Archive for February, 2007

Citizendium: A possible rival to Wikipedia?

Published by Sean Et Cetera on February 27, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I came across an article about Citizendium on Ars Technica, and figured I would post something about it. While the name does take some getting used to (it’s a combination of “Citizen Compendium”), it might be nice to see it get somewhere or even succeed.

The founder, Larry Sanger, was a co-founder of Wikipedia, and wrote Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge, in which he lists the following issues with Wikipedia:

* The community does not enforce its own rules effectively or consistently. Consequently, administrators and ordinary participants alike are able essentially to act abusively with impunity, which begets a never-ending cycle of abuse.
* Widespread anonymity leads to a distinguishable problem, namely, the attractiveness of the project to people who merely want to cause trouble, or who want to undermine the project, or who want to change it into something that it is avowedly not–in other words, the troll problem.
* Many now complain that the leaders of the community have become insular: it has become increasingly difficult for people who are not already part of the community to get fully on board, regardless of their ability or qualifications.
* This arguably dysfunctional community is extremely off-putting to some of the most potentially valuable contributors, namely, academics. Furthermore, there is no special place for academics, so that they can contribute in a way they feel comfortable with. As a result, it seems likely that the project will never escape its amateurism. Indeed, one might say that Wikipedia is committed to amateurism. In an encyclopedia, there’s something wrong with that.

I’ve known people who argue against Wikipedia based on these points, and I can even agree with him on these points, however, only as far as a similar-yet-different solution to Wikipedia such as Citizendium, and not a closed source, like Britannica. Aside from saying that, I’ve skimmed the essay, and found it to be an interesting idea. For the sake of having a user-driven encyclopedia still available online, I hope it the best.

Sadly though, I can see it failing, based only on the fact that the name may sound “stupid” (according to a couple diggers), and academia is still fearful of things like this, due to Wikipedia.

The pilot program can be found at http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page.

Comments on a digg article: Don’t Treat Your Employer Better Than They Treat You

Published by Sean Et Cetera on February 22, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I saw this article on digg and I felt I had to comment on it. The digg article can be found here.

Now, I can appreciate the fact that sometimes jobs can be dreadful, and that once you realize that a job is sucking your will to live, it’s to time to leave, if only for the sake of your mental health. The author, VA, lists the 3 ways, in her opinion, companies treat employees in a negative way, which are:

  • They Demand Respect While Simultaneously Treating You Like a Child
  • They Make it Taboo to Steal
  • They Demand a Two Weeks Notice Before You Quit

The first one can be a fault of anyone, not just a company, and as such, it may be tied more to personality types than company entities. Depending on the size of a company, it’s not the company that needs to treat employees well, but the people who make up the management of the company. If they become corrupt and soulless, there’s not much to be done.

The second one, that companies make stealing taboo, is hard to swallow. Stealing is taboo; the companies do not make it taboo. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary lists stealing as “to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice”. If a company chooses to look the other way when some paper clips, binders, tape, paper, etc. go missing, well, there’s your bonus. The company purchased the goods, not you. Then again, when one gets further up in the corporate hierarchy, they tend to assume they can use company property for their own, but would yell at people who do it beneath them. That’s just the way it goes.

If you want, you can say that overall, American companies steal our time by giving us less vacation then other developed companies, or by having it take a year before you can take a week or two of vacation, or that they expect you to stay late and/or come in early, and work weekends and/or holidays without any bonus because you might be salaried, even though the job is Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.

The third item, the two week notice, is more for people who don’t want to burn bridges behind them and wish to give the company time to work on getting a replacement or that position’s affairs in order. If you are fed up with an employer, or they are fed up with you, the termination is going to be immediate. If an employer knows a position is going to be ending, they will try and give you as much notice as they can, provided you haven’t pissed them off. After all, if an employer felt about an employee, how VA feels about her employer, it would have happened in a “don’t come back after your vacation” type manner.

In regards to “cutting you into the profit”, once companies get big enough, you get corrupt middle management who are the ones that hoard the wealth and give the “ata boy” pins. Smaller companies will take care of their workers as best they can.

In Memory of Tim King

Published by Sean Et Cetera on February 9, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Tim King, my boss’ supervisor, passed away late this morning. He had been diagnosed with Pancreatitis just the other night.

Tim was an Associate Director of Residence Life and oversaw the Residential Computing Connection program, which he had helped create, as well as other technical programs with in the Office of Residence Life.

When he attended the RCC training sessions, he always had a story he told, aside from showing old computer punch cards and hard drive discs about 12 inches in diameter. A man walks into a seafood restraunt and asks the hostess “Do you serve crabs here?” The hostess replies “Yes sir, we serve crabs. In fact, we serve everyone.”

Needless to say, things are rather subdued in the office. He will be missed.

Founders On Fire

Published by Sean Et Cetera on February 9, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Portable fan forces residence hall evacuation, flooding from sprinkler system.

I saw the fire truck and emergency vehicles over at Founders on my way home last night, but figured it was just a false alarm, as is typical in any college residence hall. Well, at least no one was hurt and the fire was contained. I did like the quote about a student who wanted to air out her room but was concerned about starting another fire. If fans were a large fire threat, they wouldn’t be allowed in to begin with. I have two fans in my office over at Saddlemire, which is mainly due to the fact that the building gets rather hot in the spring, summer, and fall, so I’m assuming I’ll still be able to have them.

I was rather distraught though, that a fire on campus, even though there were not injuries or fatalities, was beat out by the death of Anna Nicole Smith as the main article on the BG News website. That’s almost as bad as Paula Zahn bumping her discussion with Richard Dawkins after the horrifically biased “panel” the other day, so that she could waste air time talking about Anna Nicole.

On a related note, I set off the smoke alarms last night while pre-crisping some pepperoni for our pizza.

read more | digg story

Caught in the Network

Published by Sean Et Cetera on February 8, 2007 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

An assistant professor of visual communication and technology education at Bowling Green State University is confronted with network security and campus police after using Tor on his computer. Those of you who attend BGSU may recognize the name of the article’s author, Dr. Paul Cesarini.

All in all, it was an interesting article to read. Without knowing specifically whom from network security spoke with Dr. Cesarini, chances are I’ve spoken with them, due to my position in RCC at BGSU. I can see where someone using that sort of program would cause issues on the network, especially if the user was purposefully hiding their tracks. A big assumption I could make is that it wasn’t anyone in the residence halls they were speaking with, as I probably would have heard about it; then again, that’s an assumption, not a fact.

That is a benefit of working at a university. Had something like this happened in the “real world”, it could have easily led to someone’s termination, whereas in this case there was the benefit of arguing for academic freedom.

read more | digg story

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