Original Research

Pete Forsyth posted the well-deserved rant at a local historical society to the Portland Wiki-Wednesday list:

Folks,

Today's Oregonian carried a story about a joint project, http://oregonencyclopedia.org , by the Oregon Historical Society and the Portland State University History Department. In short, they're preparing the site for the state's 2009 sesquicentennial celebration, and soliciting $1 to 2 million to fund the project.

http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1202865909212180.xml&coll=7

Unfortunately, OHS presented their project in contrast with Wikipedia, in terms that are both unflattering and ill-informed.

In the last week, Wikiproject Oregon got the Oregon Portal, an introduction to Wikipedia's Oregon-related content, to "Featured Portal" status, joining only 98 other portals in the world. Last month, the article on the Oregon State Capitol was featured on the front page of Wikipedia, drawing over 22,000 visitors in a single day. But our proudest accomplishment is the collegial environment we're building, in which diverse Oregonians have collaborated to shed light on innumerable interesting bits of Oregon history. Even including a couple significant corrections to the historical record. All this has been accomplished without a single financial donation (although Wikipedia as a whole does solicit donations worldwide.)

Please check out related discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Oregon#Dissed_by_the_OHS!

We will be working up a press release of our own, and hope to generate some press coverage for our project.

I am also considering buying a few domain names, such as oregonencyclopedia.com or oregonwiki.org, and having them point to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Oregon

As Aboutmovies noted in the discussion on Wikipedia, "I guess having their site up for a few months wasn't working (what 20 entries) so they had to issue a press release. Though I fail to see much of a difference. They want volunteer writers, we have volunteer writers. They want reliable, we want reliable. They just have access to a crap load of good pictures. Otherwise I'm not impressed. Looks like Oregon History Project II, wikistyle."

Sheesh, at least Larry Singer has a reason to be pick on Wikipedia. These folks could have played it smart, put the material under a free license, used the articles in Wikipedia as a starting point and improved them, then encouraged Wikipedia to reuse their content to fix our shortcomings. No, they decided to offend the largest body of the volunteers they need, then start saying that they need money -- and put their content under a restrictive license.

With diplomatic smarts like that, I bet you all that in 12 months the site will be dead.

Geoff

Technocrati tags: Oregon Historical Society, Oregon History, Portland Tech, wikipedia

Labels: portland media, portland tech, wikipedia

David Russell's post from a week ago about the absurdity of a Blogger's Code of Ethics got me thinking about a writer's choice of language. Maybe it is because I graduated with a degree in English (which I don't mention very often on Wikipedia because any authority this certificate might give me would be undercut by my bad spelling), but I am very conscious about other people's use of language, and what it reveals about that person. So I'd like to make a few observations:

1. At the moment, I'm troubled by the tendency of my local media to use the dated slang phrase "rip off" instead of the simpler "rob". This usage suggests that the writer or speaker is insufficiently educated -- an impression I assume the local print and television reporters don't want to convey.
   
2. Those "naughty words" people worry about (if I remember George Carlin's best-known comedy skit correctly, there are seven of them) likewise suggest that the user has a lack of education. There is a certain grace and humor when a person can allude to one of these words without actually using it; however, there is a time and a place for them. When any of them is used in an aggressive manner, it will always lead to offense and an aggressive response. In short, if you don't know why the statement "this is a clusterfuck" might not be offensive but "you are fucking stupid" is more so without the word "fuck", then you should avoid using that word entirely.
   
3. It is never a bad idea to begin a blog entry attacking someone or something with the words "this is a rant"; those words warn the reader that vicious language will follow. If the post melts down into an ungrammatical string of words full of profanity, the reader was warned; if the writer makes her or his point without doing that, the reader will feel a minimum of respect towards the writer for having avoided that conclusion.
   

Geoff

Technocrati tags: blogging, portland media, writing

Labels: portland media, writing