up to scratch, and getting the cover article process moving again, helps us feel like we're doing something useful. - David Gerard (talk) 20:51, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Still a work in progress just trying to get my thoughts down somewhere more permanent than my head. Ideally I would like to distill this down as much as possible, removing unneeded verbiage or cruft. Something that doesn't hit the wall of "too long didn't read." It would be a nice resource to have distilled bullet points for when the question "why rw?" pops up. There was a blog post a month or so ago that did a bit of poking around the site as a tentative review. I think you posted in the comments section. It looked at some of the main articles like herbal supplements and the like, and concluded we were an all right site but nothing that wasn't available elsewhere perhaps in better form. That is the kind of review it is worth being able to reply to. Yeah, if you come here and look up articles about static general topics like evolution, herbal supplements, homeopathy, alternative medicine, and the like we are not really something "new" but that is not where we can really excel. We need to find a way to communicate our strengths as a skeptical and rational resource.

I think our biggest strengths are collaborative editing, fast turn around time, and much fewer limitations on what we publish than you will find elsewhere (plenty of space, no notability requirements, original research allowed, etc.). This combination of factors isn't something that is really available else where. Static sources like skeptics encylopedia, James Randi's encyclopedia and the like have a lot of prestige and are good sources but they are static and can only cover the big topics and fall behind really quickly. Most of these are pretty much fish bowled like the talk origins archive and the like. Blogs have fast turn around time and similarly no limitations, but lack collaborative editing which is very powerful. Wikipedia is the elephant in the room as far as collaborative editing goes, but it can be a bit slow to respond to current events since it has to wait for news coverage first, and it also has significant limitations on what it publishes and how it is phrased. There are other wikis like skepticwiki, freethoughpedia and who knows what else that don't have the limitation of wikipedia, but with really small contributor bases it lacks much in the way of collaboration and makes fast turn around time difficult.

There is a real nice niche for us, and its working not just in theory but in practice. It would be nice to really be able to capture this into a coherent resource. It is also important to several plans I have about trying some new things. tmtoulouse 23:35, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the issue is getting a core team who are willing and able to do the massive amount of legwork involved in realising this. A fast turnaround time for current events needs people to be very sharp-eyed or even on the frontline themselves. In our case, the best we can do is people stumbling across blogs and news sites and this makes us reasonably slow on the scene, events wise. The real strength of a wiki there is that the articles can then be adapted and are fluidly changing with the events; so that when reading them they're always consistent, as opposed to a news story or blog that can't be changed for ethical reasons and people would have to backtrack through older articles to see how it all evolved. ^pathetic 14:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Note that Wikipedia's tendency to instant response was an emergent property, and was not considered entirely desirous by many. We may just happen to do it, but it couldn't be called the least bit reliable until we have a lot of people just looking to do such a thing - David Gerard (talk) 14:53, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

So, Trent, I take it you don't mind if we copyedit these with the intent of them eventually moving to the RW space? ħuman 20:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure where any of it is destined but feel free. tmtoulouse 21:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Conference

Mrs. K and I have made travel arrangements for the Hawaii conference in December. I hope to see you all there. For those that can't make it I'll post pictures. Генгис^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 22:26, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I am hoping to get Deepak Chopra to be the key not speaker. tmtoulouse 23:39, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Another area

Although you've hinted at the general cases, you I don't think mention the specific ones of how articles are like "collaborative essays". The talk and social areas work exactly like a conventional forum, so nothing new there, but the fact we have an accompanying article gives the entire concept a new dimension. Of course, any wiki has this, but RW doesn't have the same tone as WP so I think it's different, and it's all about the "collaborative essay" angle. It's slightly different to doing it on WP, isn't it, where a lot of editing is just housekeeping, or anonymouse or slightly more mundane researchy stuff - interesting to those participating full time, I'm sure, but last I heard the majority of WP was formed from just relatively casual use. Here, an article could spin into a colourful debate, or a colourful debate could spin into an article. So I think this is the difference between a wiki, and specifically how this wiki has evolved to run, and a static resource or conventional forum; indeed, you could say it happily combines these two things (best of both, or worst of both, or a mix, I can't really say). ^pathetic 15:16, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

WP also has the notability issue. We are not constrained by that so we can pick on the most obscure wing-nut and write an article. For instance I cannot find an article on William Nelson on Wikipedia, yet he's selling $12.5K woo machines to the public. The same for $30 Shootags. We have the opportunity to warn people about getting scams which WP with its NPOV cannot or will not deal with. Генгис^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 18:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. RW has "missionality" instead of "notability" - David Gerard (talk) 21:51, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Could you elaborate a little more on what you find particularly unique about the article creation proccess here, the essay building you mention? tmtoulouse 21:54, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a lot of experience on conventional internet forums, after having spent the best part of the last decade forum-whoring myself. RW has that aspect, as we have talk pages that have far more discussion than WP, where talk pages can only discuss the article, rather than the topic. Thus the articles add a new layer to this, which I suppose you get with any wiki that doesn't control its talk content - so it might only be unique when you combine this fact with subject matter. It's like if you have a long discussion you can constantly summarise it in the article space. Though to elaborate on the article creation process, it seems like it often starts with "hey guys, I found this..." and then everyone mobs the subject for a day or so. I think we're small enough so that this happens easily, while larger sites can't because they start an article and it doesn't really get reviewed until someone who's job it is to patrol these new articles gets to it. It's a bit more wild, but it means a larger group gets to mob in. Which is very good for the whole "collaborative essay" thing, because it means articles very rarely have principle authors or controllers. ^pathetic 11:57, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Summarising the talk page is pretty much now cryonics was compiled - David Gerard (talk) 12:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Nice

I haven't read this before: Nicely stated, Trent. sterile spoon 01:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)