Category: Burningbird

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Writing

Truth and authority

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Joi Ito points to an article by a reporter talking about the untrustworthy nature of Wikipedia. It would seem that a school librarian wrote to this reporter saying, that Wikipedia is …not an authoritative source. The librarian, Susan Stagnitta then continues:

“Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the authority of the site.”

Phil Ringnalda also wrote on this (a post that did not show up in Bloglines–is it real, then?), and I gather that Morbus Iff has been mixing it up with the reporter, a gentleman by the name of Al Fasoldt.

(I liked Morbus’ question at the end: “Tell me dear readers, is Morbus Iff anonymous?” We could extend this already complex topic to include the concept of authenticity, as well as authority and truth, but my head would implode messily from the effort.)

What makes this even more interesting is that it would seem Fasoldt wrote the article warning of the dangers of Wikipedia under his name, Fasoldt, but wrote in support of the wiki, previously, under a pseudonym, Dr. Gizmo:

In a column published a few weeks ago by my companion Dr. Gizmo, readers were urged to go to the Wikipedia Web site at www.wikipedia. org/wiki/Main Page , an online encyclopedia, for more information on computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good independent source.

Leaving aside the ramifications of refuting one’s own story, and doing so in the third person, the topic of trust, truth, and authority is a compelling one.

For instance, I do find the Wikipedia to be a good resource. Do I trust the information written there? Let’s say that I trust it to be ‘a’ good source of information, but not the only one. It makes a good start when one is investigating a topic because the material at the wiki usually contains new perspectives, new avenues to explore on a specific topic. So yes, I do trust it to be a good resource…just not the only one.

A case in point of what the wiki can provide can be found in the recent discussions on the Japanese Internment camps. The Wikipedia entry on this topic provides facts that can be verified, such as the name of the camps, bills passed, and major participants in the internment process; or photos taken during this time, such those from this collection of photos of Manzanar by Ansel Adams.

(Though I personally found Adams formal style and obsession with creating ‘beautiful works’ resulted in photos that border on characterization at times.)

The site also reflects opinions, including those categorized as ‘dissenting’, mixed in with the facts. It is the opinion that usually reflects the changes the most, and I imagine it is this that caused much of the consternation with the librarian. But it is this that makes the Wikipedia just such a valuable resource.

The material in the articles can be fascinating, but no more so than that found behind the scenes. You only have to look at thediscussion or view the change log associated with the article to not only see how the topic has evolved, but the justifications for evolving the topic given by those who have made edits. You can learn as much for the reasons changes were made as you can by the changes themselves.

As for the more traditional works on the Japanese Internment, people have discarded the more researched and scholarly writings as the work of fusty out of touch historians with only a partial understanding of what was really happening. Even when a the work was considered ‘authoritative’, and annotated with thousands of pages of documents and the testimony of many who participated in the camps, the work is rejected.

The reason, according to those with more modern views, is though the authors could be considered ‘authorities’ on the topic, they don’t have the ‘truth’ because the truth, in this instance, is held by those who have new, and fresh insight into the existing material–they have reached an epiphany the others, weighed down by the mass of research material and outdated ideas, can’t hope to achieve.

According to these blessed with such insight, they have truth without authority, while the historians have authority, but can’t possibly understand the truth. Who you trust then, depends less on authority or even truth than it does on who you want to believe–literally whose interpretation rings your bell the most.

So much for authority and truth.

That poor librarian’s students would have a difficult time with this topic, as they discover that finding a source that can be trusted isn’t a simple matter of finding an authority who has the truth’; but they couldn’tcould do worse than to start at the Wikipedia, which at least promises to be interesting, if neither truthful nor authoritative.

Categories
Burningbird

About this entry

I added an entry to the top of the sidebar for my individual entry pages that lists information about the post, including: author, date and time of post creation, categories, a link to syndicate the comments for that post, post comment status, and other information.

I didn’t like the PREV_POST and NEXT_POST line at the top of the page. No reason why, just personal preference. But once I moved the entry navigation over to the sidebar, I started thinking of other bits of information that would go nicely with the individual post navigation links.

To populate this information, I’m using several WordPress functions that normally only work in what is known at The Loop — the opening and closing code to process the post(s) for a specific query. However, you don’t have to use these functions within The Loop as the data is global to the page — the last data set should persist throughout the rest of the page. Once you’ve processed the post in a page, the data should be available from that point.

Since I process my posts before my sidebar contents in my layout, to make the page more accessible to those using speech browsers, the data last set is still available to my sidebar. It’s just a matter of adding the function calls. Now, I can print out any type of information about the post in the side without having to re-create The Loop.

Of course, the results won’t be effective in pages that process several posts, but works nicely with individual pages.

Categories
Burningbird

All green

I would be adding more photos to Tin Foil Project, but the weather has been abysmal. Either extremely hot and humid, or thunderstorms, and now we’re looking at flash floods combined with thunderstorms and a tropical storm across the entire eastern portion of the country. Rather furious weekend, weather wise.

I made a version of the Tin Foil Project stylesheet for this weblog, as part of the switcher. I like the green background, and the faint image to the side. However, I have modified the overall look from Tin Foil Project, adding in a bit more color and other odds and ends. And I’ve disconnected the items much more than any of the other styles.

I know I do owe Danny Ayers an apology for doing a ‘green’ weblog when I said I wouldn’t. But at least it wasn’t the green that Danny dislikes. That one is very close to one of the colors published as part of the color forecasting done yearly. It’s called soho green, described as … A fusion of bronze and gold creates this 21st century neutral, elemental and enduring.

My color of green was from using a wonderful little shareware tool Color Cop to sample the colors in this photo. The colors from all my sites are found using this digital color eyedropper.

I used to worry about ‘web safe’ colors until a wise man told me that most monitors can handle millions of colors, and why limit myself to a couple of hundred? Now I test my colors on my Dell laptop, my TiBook, and sometimes the computer at the library. If it looks okay, then I don’t worry about other monitors. I figure if a color comes out glaringly wrong in someone else’s monitor, they’ll just assume I have taste as abysmal as the weather. Most importantly, it doesn’t stop their ability to read the text.

Categories
Just Shelley

Relative terms

It’s dangerous to use relative terms such as hot, cold, sweet, salty, better, or worse. Doing so leaves the door open to miscommunications.

For instance, I found today that my interpretation of the word ’short’ doesn’t agree with my hair stylist’s interpretation of the word ’short’. My idea was shoulder length, layered (since my hair is thick and wavy); her’s was Anne Heche.

Categories
Burningbird

Complementary or clashing

Yesterday I took several photos during an afternoon’s hot, humid shooting at the Botanical Gardens. The dragonflies were thick as ticks, and by the time I was done, my face was red, my shirt soaking wet.

When I uploaded the photos, into a post called Shape and Color, I tested the page in Preview using Fire & Ice stylesheet. The photos looked awful with the coloring and the photos on the side. I tried them with Route 66, and Burningbird of Happiness, but none of the stylesheets looked good. Even Random Shot, though relatively neutral in coloring, was too ‘busy’, with the photos on the side and in the post.

When I tried Lemon Shake-Ups, ahhh! Quick, close it! My eyes are bleeding!

None of my stylesheets is really set up for photos, especially when my photos can range from pink pastel to vivid orange and lime green. In addition, photos in the posts wreck havoc with that micreant browser, Internet Explorer.

I had planned on creating the Tin Foil Project for photo projects, and as my test weblog for upgrading from WordPress 1.2 to 1.3. However, in order to display some of the later summer floral shoots, I’ve decided to move up the time line. Check out the site.

I experimented with colors for the background, including the traditional black, white, and gray used for many photo albums. However, I felt that the black washed out the colors, and white was too bright–both created too much contrast at times. I also thought the grays reduced the brightness of the colors, or at least this is what I perceived from my inexpert viewpoint.

(ed. Or maybe what it all reduces to, is I wanted to try something new.)

I then remembered something my a karate teacher I had years ago in Arizona told me. He was a master carpenter, actually getting a MFA based on his furniture making. His thesis work was this incredible cabinet created for his dojo that featured inlay woods and hand smithed silver work – an amazing piece of craftsmanship.

Anyway, I noticed that one of the pieces he made for his home had a painted background behind the shelves rather than being finished wood. It was a pale gray/green color, relatively neutral in tone. I asked him about this at the time and he said that many cabinet makers will use a green backdrop because it complements most colors, without dimming them, contrasting too heavily, or causing the colors to seem to shift.

Considering that nature herself uses green as a backdrop for many of her brighter works, what he said made a lot of sense. So I spent today experimenting around with green colors, until reached what you see. Hopefully the photos are enhanced by the color, and the background images, which are transparent black & white merged into backgrounds the same color as the web page.

One issue I’m still dealing with is a slight margin of color around the images creating a faint line in the page. However, I think I can manage to eliminate it with PhotoShop.

The only time I’ll use photos at Burningbird, now, will be smaller ones complementary to a story. Any writing featuring larger numbers of photos, or photo posts only will be posted at Tin Foil. This means much of my photographical and sensory work will shift to that weblog.

(Eventually I’ll have functions that will list recent writing across all the weblogs (Practical RDF, Tin Foil Project, and Burningbird) ; comments, too, if I can manage it.)

If you have a moment, let me know what you think.