Hey! I'm Quoted!

I did a google search on me today and found that I'm quoted: there is a website that collects quotes by people, and they have one I said. I made that statement as part of when I was interviewed for this news.com article. I'm glad someone thought it was a cool quote. I wonder who it was?

I was looking at myself, because the guy I was writing about here found the article about him and asked the webmaster about it's content. It's useful to keep an eye on what people are saying about you. I've never found anything really nasty. Some people find nasty things and freak out. Which never helps.

The whole discussion about whether wikipedia articles are correct or not misses the whole point. It isn't about having perfectly correct pages that makes wikipedia so powerful -- it's having access to the history and the editorial dialog. You can't ever read something and know whether it's "true". But if you can see the history and the diversity of ideas and viewpoints that have contributed to the current page, now, suddenly, you can make an assessment. Is there no history? Hmm. Suspicious. Is there a long history of contributions that gradually lead to this nuanced view? Hmm. This is probably pretty good. Does the history gyrate wildly from one point of view to another? Hmm. This is something about which you have to look at assumptions and be prepared to take a position to evaluate each side.

You can use Wikipedia like a textbook or encylopedia by simply linking to particular pages in the history that you agree with, but that's just stupid. The goal isn't to slavishly believe any particular page: its about coming to grips with how many people look at something and trying to come to grips with the complexity. Wikipedia, for the first time, really lets people do that. That's why Wikipedia rocks.