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In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I have to fess up to having attended Williams. However, the many good times and incredible things I learned there are not the reason for it reaching Fave Wiki status. No, attending Williams only first brought me to this page.

Valleywag has a great writeup about an upcoming FTC public hearing aimed at what sounds like propping up newspapers. The specifics of the hearing are best summarized in their article, so I won’t repeat it here. Just know that I wholeheartedly agree with their feelings on this issue. In my own post, I would like to draw attention to something […]

Mel and I rented a car this weekend to go to the wedding of two of my friends from college.  Happened to be up in Quechee, VT right about the peak of fall foliage.  Much to our delight, the car rental company upgraded us to a Volvo C70 hard-top convertible.  Pretty amazing weekend all around. Slideshow: Fullscreen: Download:

Bigs news that Pavement has reunited for a brief tour, including a 4-night stand in Central Park. Maybe I had to hit just the right age, but I was never really into Pavement until recently. I remember giving their albums a listen early in my high school days and just wasn’t feeling it. Fast forward to 2009 and I “picked […]

Working on content at Hunch over the past year has given me plenty of time to mull over various aspects of creating a UGC product. At a certain point, I realized that each and every day I was spending some amount of time at wikipedia. While assembling content and knowledge online, inevitably I kept coming across the king of all wikis. It has informed many of the UGC principles we use at Hunch, figuring that the contributors and bosses of wikipedia have already reached pretty solid positions on issues that can, at times, be especially tricky.

Along the way, I’ve been picking out some of my favorite pages from across wikipedia to be shared here, beginning with one that details a central principle that I believe must exist in all wikis. This page details why, when settling disagreements, polling of the crowd is not a substitute for discussion and collaboration. It is forceful, authoritarian and anti-democratic, yet it stands at the core of a tool that has totally obliterated the barriers to entry for public knowledge and near-factual authority — and this is all a good thing! At once top-heavy and bureaucratic, in my eyes this principle helps wikipedia affirm a consensus on disagreements in a manner that both a) takes a bit o’ time to appeal, discuss and simmer and b) will eventually reach a single judge to just put an end to the matter.

Play me!

Slideshow: Fullscreen: Download:

Headed deep into Williamsburg last night with Mel. Caught a concert at the Mast Brothers Chocolate Factory and then made our way to fette sau for dinner and beers. Highlights of the night were the black angus brisket and Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold on tap. Delicious. This also represents my complete transfer to WordPress.  I’m liking it much more than […]