The Longest Now

Two things:

Bloggership is going on right now; the web of scholarship, libel on blogs, and the predominance of blog discourse in shaping legal and other discussions.

And we’re having a pizza-laden Wikimania presentation today at 5pm at Berkman; come get a sneak peek of the new conference site and banners, and find out about the list of open tasks for the summer.

Bloggership ; Wikimania volunteering …

BBC Focus put out a micro-comparison of Wikipedia, Britannica Online, Encarta, and Infoplease, asking three experts to review one article apiece.  Suburbia describes it well. 

Reporters running a statistically insignificant comparison with other references, is becoming as popular as vandalizing Wikipedia, when it comes to coming up with a story to publish.
BBC Focus put out a micro-comparison of Wikipedia, Britannica Online, Encarta, and Infoplease, asking three experts to review one article apiece.  Suburbia describes it well. 

Reporters running a statistically insignificant comparison with other references, is becoming as popular as vandalizing Wikipedia, when it comes to coming up with a story to publish.

Hey, didja catch that BBC Focus article? …

Wikimania 2006, August 4-6 2006, Cambridge MA :

Submit workshops, tutorials, and presentations for the 2nd annual Wikimedia Conference!  Present to hundreds of Wikimedians and collaboration enthusiasts from around the world   The earliest submission deadline is this Saturday;  See the full Call for Participation on the new conference website. 

It will be a fabulous event; not your usual conference.  Whether or not you have something to present, I hope you can join us. 

Wikimania Call for Participation, website …

Verizon Online is an unusually poor service provider.  I have suffered through two ‘once in a lifetime’ catastrophes with them, and do not wish to wait for a third.  VZNO have no warning system in place for outages, repairs, or changes;
and offer minimal information in their reports and summaries.  This all
falls under ‘general incompetence‘; Comcast Cable and most broadband providers have similar issues.  When they mistakenly disconnect a line, and then say it will take
12 hours to verify and over 24 hours to fix due to ‘standard
paperwork’, that goes a bit beyond.  When 24 hours later a supervisor says that due to insurmountable bureaucracy and employee error on their part there will be another 48 to 72 hour delay, as though this were the most natural thing in the world, one wonders what ritual incantations they must perform to coax bandwidth from the Baby Bell routing daemons. 

In the past eight months, there have been two additional 12+-hour outages thanks to infrastructure failures … it is only through inertia that we still use their DSL.

I was browsing for a quick quote, so it took me a while to realize I had discovered a bulletin board for serial transcription of English video….  incredible.

Putclub …

Alien to terra firma, that is.  The Arapaima, fish- and bird-eaters that get up to 200lbs and 3m.  The Tripod fish, fresh from WotW to you.  If that isn’t enough alien nature, try browsing the pages of Bizarre Books…
Alien to terra firma, that is.  The Arapaima, fish- and bird-eaters that get up to 200lbs and 3m.  The Tripod fish, fresh from WotW to you.  If that isn’t enough alien nature, try browsing the pages of Bizarre Books…

Amazing aliens …

Check out the Global Voices/Reuters teamup
tonight — starting right now — as seven mainstream media panelists
are joined by five Mid-east GV bloggers to discuss whether the “:real” Iraqi story is being told by the media.  There will be streaming audio and a live online chat available for the two-hour special discussion.

Reuters calls it the “Reuters Iraq Newsmaker debate“.  I’m guessing the MSM will be taken down a few notches, but I would love to hear what Reuters’ Iraq bureau chief Alistair MacDonald and Guardian photojournalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad have to say.

Is the Iraq story being told? …

Come wikify your night with a [local group] of entrepreneurs and wikiphiles.  The second Boston Wiki Wednesday gathering is happening tonight, properly the first week of the month this time.

Where : at Smile Thai in Harvard Square (12-14 Eliot St).
When : at 7pm
Who : anyone who has ever contemplated deleting an entire wiki page.

Call to RSVP, or for more information.    529 4266 (617).

Boston Wiki Wednesday #2 tonight …