User:John Gohde

WARNING: You have entered the user page of a Free Thinker.

This user page has made it to [1], one of the new mirror sites to grace the web.

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Looking at the bigger picture, categories do not work in the vast majority of mirror sites. But, lists do.

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Published Critiques of Wikipedia

Did this author have Alternative medicine in mind? "Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy. Does someone actually believe this? ... How long does it take for an article to evolve into a "polished, presentable masterpiece," or even just into a usable workaday encyclopedia article? ... In fact, the earlier versions of the article are better written overall, with fewer murky passages and sophomoric summaries. Contrary to the faith, the article has, in fact, been edited into mediocrity. Is this a surprising result? Not really." The Faith-Based Encyclopedia

• Does someone actually believe "articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy?" Heck, no! What I found are articles being edited to death by mediocrities.-- John Gohde 22:05, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sanger on the Current Wikipedia

Co-founder of Wikipedia writes:[2]

1. A fork edition of Wikipedia under new management will probably be necessary.
2. Wikipedia is being snubbed by academia.
3. Wikipedia has a credibility problem.
4. Did Harry Nutcluster have Alternative medicine in mind? "If the project was lucky enough to have a writer or two well-informed about some specialized subject, and if their work was not degraded in quality by the majority of people, whose knowledge of the subject is based on paragraphs in books and mere mentions in college classes, then there might be a good, credible article on that specialized subject. Otherwise, there will be no article at all, a very amateurish-sounding article, or an article that looks like it might once have been pretty good, but which has been hacked to bits by hoi polloi."
5. The majority of the editors are "difficult people, trolls, and their enablers."
   • The real trolls are all within the power structure of Wikipedia.
6. Having problems with Admins? "there are myriad abuses and problems that never make it to mediation, let alone arbitration. A few of the project's participants can be, not to put a nice word on it, pretty nasty. And this is tolerated."
7. Editors with absolutely no personal life, rather than those with expertise, rule on Wikipedia. "The root problem: anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise", i.e. Lack of respect for WikiProjects
   • This is not a minor problem. People who live on Wikipedia, with aboslutely no personal life, have obvious mental problems. In short, the mentally ill are running Wikipedia. Think about it. You are not considered for an Admin position unless you have done at least 10,000 edits on Wikipedia. No rational person would spend a lot of time in Wikipedia, yet this is what is expected of all editors.
     • You clearly cannot have a rational coversation with non-rational editors. The place is absolutely crawling with mentally ill individuals who live on Wikipedia 8 plus hours a day, 7 days a week for several years. Addiction to the internet is a mental illness that has broken up many a marriage. And, addiction to Wikipedia is one of the worst forms of this type of mental illness. No rational person has the time to keep on cleaning up every time one of these seriously deranged individuals takes a crap on what you are trying to work on in an objective manner.
   • Of course, I have long poked fun at all forms of academia. I call it the second oldest scam in the history of mankind. Experts should not be just limited to academics with a Ph.D.. WikiProjects are, thus, the perfect compromise. One can become a good enough expert in any field simply by spending a lot of personal time in that area: reading, researching, and writing on the topic.
   • "any idiot can and does contribute to articles in subjects they know nothing about" Dr Gonzo
     • Tell me about it!
   • "The truism that 50% of all people are of below-average intelligence rings true on Wikipedia, and the brighter minds who are experts in particular fields don't have the time to waste on constantly revising their articles every time some crackpot takes a crap on them." Dr Gonzo
     • Personally, I prefer to use the term defecate.
     • People in the first quintile of IQ scores are too stupid to realize just how stupid they actually are.
   • On Wikipedia it is neither form or substance, but rather process crap! "Right now, far more talk is generated when a serious user commits a faux pax (e.g., violating the 3RR or 'calling a troll a troll') than when a troll spews crap into an article. Here's the reason: Wikipedia has mechanisms enforsing rules of PROCESS (e.g., Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement) but lacks mechanisms enforsing rules of PRODUCT (e.g., Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). As a result, when a policy related to product is broken, the dispute usually stays on talk, handled only by a handful of serious editors actively watching the page; but when a policy related to process is broken, it will attract a huge contingent of users fussing over who reverted whom, how many reverts there were, and what did or did not constitute a revert. The rules are shaping a culture on Wikipedia utterly obsessed with process, but incognizant of product." desysoped 172
     • Will all you people without a life stop wasting my time on all your PROCESS CRAP and start working on the real problem: PRODUCT?
   • Speaking of Snowflake and his ilk? "anti-elitism ... is cultivated and desperately defended as it allows just about anyone with absolutely no qualifications who have a lot of time on their hands to become community "insiders" and control the activities of others. Who cares if anyone is reading the articles the wikipedians are having fun, right? Expertise and the amount of time required to become a respected member of the Wikipedia community are mutually exclusive. This demand for time screens out experts and allows officious (and oh so self important) bureaucrats with dubious qualifications to control the process. Kids, students (with either no social skills or no real academic commitment - with as a result lots of time), dossers and assorted unemployed or minimum wage bums have the one ingredient required to make it up the Wikipedia hierarchy ... time." Robert Brookes
     • Snowflake is the champion of all mediocrities in Wikipedia.
   • NPOV Did this author have Alternative medicine in mind? "their 'Neutral Point of View' so often becomes 'the general uninformed prejudice on the matter'. ... are far more likely to censor truths that contrast mere general prejudice and leave in anything that repeats commonly held fallacies." nomentanus
     • Reminds me of the garbage being written by the anti-alternative medicine crowd. Can they please stop defecating on CAM articles?
     • Feel free to continue to waste your lives writing fodder for children on the commonly held fallacies of our times.
   • Well somebody must be writing all these 3rd rate articles and comments? "Wikipedia is seen as a third-rate reference" cribcage
   • The move to Categorize really makes the interface suck! "Mental Vomit Regarding Wikipedia ... Reality is cool and all... but the interface sucks." noise
     • Navigation boxes made by experts in the field is definitely the way to go. You cannot improve Wikipedia when @#$%^* keep on defecating on your work.

Sanger on Categories

See [3]

See also [4]

Nobody owns an article in Wikipedia

"Compared to the behaviour of such recent arbitration subjects as Herschelkrustofsky or Robert the Bruce, John Gohde is just fine. ... However, he really doesn't get this "no article ownership" or "play well with others" thing at all. In my non-arbitrating and strictly as any old Wikipedian opinion" - David Gerard 23:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) [5]

• There is a difference between people working to improve an article [6], by increasing the informational content, and between those who have nothing better to do than crap on articles[7] and actively try to destroy the work of other people[8], with edits that destroy prior work rather than contribute anything positive to the article.
  • The negative example cited above [9]shows an instance of an editor deleting an entire sentence over one word, when the editor could simply have changed the word.
• The wisdom of ages clearly states: Too many cooks spoil the broth.
• Mental Vomit best describes Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes. Starting on [10] and ending on [11] this editor who has been clearly living on Wikipedia for 8 plus hours a day, 7 days a week, for several years made a total of 19 edits to a so-called finely tuned guideline that reminded me of somebody being totally intoxicated because they clearly couldn't make up their mind as to what they were actually doing. This admin happens to be one of the so-called best in Wikipedia. Of course, the real reason behind all his intectually dishonesty is the fact they can not stand facing the fact that lists have more historically documented advantages to them than their new concept of categories, which nobody else on the planet is using.

Dictionary of
Alternative Medicine

Introducing a new limited fork edition of Wikipedia operating under new management which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The next step in the evolution of the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine.

What is it about about Wikipedia that makes it so good? Why it is the GNU Free Documentation License. There happens to be about 3 dozen clone copies of Wikipedia on the WEB, but only one modified copy called the Dictionary of Alternative Medicine. Who ever said that the Project on Alternative Medicine did not succeed? Obviously they did not read the fine print about the GNU Free Documentation License. If Wikipedia does not want to claim any of the credit, no problem'o. I have no problems with claiming all the glory in the Dictionary of Alternative Medicine. It was the GNU Free Documentation License which made it all possible, after all.

At least one dozen clone copies of Wikipedia were created before I started editing. And, at least two dozen clone copies of Wikipedia were created during my brief stay here. I don't think one of these mirror copies of Wikipedia (with the possible exception of those forks using Wiki, such as Fred Bauder's fork edition called Wikinfo) were created for humanitarian reasons. Some business man simply wanted to sell advertising. And, being able to create a 400,000+ page web site overnight for practically nothing certainly seems to have been a convenient way of doing it.

Having been inspired by Larry Sanger, Co-founder of Wikipedia recent comments, in the future, all of my editing of alternative medicine articles will be done on my own limited fork edition of Wikipedia. These edits, of course, will be relatively minor as I am not going to put a great deal of work into developing anything under the GNU Free Documentation License. All of my serious work will be done elsewhere on my website under a copyright.

I am laughing at you!

Do you really think that I would come back to Wikipedia, if I was not totally immune to what ever you might do to me? I publicly planned on coming back several months ago.

Oct 26 2004, 6:24 am "By the time I get through with the dictionary (wont be long), the time I spent in developing Wikipedia would have proved to been well spent. And, I definitely plan on letting the boys at Wikipedia know about it. They actually think that they won. Ha, ... Hah, Ha! :)" [12]

Just like all the other mirror sites of Wikipedia, my dictionary of alternative medicine exists in order to attract hits to my web site, among other things [13] Ha, ... Hah, Ha! Yes, I am using you to improve my Google and Alexa ratings.

I don't give a hoot as to what you editors do to the CAM articles or infoboxes on Wikipedia because quite frankly, it wont affect my dictionary of alternative medicine in the least.

Top 1000 Posters

In my former incarnation, I seem to have made it into the Top 1000 posters. And. that was with two banishments, and one long vacation. I wont come close to that number of edits this time around.

Work on articles:

• #752 Mr-Natural-Health 1452

Work on User Pages, WikiProjects, and Talk Pages

• #400 Mr-Natural-Health 4239 -67
• I made extensive edits to Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine. So, it was not just talk chatter.

I feel that I spent way too much time editing Wikipedia. So, looking at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits I see that a number of people really do not have a life, as their edits are in the 10,000+ range. How sad.

My AFFC Gym

AFFC is open 24 hours a day!

Silly me, I just plan on outliving all of you. Ha, ... Hah, Ha!

Since Snowflake appears to be retired, I will outlive him even if I expire at the young age of 70.

Fundraising Drive

The new Wikipedia Fundraising Drive gives me another opportunity for bragging rights. I recall a recent comment that Wikipedia costs USA $10.00 dollars an hour to operate. That computes to a total operating cost of USA $87,600 dollars a year.

My web site, which includes the dictionary of alternative medicine, costs less than one USA penny an hour to operate. Just thought that you might want to know, that some operations are more efficient than others.

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is nothing but the blog concept applied to writing webpages in some big ISP. One common address. Slightly easier to publish garbage than with HTML. Blogs can be an editing free for all. The only difference is that Wikipedia pretends to be an encyclopedia, or something like it.

My only interest in Wikipedia is that it is being tracked by the OneLook Dictionary search engine. I was not introduced to Wikipedia via its main page, but by way of Onelook.

In contrast, Fred Bauder's fork edition called Wikinfo, offers no utility to me. Wikinfo; on April 17, 2005; had a Google page rank of 1/10 and an Alexia rating of 668,137. Compare that to the same respective figures for my tiny web site of 5/10 and 151,787. Worst of all, Wikinfo is being ignored by OneLook. Thus, it is pointless for me to spend time to editing Wikinfo, IMHO.

Look Mom, no categories!

• Alphabetical index
• Browse articles
• Browse portals
• Browse categories
• Other indices

Isn't it queer than when categories naturally organize into a web of knowledge, that our beloved Main page doesn't have a single category on it? Isn't it odd, that Main page uses a list, and a template no less, to organize the entire web of information on Wikipedia? Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that plain old lists are easier to use than categories?

Clicking on Article overviews produces one of those dreaded ASBs which just happens to do an even better job of helping visitors to Wikipedia find what they are looking for. Likewise, clicking on BROWSE produces a very useful ASB. Compare these two ASBs to Category:Fundamental and try to tell me that the category does a better job of presenting its respective information!

Clicking on SCIENCE unfortunately produces a category which is nothing but a total mess of unorganized information. A bulleted list, intelligently showing relationships, or an ASB would do a much better job.

Categories naturally organize into a web of knowledge, NOT!

Google's Dilemma

There are now around 4 or 5 dozen mirror sites of Wikipedia on the Internet. Each identical copy of Wikipedia contains some 500,000 plus web pages. Google will index every word on each web page up to 100K.

Google has a prohibition against identical web pages, yet Wikipedia in effect, is forcing Google to index 4 or 5 dozen essentially identical copies of 500,000 plus pages of information. That gigantic amount of identical information will only continue to grow at a geometric rate.

So, the question that begs to be asked is just how vindictive is Google?