MetaFilter
I seldom read comments or comment boards, but a few MetaFilter comments on my Wikipedia series did catch my eye.
It should probably be pointed out that Mark Bernstein has been thinking about hypertext and digital culture since before there was a Web. When a person like him talks about the possibility that this "may well permanently discredit not only Wikipedia but the entire open Web" there's some reason to take the concern seriously, even if you think (as I do) that the statement is probably a bit hyperbolic.
The proper balance between the competing narratives “she sleeps around” and “there is no way that is any of our business” is not “some sources have said she sleeps around.”
And just a few short months after honoring the memory of Adrianne Wadewitz, ArbCom spits in the faces of feminists. Sickening.
In other news, the Wikimedia Foundation’s PR Office is reportedly distributing talking points seeking to discredit me. Have a fun weekend, guys!
I really dislike this.
- I like wikis.
- I like the researcher who invented wikis, Ward Cunningham; unlike Jimmy Wales, Ward isn’t a household name and doesn’t get invited to Davos or have houses on two continents, but he did the work to create wikis and literally wrote the book: wrote the book
- I added a few flourishes and touches myself, back in the day. The academic citation for visited link colors and for breadcrumbs, both used on every Wiki page, is [Bernstein and Thorsen 86]. The use of tabs for hypertext navigation may well trace back to my paper on “The Bookmark and The Compass” (abstract in first Hypertext conference, 1987; published in TOOIS in 1988), though there might be older precedents. More broadly, some people think my papers on hypertext structure inform the way people write (or should write) with links. Tinderbox takes lots of ideas from wikis and supports wiki functionality. I’ve been both the keynote speaker and the program chair of WikiSym, the leading research conference on wikis.
- A great place for donations in place of Wikimedia: App Camp For Girls.