Riding the Failure Cascade 195
An anonymous reader writes "The Escapist has up an article looking at a curve that represents the dissolution of large social groups, like online guilds. Called the Failure Cascade, it's essentially a way of examining the dissociation of members of an organization predicated on a culture of success. They primarily explore this phenomenon using descriptions of EVE corporate alliances. 'These are the two forces at work in [an] alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild ... This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.'"
Hello? Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
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I remember how the downfall happened; it involved a catastrophic event of huge dimensions, huge and expanded dimensions, painful ones, the goatse was called and when "they" started posting this horror it just became a matter of time until the collapse.
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, the goatse was called and when "they" started posting this horror it just became a matter of time until the collapse
Really? Here I was believing that the goatse was the reason for /.'s popularity.
I've never 'got into' the chat room games, but I have seen some other online communities come and go, yet somehow /. remains.
Usually, most seem to get 'stale' and fail to bring in new interesting people. Sure there are some here who browse and post nearly every story (or it sometimes seems that way), but most of us come and go, sometimes days, months, and even years between appearances. However, when we do return, we find v
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Being unable to go out on a Friday night for fun would imply one of three things to me. My Friday nights ended with marriage. I was married before slashdot was born. But, the repetition of activities led me to slashdot. Being married to a beautiful woman might seem like something nice to so many without a relationship, but a mind is the most beautiful of things. And she rarely wants to study, discuss or have anything to do with anything beyond cosmetics, jewelry and clothes. She is great at all three.
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But there are many intellectual pursuits we do shar
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I realize what you said was a joke. What I said was meant to be humor as well. Maybe I was a bit too dry. I really thought the flux capacitor in a Matrix would give it away.
InnerWeb
Re:Hello? Hello? (Score:4, Funny)
It is just a regular silver/gray matrix. Nothing special.
InnerWeb
Re:Hello? Hello? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously.
Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
The article could be summarised as so:
People leave guilds.
More people leave guilds.
No one is left in guild.
Guild dies.
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People leave guilds. -> More people leave guilds. -> No one is left in guild. -> Guild dies.
I dunno, this is actually pretty interesting. I think it's the first time I've heard of this subject being formally studied...and as a big MMOG player I can use information like this.
It would be nice to see others doing studies like these.
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People leave guilds. -> More people leave guilds. -> No one is left in guild. -> Guild dies.
Counter-example: People join guild. -> Guild can has success -> More people join guild. -> Guild p0wnz.
Discuss.
Re:Pointless (Score:5, Informative)
It all breaks down to a statement of the events which occurred, without any actual insights into the particular motivations (there's some pure speculation, but no actual information).
Cultures of success breaking down when encountering failure is nothing new, and doesn't need vague exploration. Actual exploration of the problem, with statistical models to help understand and, possibly, predict the curve would be helpful. Too bad this article offers none of that.
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Kind of a waste of time if you ask me. Don't they have anything better to do? If they don't, their education was a waste of time.
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It would be a particularly shallow summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Or
Life, as shallow as you like.
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Its just a single case of a dying alliance presented there.
And even that case doesnt give an point towards some kind of "failure cascade".
It just tells that if one corp is losing battles, its getting weaker, and thus likely to lose more battles if it doesnt stop. Somebody call captain obvious...
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I know I lost interest in EVE after the corp I was in dissolved. I canceled my account about two months after the corp crashed.
The cascading decline and DRM (Score:3, Interesting)
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How does fewer people buying CDs lead to still fewer people buying CDs?
When I was in the service in the peak of my pirating days, we lived in the barracs (Dorm) and it was from all the great music I was explosed to that I copied (made mix tapes) and became a fan of a few artists of which I bought albums (pre CD LP's and tapes). Without the sea of great music in the barracs, I would have been exposed to very little interesting music and would have bought even less. I would
Failure Cascade? (Score:5, Funny)
All good things end (Score:2)
Associations, cultures, empires all come and go. That's not something that's new or poorly understood. People have been applying empirical measures of success to all of the above for quite some time.
Microsoft's Failure Cascade (Score:4, Insightful)
Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower [roughlydrafted.com]
Somewhat ironically, one of the most financially successful capitalist companies of the 90s has positioned itself as a modern counterpart to the old communist Soviet Union. Microsoft's ideological contempt for and resistance to free markets and the open expression and propagation of fresh ideas and technologies is not only a close parallel of the old USSR, but also a clear reflection of why Microsoft is currently failing and why its troubles have only just begun. Here's a comprehensive look at why this is the case.
Demonstration of failure cascade in action (Score:2)
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Re:Microsoft's Failure Cascade (Score:4, Insightful)
Take your pic on the data you'd like to take issue with: slagging sales, stock market indifference, consumer market share in any product that has any competition, consumer perception, forward looking sales projections, historical inability to ship, outrageous inability to make money on any product not supported by a monopoly position.
And please, drop an occasional detail why you think I'm wrong. All this weak ad hominem criticism just makes me more likely to get sloppy. I really need the competition, just like Microsoft.
Apple TV Digital Disruption at Work: iTunes Takes 91% of Video Download Market [roughlydrafted.com]
This quarter's NPD report on video downloads flies in the face of claims made by certain analysts claiming to have the answers required to turn around the supposed "failure" of Apple TV. Echoing his earlier claims that iTunes faced a dire future, Forrester Research's James McQuivey recently took Apple TV to task, fretting that his guesstimate of sales didn't match his earlier sales prediction. Based on McQuivey's guesswork, Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer offered suggestions for "fixing" it.
While it has become fashionable to mimic the complaints of others when talking about Apple TV, the more shocking reality is that the product is actually working as intended to strengthen Apple's plans for the digital disruption of television. Here's why.
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Take your pic on the data you'd like to take issue with: slagging sales, stock market indifference, consumer market share in any product that has any competition, consumer perception, forward looking sales projections, historical inability to ship, outrageous inability to make money on any product not supported by a monopoly position.
I agree with all of the above points, save two: lagging sales and stock market indifference. If you look at sales of personal computers, you'll see that Vista is taking hold despite all of the negative attention that it has attracted. Simply put, the mainstream media haven't covered the disadvantages of Vista to nearly the same extent as the tech press, with the result that consumers are largely uninformed. Those banner ads saying "Dell recommends Windows Vista" work, because consumers by and large don
Tighten up your reasoning... (Score:2)
You write: "The PS3 has sold better out of the gate than the PS2 did in its first year (PS2: 6m in 1 year; PS3 6m in ~5 months)."
- The PS3 didn't sell 6 million in 5 months - they shipped 6 million from factories in the first 5 months. Sony have now shifted to the more conservative "shipped to retailers" estimate. (The same t
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Weak ad hominem? Please. Just look at the images on the site: here [roughlydrafted.com], here [roughlydrafted.com] among others. Also most of the site paints MS in a bad light no matter what they do and paints Apple in a good light no matter what they do. I mean, where are the articles critical of Apple? Not faux critical, but really critical?
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Objective criticism isn't the presentation of equal numbers of pros and cons when comparing two things. You've just been brainwashed into thinking its polite. Comparing a failure with a success isn't bound to be flattering.
Should Apple TV Copy Tivo and Media Center? [roughlydrafted.com]
With Apple ho
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I have detailed this missing information as an early warning: PC sales are mature and new/emerging markets are looking for cheap laptops. There's no growth market for a $300 OS running a $300 Office suite. Is that an ad hominem attack in your mind?
Microsoft's Outrageous Office Profits [roughlydrafted.com]
I detailed Microsoft's stock performance over the last few
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A[HREF*="roughlydrafted.com"]:after { content: " [IDIOT WARNING]"!important ; color: red }
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"In Soviet Microsoft, gates control the commerce."
It fits... it really fits. How appropriate.
Ref: This post [slashdot.org]
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Am I supposed to equally hold everyone else opinion, too?
Also, I don't play the lottery, so I am very unlikely to ever win one. However, Microsoft will change, and is faltering now. Thinking it will remain as it is is simply juvenile. Thinking it will stumbled based on a pattern of short sighted decisions that have been failing in sequence over the last half decade is not nearly as much prognostication as i
That's... (Score:2)
Political Parties (Score:4, Insightful)
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we are all going to die.. (Score:2)
[1]not the other one [www.ccc.de]
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But if the Democratic brand is defunct, how is it that the DP has been in and out of power since then? Because not everything is about brands. When people go to the polls they vote for a person, not a party. Thus the Demos held on to the House of Representativ
Re:Political Parties (Score:5, Insightful)
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All that says it that those people were idiots. The Republicans have been savagely opposed to all of those things since at least the election of that fascist, terrorist supporting, cra
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What are you proposing their "nasty message" was regarding? Their fascist politics is all they stand for, so what totally foreign thing do you think the message was in reference to?!?
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Re:Political Parties (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I know exactly what that word means, and there is no hyperbole whatsoever.
It's the merger of state and corporate power according to, you know, the guy who invented the freaking word.
So you might not think that it means what it means, but that's only your ignorance showing.
So, when we have a system where corporations write our laws and then bribe our representatives to pass them, then it's pretty hard, no impossible, to argue that this isn't fascism.
Heck, just spend a little bit of time researching the history and you'll see that we're the direct ideological descendants of the Nazis.
You know, don't you, that a huge chunk of American industrialists absofuckinglutely adored Hitler, right? You know Henry Ford received a medal from Hitler due to his militantly anti-Jew hate screeds, right? In fact Hitler credits him with helping him conceive the holocaust, right?
I mean damn, our current sitting President's grandfather was an avid supporter of Hitler *while we were at war with him* and barely avoided execution for treason over it. Add in the Republican party's 60 year all out war on anything remotely leftist leaving us with nothing but the extreme right, you know, fascism as their platform. You do know that extremist anti communism was the genesis of Nazism, right?
Then look at Bush's original cabinet. You do know who Wolfowitz got his PhD with, right? The primary proponent of Nazi philosophy, especially "the big lie".
Seriously, dude, when you know shit fuck all about a topic, you might consider just shutting the fuck up instead of demonstrating yourself to be an ignorant fool.
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No, it's not. I quoted the guy who invented the word describing what it meant. Your definition is meaningless.
Wow, you're completely out of touch with reality.
You seem to have a real
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No, it's not. I quoted the guy who invented the word describing what it meant. Your definition is meaningless.
No, his definition definitely has a meaning (meaningless statements are ones like "fhadsokfjdsal;fsa", or "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"). You should probably not lecture anyone else on the meanings of words. In any case, Mussolini also made the following definitional statements about fascism:
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State....The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.... Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value...Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought....
But if you want to oversimplify history, that's your choice. Speaking of quotes, here's a good one you probably need to read:
...the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'
The above quote was written by one Eric Arthur Blair, who became famous for
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He forgot to add ideals (Score:2)
despite it starting up with only 2 members in rebel side, and many mishaps and failures, went on to grow to 120 members (a major number for the bigges server in the game) and established one of the biggest player cities on the server. the group still continues today by hopping from game to game.
the idea is that it was a democratic pa with a solid constitution after the fashion of t
Re:He forgot to add ideals (Score:5, Informative)
The article is a really horrible description of what happened. The goons launched a combination of raw propoganda as well as propoganda targetted to specific events. Defeats for the goons were absorbed and made part of the culture. Wins were beaten into the ground as a failing on the part of the enemy. An impressive spy and saboture network was fully exploited in terms of economic and military assistance, as well as in the propoganda.
"Failure Cascade" was a term coined by The Mittani, the leader of the Goon Intelligence Agency (GIA). It seems to apply mostly to the application of public opinion and propoganda to widen rifts and blame games within an enemy organization. If the logistics people make a mistake, any military victories are met with comments on the pointlessness of fighting when the territory-holding infrastructure won't hold. Same thing applies to military losses in the face of stout infrastructure. Pretty soon the fighters and logisticians are distrustful and burnt out, not trusting the others to do their jobs.
Enemy command structures are infiltrated and often the goon populace knows as much or more about internal workings as the rank and file members. After the fighters begin got get more confirmed leaks from their leadership on public boards than they do on private boards, a rift is formed and further exploited. At some point, these rifts become self sustaining -- a "failure cascade". It's not unrecoverable.
Democratic alliances are more vulnerable because there are more rifts. People bring up and participate and lose in the democratic process, causing a LOT of "I told you so"s and "If you'd only gone my way..." to exploit. An alliance with ideals presents a target for showing hypocracy within the leadership. The best defense seems to be playing in a largely amoral, berserker-don't-give-a-damn-about-loses style.
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I remember... (Score:2)
So the question is what keeps people go, from my own experience nationality is very important, and web site communities. But that's all in the article too..
[1] miss use of buzz words bingo
Re:I remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't a clan per se, but there was once a group of players I regularly hung out with when the ex was at work (I had no real responsibilities back then, and it beat hitting the bars with the buddies). Everyone would hit a Quake 2 WF server in the wee hours, hang out in observation mode, chat, and play... it was like hanging out with friends at a public pool - you blather on w/ each other a lot, and occasionally jump in the pool and goof off - with the added dimension of giving each other a ration of shit when they were playing and did something dumb (which we would all laugh our asses off at - including the one who goofed).
It wasn't about scores, or standings - most of us in there were fairly solid players who could easily hold our own on nearly any public server (lag permitting). It was about hanging out in something that was new and unfamiliar to most of us in there. It was about a female player (she lived in Utah) blurting poetry in rhythmic time to the goofball sounds that would come out of the screen. It was about telling dirty jokes to distract a flag runner while he was trying to hold off three pursuing defenders. It was about seeing who could stick a sentry gun in the most weird-assed place on a map (you could get them to 'stick' to ceilings if you knew how), or getting a flag without ever touching the ground (or flying - grapple only, please). It was about seeing who could make a flag run as the weakest character, with only that shitty no-damage blaster, and with no help doing it... and everyone (including the defending players) cheering like mad when someone pulled it off.
It's things like that you simply cannot fully analyze, but its things like that which are vital to making and keeping a coherent group of players involved and happy.
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If you still have doubts as to why that relationship ended, I might have a few pointers for you.
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The MC (Score:3, Interesting)
Tempest in a Teacup (Score:2)
I figure, it's at least a matter of group basis (what is everyone doing/coming he
apples and oranges (Score:2)
I disagree. Social networking tools aren't within a competitive environment, where a collective can "attack" and "disband". People can subscribe to multiple, and often do. For the most part, social networking sites are slipping from the "ease of contacting friends afar" to the "amass a myriad channels to communicate". We will arrive at saturation quite quickly I believe. Face-To-Face, hand-passed-notes, letter-through-post writing, telephone calls, cell phone, voice-chat, text-chat, email, Foru
Not much different than Clans... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 'culture of success' is no simple analogy, and can have adverse effects as well. There was a Weapons Factory clan that was founded on success at all costs (they went by the symbol "$"), and they managed to claw their way to the top (mostly through questionable and 'slight' game modifications that weren't exactly botting, but weren't exactly fair play, either - e.g. setting the client binds so that a normally silent cloaked spy player would have nice, loud footsteps to the defending player's ears... meaning they're much easier to locate. Just one of a mountain of examples).
This eventually killed off the entire MOD... folks didn't want to have to deal with outright cheaters (not bot-users, just cheaters), so the clans died off one by one, since most of them were only in it for the fun. Once the clans left, the cascade took down a lot of public servers with it (it didn't help that the Quake 3 MOD's main coder eventually became a member of that same clan, and actively implemented changes as suggested by same...) It had been bad enough that the shift from Quake 2 to Quake 3 had done quite a bit of damage to the MOD's player base, but the clan's modus operandi were eventually too much for the community - they still survive as a small shadow group, and occasionally play on a part-time server. Compared to the days when literally thousands of players could be found on hundreds of servers? Just a faint shadow.
Nowadays, most games are fairly cheat and bot-proof (I said fairly, not mostly or certainly). But the same dynamics are at play - a clan/guild/whatever that makes success their only goal will invariably attract the kinds of players you don't want on any server/world/etc, and tends to ruin the gameplay for everyone else while they're at it. While yes they do set themselves up for failure more readily than those who form just for fun, they also tend to start getting desperate when normal gameplay doesn't offer them the success they need to stay alive. This means they may start looking at 'alternatives' to try and keep the mojo going.
IMHO, the best organizations are those who simply do it for fun, and have a cadre of players who are really into the game. Again at the Weapons Factory example, the Quake2 version had a clan that were the friendliest and most respected guys in town... Population Control Incorporated (PCI). These guys had ISDN connections when the vast majority of players were on modems, but they always played fair, and the matches (at that time) were tightly regulated and fair. The funny thing is, this particular clan did it just for the fun of it. They'd go out of their way to mentor new players on a public server, and to make it fun for the whole pile playing (for instance, if more than one were playing on the same public server and it was full of unknowns or newbies, they'd automatically split themselves among the two teams). They were a stand-up group of people, and it showed in their playing style. It's still a pity they disbanded during the Quake 2/3 shift, but as they themselves said - they held the top slot for too long, many members got burned out from playing the game for literally years, and they pretty much came together and decided that it was time. Most stayed played on for fun (but never joined a clan again) in the Quake 2 version with the occasional fun meet-up matches, until the Q2 version of the MOD finally died a quiet death around 2002 or so... 3 years after Quake 3 came out.
I believe that all organizations begin, they (might) rise, and they (certainly) fall. Some do it short, some take awhile. Some end by mutual agreement. Most are benign, some are poisonous. A precious few even shift from one game to another together.
It's a complex dynamic in any organization, but I kinda like how TFA articulated at least one aspect of it...
Good math potential (Score:3, Insightful)
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Oh, and +1 for the Foundation reference.
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Although, I suspect that if it's something you can do with built-in Matlab functions on the vast readily available financial data (you can get historical data in CSV from yahoo, google, et. all for free last I checked. I'm not sure about intraday though) that there are plenty of firms already doing it and it's already priced-in.
<The Failure Cascade> (Score:4, Funny)
Also known as (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations asshole deletionists. You may finally achieve the ultimate deletion-the entire encyclopedia.
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- refusal to acknowledge certain facts, such as popular musicians (Mehdi) even though they are established (he has an 8 volume CD set out!)
- bone-headed policies of not allowing trivia. One man's dis-interest is another man's interest!
- censoring criticism, i.e. WOW, etc.
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Not a Wiki-fanboi here.
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Most of them are just self-serving wankers, add-shills and crackpots that are better off gone.
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No, it says a lot about how Wikipedia has evolved as a project and had to adapt to its growing success and popularity. You have absolutely no idea how much Wikipedia is used for advertising. When an article about a company or commercial product is written in an overly positive tone, or with lots of meaningless buzzword-laden prose, you have to assume it's marketing crap, and if an article is written by the company or individual it purports to be about, that alone is reason to delete it and, if necessary, al
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I accuse Fuzheado of nothing--I was speaking in general terms. But now that you ask, I was never highly impressed with Fuzheado's credentials as an administrator. I knew of him but I was involved with Wikipedia nearly as long as he, and many administrators had more experience and have, in my opinion, more salient criticisms of Wikipedia to make. Kelly Martin, for instance.
This is not true. Many of the webcomics were written by fans of those comics and not the author. But it got deleted anyway under the pretense of non-notability and self-advertisement. Many tried to defend it but under the new system of deletion that's now been corrupted by the deletionists, but their votes are tossed aside under false pretenses such as sock puppet, new account, and other such garbage. The fact is, there are lots of articles that were written by a 3rd party with nothing to gain, were defended by other editors, and still got hit with the deletion club. And we haven't even talked about the mass removal of work in terms of trivia sections.
The webcomics thing was years ago--it couldn't have been after 2006 and I'm fairly sure it was in 2005. It's difficult to judge the no
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That's your opinion of what's "the best solution (in terms of both style and substance)". I like them. They are important and interesting to me and many were referenced. This thread in another Slashdot article tells me others cared about them too.
There is no shortage of trivia websites on the internet, nor is there anything stopping you from starting your own. Wikipedia is a community-run website that has a specific focus--and while that community is open to newcomers and outside contributors, it is what it is and the consensus of that community won't change without a long-term influx of people who think differently. And that's an issue of social dynamics beyond either my or your ability to change. I increasingly think now that my WikiTrivia proje
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It's not as if this policy were in at the beginning, and all of us trivia lovers came in trying to force trivia sections into articles.
Actually, in the beginning trivia sections were rather rare--they only became prominent long after I joined, quite to the disdain of the "old school". You mention the Arthur C. Clarke article--the reason such things are tagged is because, as I said, it's usually best to expand the article's prose sections and work the more notable bits of the trivia section into that, rather than delete the section outright. You know, keeping, modifying, and building upon poorly-formatted contributions?
So, over nearly six months none of the people who have an actual interest in the Arthur C. Clarke article have been motivated to remove, merge, or rewrite the trivia section in a form acceptable to the policy police. That's a fact. It shows that the "consensus" is a myth.
Or that laziness
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Again that's your opinion. You interpret it your way and I'll interpret it as people who really like the trivia sections and absolutely DO NOT want them removed. Not all of us aspire to having a "Featured Article".
Given that my opinion is based on experience and that yours is based on furthering your own ignorant point, I'll choose mine.
Yeah, how strange of me to think that you and I are having a conversation but that in reality, you are talking to some hypothetical inclusionists that apparently wants everything in. And don't even pretend that your statement about "crapflood" wasn't directed at me. If you are no longer addressing me, please tell me now. So I won't have to worry about how you once heard that inclusionists support the killing of puppies and that they hate rainbows. Because for the record, I love rainbows and am against killing puppies.
My examples were given with the purpose of explaining where the deletionist viewpoint comes from. And on many of the issues you point out (webcomics for instance), the skepticism that comes from this experience is exactly what causes the deletionist reaction you complain about.
When it comes to open source, Wikipedia, or donating blood, I am fully aware that there is a great deal of possible rejection or modification involved that are beyond my control. The Blood Bank has very strict rules on who can donate and there's about 30 questions and many additional tests that may get you excluded. Those rules are fair, protect the blood supply, and are made clear to everyone before the first drop is extracted. But if one day, they were to say to me, "We don't want the blood of Colored people anymore, but please keep donating money," you can be assured this would be the last time I gave them either blood or money.
I would think, with all your railing against straw men fallacies, that you wouldn't commit one now. W
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Since I'm not defending "the company shill, the teenagers screwing around, the garage band," I don't need it explained to me why some things get deleted.
I'm not explaining to you why some things get deleted, you illiterate prick. I'm explaining the formative experiences of "asshole deletionists"--the experiences that form Wikipedia editors into that given viewpoint on the project.
And how about the "crapflood" accusation. That uncivil statement was unquestionably directed at me.
Given that it's taken three incidences of repeating myself to explain the above point to you, you're probably not at the level of reading comprehension for me to attempt any further clarification. Please tell me English isn't your native language.
Here is one where a lot of keep votes were accused to be socks. As I say, I haven't spent my time forming alliances, so I cannot vouch for them. But a lot of keep votes were definitely tossed pretty easily. See more in comment below.
That one seems a little bor
Stocks -- the prime example (Score:3, Interesting)
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I don't mean just in terms of the rational/irrational market. Also I mean in terms of the fact that stocks aren't dissimilar from MMORPGs in that a core of people recruit new buyers, and once the success gives out they fall apart along similar lines.
cool read (Score:2)
In other words sometimes forums become unpopular (Score:3, Funny)
Shallow article, unsupported by facts (Score:2, Interesting)
Reminds me of SW dev teams (Score:5, Interesting)
In one case, the catalyst was the company being sold. In the other case, it was near-criminal behavior of a newly added team member.
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Risk takers versus responsible followers (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm a risk-taker, but not a long term responsible individual. My failures in business or projects have generally come from a lack of finding responsible people who can carry the long term needs after the risk I take starts earnings its rewards. I ran a succssful BBS 2 decades ago, and I saw many failures due to there being a risk taker who took off, leaving the responsible ones with no "leader."
I think the same is true in social groups, although maybe it isn't the factor of having a risk-taker, but having a natural leader who others look to for support even if it is purely "spiritual" in nature.
I run a not-for-profit that works with hundreds of churches, and I see the same thing. The leader leaves, retires, dies, whatever: the church falls apart. Recently a large client of mine went under after 25 years of being in business. The boss left, leaving his responsible managers but no leader/risk-taker.
There's nothing to see here. These are proven truths over millenia that have surfaced in every area of life: politics, businesses, faiths, even families. If there isn't a new leader to move the group in a direction away from complacency, the group will fail. Sometimes a responsible individual finds a natural tendency to lead/take new risks in new directions, but I'm not sure its a matter of nurturing those skills. I do believe firmly that there is a natural propensity to either being responsible, or being risky. A very rare few have both talents, although I personally have never met anyone like that. It's either one or the other, generally.
The majority, though, seem to have neither. They want to follow in hopes that some day they will lead, but in the end they're driven to neither. They follow long enough until it is obvious that they'll never lead (because they don't push to become an obvious leader/risk-taker), so they fall away from the project. In this case, though, I don't see many failures, because a natural leader has a tendency to attract others to the project. When that risk taker gets bored, runs out of money, or gets caught up in something else, the project fails.
Every project I've worked on that has failed has been my fault, and no one else's. Usually it boiled down to getting bored, but sometimes it was pure irresponsibility. Sometimes it was a lack of trusting another person to take over for me, at which point I put too much burden on the future leader, and they left. Life lessons.
When Startups Go Bad (Score:2)
Dead guild? Never! (Score:3)
My VO guild is still alive. Probably. I haven't actually logged in for over six months...
-:sigma.SB
Re: (Score:2)
Sheesh you are right that's old, you would think that this article would have burned with the library in Alexandria..