Comments for Thoughts on the Future

Comment on The Future of Citizendium by James

James — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:00:54 +0000

Wow, David Gerard commenting onmy humble blog… I must be doing something right (-: Anyway, awesome link; I enjoyed it and found it to be humourous.

Comment on The Future of Citizendium by James

James — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:40:49 +0000

I didn't emphasise this in the article but you are absolutely right; ignoring the upcoming financial crisis, the inappropriate level of bureaucracy is probably the biggest challenge that the project faces. It makes getting anything done time-consuming at best, and just like some real-life democracies, it's not too hard for a small number of people to grind progress to a halt. It's probably something that deters me from participating too; I've looked at some of their discussions in the past and thought, "what are these people smoking?", followed by "if this is the way that the people running the project think, there's really no point in me spending too much time here." I think that, in principle, it's really cool that CZ has managed to emulate a constitutional democracy in a wiki project. However, for a project with less than 30 contributors in a month, the best form of government is anarchy or something close to it.

Comment on The Future of Citizendium by David Gerard

David Gerard — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:00:55 +0000

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Citizendium

The decline and fall of Citizendium, with numbers and graphs. tl;dr: they drove off the recruited academics, the pseudoscience advocates moved in, everyone left, the hosting is ridiculously expensive for what they do.

Comment on The Future of Citizendium by Christian Liem

Christian Liem — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:26:12 +0000

Interesting article. I believe the major impediment to Citizendium is the bureaucracy. The current admins running Citizendium are the least suitable to run it. Self-serving editors who have done little but use the project to feather their own nest while excluding others who are deemed a threat to their “power”. They can hold elections but it makes little difference, as there are so few people left now to play their farcical musical chairs. I’ve stopped editing there as a result.

Comment on I Hate My Teenage Daughter, pilot episode by I Hate My Teenage Daughter, episode 2 | Thoughts on the Future

I Hate My Teenage Daughter, episode 2 | Thoughts on the Future — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:52:40 +0000

[...] I did write a blog entry for last week’s pilot episode, not sure whether I’ll write a blog entry for each episode but I’ll write one [...]

Comment on Funniest mathematics comic by James

James — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:52:53 +0000

It’s still making me laugh when I think about it.

Comment on “The Amazing Race” and Natural Disasters by James

James — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:18:05 +0000

Here’s another one for the list… last week’s show episode was, in part, from Bangkok, and Bangkok now is being threatened with flooding.

Comment on Earth: Population 7 Billion by James

James — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 02:16:35 +0000

Thanks! I haven’t, but I’ll check it out.

Comment on Earth: Population 7 Billion by Steve

Steve — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 03:44:18 +0000

Have you ever read The Grandest Challenge by Abdallah Daar I found it eye-opening and it aligns with what you wrote.

Comment on After America by Mark Steyn by russ in nc

russ in nc — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:06:45 +0000

The Central Government in Washington DC is spending 24% of the nation’s GDP while collecting 14% of GDP in taxes. The difference is being borrowed to the tune of over a trillion dollars per year. How long can that continue? Mark Steyn says it will come to an end sooner than later and when the dust settles there will be less than fifty stars on Old Glory.