Earth-friendly EOMA68 Computing Devices

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/progress-and-events

by jonny_storm • 10 years ago

22 11 10 years ago

sevensor4• 10 years ago

Good grief. Wikipedia has a problem with pages that can only be evaluated by experts. They could be perfectly good, or they could be advancing an agenda. I noticed this with their page on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, which is a somewhat scammy group decision making technique promoted by a cult-like group of business consultants. (I've compared it to Scientology -- it has a charismatic leader and even uses special electronic gizmos to make you feel like it's more sciency.) It's hard to fix the page because nothing on it is wrong, exactly. But its sheer length and loving detail, and the utter lack of criticism or reference to alternatives, makes AHP sound way more legit than it actually is.

Bartweiss• 10 years ago

I think that even more broadly, Wikipedia is incapable of handling any topic primarily of interest to a narrow 'interest group'. Those topics have a limited number of people who are qualified to work on the article, and it's possible that there will be one who is qualified, interested, and unaffiliated to do the editing.

At one extreme, the result is what's linked here: unqualified editors produce inaccurate content, and reject anyone more qualified as having a conflict of interest. In the worst case, knowing enough to edit competently becomes evidence of bias, and the chances of producing an accurate article drop to 0.

At the other is the pattern you described. I don't know AHP, but several of the articles on personality tests suffer from similar-sounding issues. They're not wrong, but they've very visibly been edited by true believers, and the tone is bizarrely approving (or, at times, disapproving). You get pieces with 5,000 words of praise, followed by 100 weasel-words of 'Criticism', simply because the believers cared enough to go dig up sources and write good content.

I'm not sure there's any good way to break through this dichotomy, since the problem is a shortage of people qualified to analyze the article.

I do know, though, that it only takes a tiny amount of malfeasance to move the problem from bad to catastrophic. For instance, the EOMA68 article saw the hideous sequence of someone deleting sources, then using unsourced claims as grounds for a deletion request. Wikipedia does have some issues with bullying by senior editors, and in fragile cases like this it can have enormous consequences.

sevensor4• 10 years ago

In the worst case, knowing enough to edit competently becomes evidence of bias, and the chances of producing an accurate article drop to 0.

This is why I haven't edited the AHP page, in fact. I know AHP is an inferior approach for a host of technical reasons, but the fact that I've drawn that conclusion means I can't maintain a neutral point of view.

hinkley• 10 years ago

What is the encyclopedic value of an article that can only be evaluated by experts in the field?

Maybe we're trying to use Wikipedia as a dumping ground for all knowledge that can be catalogued without really thinking if there are more appropriate locations for it.

An encyclopedia article is normally about starting points. It's supposed to begin the process of unpacking a concept and introduce some ideas, papers, books and actors, to serve as a vehicle for an in depth reading on the subject.

sevensor4• 10 years ago

I agree about the purpose of the encyclopedia, but I think only experts are in a position to guide non-experts towards a deeper understanding of a subject. This is what I see as Wikipedia's basic problem. They need experts to write coherent articles, but they want unbiased content. All experts are biased by their expertise, which leaves Wikipedia in a bind. In practice, biased experts write biased articles. In the best case, they try to be as even-handed as possible, but the worst case devolves into the situation described in the article we're discussing, or the AHP page I mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

Edit: to your point about basic information, I think it's going to be difficult finding where to draw the line.

bcg12• 10 years ago

Original title seems to have been "I’m Supporting the 'Deletion' of the Wikipedia Page" which is a tragic story of Internet bureaucracy.

sevensor4• 10 years ago

I think the original title is more appropriate, even if it doesn't match the title of the page. Perhaps the link should go to

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pro...

With a title change to

"Wikipedia's EOMA68 Page"

_Codemonkeyism2• 10 years ago

From reading this I could not find out what was going on.

From what I tried to understand, someone running a crowd funding campaign on a 'EOMA68' device denies he has any conflict of interest with writing a 'EOMA68' wikipedia page when there is $175k on the line.

Not that I'm a friend in any way on how 'Wikipedians' act.

bcg12• 10 years ago

Author said that if (s)he believed there was a legit conflict of interest, they would have declared it. They asked Wikipedia folks for clarification, after which the bureaucrats started some administrative process and proceeded to edit the page with incorrect facts.

FWIW, the EOMA68 crowd funding campaign is to create a open hardware laptop that can run entirely with free software, and all of the designs etc are open source and available to the public (afaik).

_Codemonkeyism2• 10 years ago

From reading the entire talk page, for me the author has a limited view on what has happened.

He asked about COI and got

"As the author of the EOMA-68 standard, and as a co-creator of a crowd-funding campaign around several implementations of that standard, you have both a legal interest (as the primary author and copyright holder of the standard) and an economic interest (as an implementor) in the entities that this article is about."

as a first answer. Which is what the author didn't like and asked for 'clarifications' holding the opinion that

'do i have an interest in promoting the SUCCESS of EOMA68?" no i do NOT.'

which sounds surreal if you are the co-creator of a standard and run a crowd campaign for a device based on that standard, irrespective of the device being and/or standard being open.

The reasonable answer by the Wikipedian is

"Here is a video of you promoting the EOMA-68 initiative. Here is another. And here is an interview, in which you say, in relation to EOMA-68 and its implementations, things like, 'Let me tell you a little bit about why I'm doing this and why people should buy these products.'"

Looks like the author has also a very different view on crowd funding:

"it is a common mistake that a lot of people make. crowdfunding is a gift economy"

Otherwise read the talk page, it's much more fun than the blog post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:EOMA68

grkvlt• 10 years ago

Wow. I don't think the EOMA68 author is really the sort of person you want in charge of an open standard. They also seem somewhat conflicted, beyond WP:COI, for example, regarding patents he says:

i'm a SOFTWARE LIBRE DEVELOPER. do you know what that means? it means we DON'T LIKE patents!

But on his LinkedIn page we find:

as a result of my exploration in implementing encryption algorithms on an ASP, I also came up with enough new ideas for Aspex to be able to generate over six new patents.

To be honest, I don't know what exactly is meant by a 'Software Libre Developer' anyway, it seems to be a strange way of saying 'Open Source Software Developer' but with some kind of hidden subtext.

Earth-friendly EOMA68 Computing Devices

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