Editing User:Jukeboksi/Blog/September2004

8.9.2004

It is clear that claiming [[corruption]] is not a function of this wiki unless it is such (dis)information that it is useful to have around to avoid mistakes others may have made while building similar projects. Now I have to go, but I will carry on later to move things to appropriate places and remove any false information from articles which state it as (true) information

Also the amount of bullshitting about irrelevant issues is getting to me slowly. The ultimate meaning of this wiki is to plan the operation of the production wikis" not useless biased rethoric and claims about non-consumerium issues that really hurt our ability to get the real work done (ie. [[Consumerium:Intermediate pages]], forming an [[CGO]] and establishing what is the [[Consumerium Process]] and [[Guidelines]] and [[Rules]] for the wikis to come.

I plead to all parties that we leave the unnecessary/damaging throwing of accustations and focus on getting the very practical issues worked out so that we can move on the next stage ie. [[Research Wiki pilot]] --[[User:Juxo|Juxo]] 18:59, 9 Sep 2004 (EEST)

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7.9.2004

Today I've been mostly organizing my study notes and editing [[wikipedia]], mainly adding categories toa business and economics articles.
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6.9.2004

Last weekend I got my move to [[w:Tampere|Tampere]] mostly finalized though most of the stuff is now around my room in boxes and bags and I have to sort them out and find a place for all stuff. I should be getting [[w:ADSL|ADSL]] access in one to two weeks time which will help me contribute more

Yesterday I had a meetup with [[User:Linkola|Linkola]] who is working on his doctorate in http://www.uiah.fi . I'm half way reading through his masters thesis and will write a brief summary of it here. It contains lots of interesting research information about [[consumer]] wishes, hopes, fears and practical information about '''how''' consumers use the information about [[product]]s supplied to them currently. 

:It's very easy to study what they look at.  It's very hard to study how it affects them.  Focus on [[price premium]] perhaps as the indicator that can be made objective?  That is, someone buys the [[green light]] product even though it costs 10 Eurocents more than the [[red light]] - but if it costs 15 they do not buy either, or, they actually buy the red light product.  That's the kind of data you need to determine what the actual willingness of people to pay more to satisfy [[individual buying criteria]] is.

He renewed his commitment to become one of the founding members of Consumerium Association of Finland. He was most interested in getting a [[pilot project]] hastily off the ground and to get to analysing '''how and what information consumers use for making decicions''', so I'm betting that he would be very interested in [[link transit]] data which has been a hot potato around here for quite some while now. 

:Yes, clearly it's of even more use to [[Consumerium Services]] or other serious [[wiki mission]]s than to those [[Wikimedia|bogus pseudo-encyclopedists]] who don't even understand why it's important, or pretend not to (more likely unless they are stupid).

::If it's so obvious why link transit data is valuable, then why haven't any of the users requested it? Just answer my question on [[Talk:Link transit]]. If you're so arrogant that you refuse to my question on the grounds that I am "too stupid", why should you expect me to do this work for you? -- [[User:Tim Starling|Tim Starling]] 08:49, 8 Sep 2004 (EEST)

:::What's obvious to people with actual experience managing a [[corpus]] is not the same as what's obvious to the gibbering drooling hordes that consider [[Wikipedia]] to be more credible than the [[w:National Enquirer]].  Why didn't "the users" demand retaining the number of page views, too?  How is anyone supposed to answer that?  You told them that server load was the problem, that you couldn't do anything "because of server load", there were dozens of such requests turned down for this reason.  Perhaps you're all such bollocks as programmers that you can't figure out how to do it effeciently?  But you certainly did your job squashing the user requirements pipeline flat:  don't blame the [[trolls]] if you don't get accurate information from it now.
:::And, no one ever said they expected anyone, least of all ''you'' "to do this work for" anyone.  It's important to editors to have some idea of how often their work is read, so they know where to focus editorial effort.  It's not surprising that Wikipedia didn't think of this since it values volunteer time at zero, generally, and doesn't care how much volunteer time gets wasted dealing with say [[sysop vandalism]] and the like.

He also expressed his view that we should start with a limited group of users, but I countered that with the fact that we have for a long time been planning for a system that is accessible to everyone without any limitations of scope as to users. 

:It is obviously better to have wide-open editorial policy that is [[troll-friendly]] and immune to [[propaganda]] or takeover by any one [[faction]] - else who would trust the data?  This is just typical academic belief on his part, that somehow cliques can be made trustworthy.  It's fairly obvious that without the wide-open policy, none of the design work would have gotten done.

:So far even the [[Sysop Vandal point of view]] expressed strongly by some sysops pretending to be trolls has not had any significant effect.  Anyone coming to the front page and clicking around would probably never see any of the nonsense they've been writing, so, [[troll-friendly]] policy proves itself once again.  Eventually they'll tire and realize they are harassing people who do serious work, interrupting us with their trivial concerns and bogus claims.

I understand that having one single group (ie. the members of some association with interest in these things we are to be dealing with) would make for better research material for his doctorate if he decides to include Consumerium in some way in his post-graduate studies. The discussion we had was intense and I found it very pleasing to actually get to talk about these things face-to-face and not via [[wiki]].

:It would be useful to support a doctoral study on [[moral purchasing]] but we really need a [[Research Wiki]] to actually start to compile [[intermediate page]]s on all the things we care about.  We are long past due to do that, and other projects are passing us.  We can't rely on [[CorpKnowPedia]] and [[Consumerpedia]] and [[Wikipedia]] and [[Disinfopedia]] to track these things, though, we might from time to time rely on information from all of them.  [[Wikinfo]] might be useful to track [[sympathetic point of view]] of various movements like [[no old growth]] or [[dolphin free]], but, not to track corps, since the [[Coca-Cola]] article there must be sympathetic to Coca-Cola!  So we have a niche to fill that has not been filled.  Perhaps work with [[Indymedia]] on this, as they expose corporate misbehaviour a lot?

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2.9.2004

[http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=validate&timestamp=20040810005530 Here's] an interesting piece of code developed by Magnus Manske some while ago. It's not used on [[Wikipedia]] but could be very useful for the [[Consumerium Process]]. It allows users to flag some article as validated on a number of issues ie. ''style, legal, completeness, facts, suitability for "final" release ([[Publish Wiki]] in our case)''

Thanks to [[User:TimStarling]] for pointing out this code. I queried him about Magnuses' code for custom meta-tags such as "no index" (or whatever it's called) because if we could easily and reliably control what gets indexed by search engines and what not we could do with a unified [[Research Wiki]] and [[Publish Wiki]] where articles flagged indexable would be considered "published" and those with "no index" to be still in research stage. Just a thought. Apparently Magnuses' code does not include tags for robots but according to Tim this would not be difficult to implement. The main problem being that once an article is indexed and then some seedy characters add questionable content how does one get Google etc. to stop indexing it. Apparently there is yet no way to remove pages from search engines on request.

[http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/002729.htm Ericsson and ScanBuy] working on including [[barcode]] capture properties with [http://www.scanzoom.com/ ScanZoom] technology for [[Ericsson]] [[Hardware|camera phones]].
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1.9.2004

I'm currently reading the master's thesis of Jouni Linkola, "Shopping Guide to The Future", which is available (in Finnish) at http://mlab.uiah.fi/5medialaunch/jlinkola_lopputyo.pdf there is also a visualization of some main aspects of it at http://personal.inet.fi/surf/graphic/future.html (in Finnish again). The visualization is quite similar to the original [[Motivation]] of [[Consumerium:Itself]]. I'm looking forward to meeting up with Jouni to discuss the synergies between his post-graduate studies apparently also focusing on information services for consumers to be more informed and empowered.

Also check out the cool [[Consumeter]] shopping bag at http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~antello/designfiction/pictures.htm Watch the associated videos as well if you have broadband.

:[[design fiction]] is a [[Good Thing]], that's what [[visions]] and [[best cases]] are about ultimately;  and [[free circulation of fiction]] is better still.

:Can [[Consumerium:We]] get Linkola to contribute to [[visions]] and [[best cases]]?  Also he might have insight into [[worst cases]], but more likely we have thought through that more.  We need one unified [[design fiction]] effort to figure out what our priorities are, and where we're going technically in the long run.