" What I had meant to describe specifically was the construction of a full-blown alternative media ecosystem, which has been become more self-sufficient and self-contained as it’s become more interconnected. ... That does not mean conservatives are completely cut off from outside information — as David Brooks notes today, research suggests that frequent visitors to partisan sites are actually more likely to also visit “the enemy” — but it tends to be approached in roughly the same spirit we might read the Korean Central News Agency. "

" The output may have varying degrees of liberal slant, but The New York Times is not fundamentally trying to be liberal; they’re trying to get it right. Their conservative counterparts—your Fox News and your Washington Times—always seem to be trying, first and foremost, to be the conservative alternative. And that has implications for how each of them connects to the whole ecosystem of media: Getting an accurate portrait is institutionally secondary to promoting the accounts and interpretations that support the worldview and undermine the liberal media narrative. "
...
" There’s another explanation that’s related to the rise of what I’ve called the politics of ressentiment... So here’s a hypothesis: Epistemic closure is (in part) an attempt to compensate for the collapse of geographic closure. A function no longer effectively served by geographic segregation—because the digital equivalents of your local hangout are open to invasion by the hordes from New York and London—is being passed to media segregation, bolstered by the sudden demand that what was once tacit and given be explicitly defended. "

" One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) "

Or, "Now all libraries are Taco Bell."

"But there is a fundamental problem here that needs to be addressed. Look at this issue from the other side. A significant number of articles, including many published in small circulation periodicals, are never cited by anyone. Think, too, of the conferences papers that fail to attract meaningful audiences, the journals that have tiny circulations and very small readerships, and the fact that most academic books are published in press runs of under 1,000 copies, despite the growth in the number of academics and university and college libraries. Put bluntly, we are researching without having an impact, speaking without being heard and writing without being read."

"It's hard to explain why the article isn't simply deleted; or, better, loudly labeled as a fake so that we can learn even from fakes."

"WikiDashboard shows which users have contributed most edits to a page, what percentage of the edits each person is responsible for, and when editors have been most active. ... The page on Hillary Clinton, for example, shows that the main contributor has put in about 20 percent of the edits."

"you can’t expose him from the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. He created the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. Fresco maintains strict control over the Prem Rawat article & countless related articles, keeping criticism of his guru to a bare minimum."

"It will result not in the infotopia that the prophets conjure up but in one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive."

"At least eight submissions of written evidence have come from medical professionals who have not disclosed their membership of Christian groups opposed to abortion on faith grounds."

"An increasing number of academics - many of whom have helped edit the resource to maintain informal quality control - are concerned that Wikipedia is becoming a stronghold for cranks"

Compare/contrast to Citizendium: "Each article is written by an expert (invited or elected by the public). ... Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information."

Skip all the D.B. and start with the Duncan Watts part: "Things that are popular tend to become more popular still, so that small, possibly random, fluctuations early on can get ‘locked in’ and generate a large difference in popularity over time."

Documents pro-life social movement organizations' growing use of pseudoscientific arguments that abortion causes severe harm to women. Note especially the substantial subsidies to "post-abortion syndrome" pseudoscientific research.

"If your visits to the web look like a random selection from an information slag heap or like the pages were chosen by a marketing department, visit your nearest library -- online or offline, the best place for information."

Kapur: "While [intellectual networks] reduce selection costs and serve as reputational mechanisms, they can also be prone to a form of 'crony intellectualism.' This inherent tendency to inbreeding has negative consequences for intellectual advancement."

Kudos to Clay Shirky for hosting an eviscerating critique of his dour Citizendium predictions.

Vacuous; see the StrayPackets post for a damning critique. See comment 11 for effort biases (and compare, say, the Naruto entries with the Sociology entries), and see comment 12 for profound ignorance of what knowledge means.

An all-too common problem, not unique to Wikipedia: "it’s apparent that many of Wikipedia’s supporters value the dynamics of its community more than the credibility of the product they deliver."

"there will also be "editors" who have more authority because of their background as specialists... Sanger strongly believes that the valuing of expert knowledge would attract more people from the scientific community and thus improve the overall quality"

"If I had to offer a philosophy of Networkism, it is that the participation of domain experts in creating articles and debating their deletion increases the quality of the process, and most domain experts will not become core members of the community."

"many defenders... aggressively reject any suggestion that projects like Wikipedia give special rights to expertise... It beggars belief that anyone could seriously think [experts] are no more credible or reliable a source of information than anyone else"

"Business owners sometimes gripe that Yelpers ... don't fully explain what bothered them ... or complain about something that's out of the proprietor's control" ... "readers don't know whether a positive posting was encouraged by special treatment."