Wales and Hayek  From reasononline: "On other occasions, Wales has offered a more erudite account of the site's origins and purpose. In 1945, in his famous essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society," the libertarian economist F.A. Hayek argued that market mechanisms serve "to share and synchronize local and personal knowledge, allowing society's members to achieve diverse, complicated ends through a principle of spontaneous self-organization." (These are the words not of the Nobel Prize winner himself but of Wikipedia's entry on him.) "Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project," Wales wrote on the blog of the Internet law guru Lawrence Lessig. "One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek." Long before socialism crumbled, Hayek saw the perils of centralization. When information is dispersed (as it always is), decisions are best left to those with the most local knowledge. This insight, which undergirds contemporary libertarianism, earned Hayek plaudits from fellow libertarian economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman as the "most important social thinker of the 20th century." The question: Will traditional reference works like Encyclopedia Britannica, that great centralizer of knowledge, fall before Wikipedia the way the Soviet Union fell before the West?" Hayek 

See my comments on the I Hate Wikipedia blog: Hayek

Troll & Sysop - Licensed under the: I Found It On Wikipedia (IFIOWP) doctrine. Sysops or Admins are Wikipedia editors that have access to technical features that help with the maintenance of WP.

Wikipedia's co-founder Jimbo Wales has ties to Ayn Rand and the Objectivists. The Objectivists have on occasion been described as a cult formed around the late Ayn Rand. Not that that's relevant. Here's a little Objectivist humor:

Why don't Objectivists wear pocket protectors? So that people won't mistake them for accountants.

How many Objectivists does it take to change a light bulb? You second-hand, evading social metaphysician, Ayn Rand has already changed it. The world just hasn't noticed yet.

What's two plus two? Whatever Ayn Rand said it was.

What's two plus two? Ayn Rand said it was "four," but she never followed up on her own groundbreaking insight. Now, thanks to the work of David Kelley, we're finally able to verify her result independently and give it the attention it deserves.

Why was Ayn Rand so paranoid? Because of her psycho epistemology.

Why did the non-Objectivist chicken cross the road? To mooch off the productive achievements of the Objectivist chickens who had already shown the way to the other side. (Fortunately, since A is A, a tunnel collapsed on it and it died as it deserved.)

Dear Ayn Randers: Help! I've lost my car keys! My wife says they're somewhere in our house, but my son says they're not. What should I do? Signed: Keyless in Milwaukee. Dear Keyless: Check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

"Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."" - Cindy Long, NEA Today

The question Ayn Rand might ask Jimmy Wales is why? Such a large undertaking, consuming years of Mr. Wales life, is this what he supposed to be doing? I guess I look at the situation and assume Wales still values what Rand said. That his past ties to the Objectivists was time well spent.

The above quote seems so altruistic as to remind us of a contestant in the Miss America Pageant. Rand in my opinion really gave the altruists both barrels. Her thinking was often binary. Good or bad, yes or no. Simplified it was the selfists (SELF ISTS) versus the altruists, with the selfists being the Objectivists. Rand felt that the altruists were bad, but now I am reading, correctly or not, Jimmy Wales sounding like an altruist.

(Selfist being the opposite of an Altruist. You might be surprised that some of us don't mind being called selfists, or even selfish. Some believe the most important goal in life is to help the poor. I don't.)

The Larry Sanger article on Kuro5hin

Sanger make three key points about the problems of Wikipedia on 12/31/04:
• First problem: lack of public perception of credibility, particularly in areas of detail.
• Second problem: the dominance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers.
• The root problem: anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise.

Larry Sanger claims to be the co-founder of Wikipedia. See the more of the story at:Kuro5shin

Jimbo Wales and Ayn Rand

“Wales admires the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, and while in graduate school owned and moderated an Internet mailing list known as the "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy." He also takes an interest in firearms policy and constitutional law.”

Above quote from: http://enc.slider.com/Enc/Jimmy_Wales

Ayn Rand is still somewhat of a controversial figure. She made effective libertarian arguments at times. Below she makes one of her best. She was writing about freedom, about living ones own life, about owning ones life:

"Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their alters."
 
** Source: ''Anthem '', Chapter XI

When a politician tries to make you feel that you are obligated to help to the poor, remember the above.
 
Wikipedians may at times wish that their leader was something besides an Ayn Rand follower. She is a target of much criticism:

“Ayn Rand was a truculent, domineering cult-leader, whose Objectivist pseudo-philosophy attempts to ensnare adolescents with heroic fiction about righteous capitalists.”

Above quote from: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/critobj.html

Mike Huben’s site is massive, and ranks well with the search engines. Some day Huben may figure out who Wales is and have something new to write about.

If I was a Wikipedian, I would be concerned about exactly what Wikipedia is? I would spend some time learning about Rand. I would ask myself if I am a capitalist? A volunteer? Wikipedia has its libertarian attributes.

Many libertarians looked up to Rand while Rand looked down on them. Rand has her place. Her arguments can be the best. I agree with some important things she wrote.

Will Wales distance himself from Rand? That would be the safe, conformist thing to do. What would happen if someone put on his page, something about his past association with Objectivism?

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Defies Chinese Censors
September 11, 2006 · Category: Politics, Culture, Celebrity Rand Fans
From a new article at the Guardian:

"The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.

Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.

Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.
 
Wales is a long-time admirer of Ayn Rand’s writings, so his unwillingness to suffer censorsorship at the hands of Chinese bureaucrats shouldn’t come as much of a surprise." - from The Atlasphere - Connecting admirers of the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged

   
          Naked News Lead Anchor Michelle Pantoliano reports on Wikipedia
Michelle is originally from New York City. She holds a Broadcast & Communications degree from the State University of New York at Oswego, and held a number of jobs in broadcasting early in her career. She was a radio show host, worked at CNBC, and was a reporter for a New York-New Jersey cable news program. Source: Wikipedia

On seven different occasions, Wales has altered sentences that gave Larry Sanger credit for cofounding Wikipedia. Sanger, a former employee of Wales whose job was eliminated in 2002, led the project as "chief organizer" from its January 2001 launch and gave the site its name. He described himself as Wikipedia's cofounder in a 2004 Kuro5hin article.

Wales changed "Bomis Babes softcore pornography section" to "Bomis Babes adult content section" on Sept. 4 and twice removed references to the nature of the site, replacing "Bomis Babes erotica section" with "Bomis Babes blog based on Slashdcode" - More from: Cadenhead

Selected definitions of Ayn Rand from UrbanDictionary.com:

• Mid-20th century pop-philosopher who first propounded objectivism in a set of rather poorly written cult novels of dubious quality. Her philosophy is founded on unremarkable restatements of the obvious, prizing material achievement, self-centered pride, and unfettered commerce as virtues over love, humility, generosity, and faithfulness. Followers of objectivism, called randroids, tend to be a rude, selfish, condescending bunch, intolerant of anything that does not perfectly match their ultra-naturalist, laissez-faire dogmatism.

"A=A, oh, yes, A=A," the randroid muttered again and again, softly, obsessively, as he cut out heart-shaped pictures of Ayn Rand from a magazine for his objectivist collage showing her to be the pinnacle of human evolution.

1. a anti-communist.
2. an extreme individualist.
3. a follower of objectivism.

Maritza: "You voted for Kerry? I can't be friends with a communist." Joe: God, you don't have to get all "Ayn Rand" on me, I'm a democrat, not a Marxist.

• Most noted for her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand was an extremely, extremely hot writer and philosopher who advocated reason, egoism, and capitalism, allegedly on the grounds that existence exists.

Ayn Rand has been admired by many, but laughed at by still more.

Below is an RSS feed from Answers.com. Their site is known for duplicating Wikipedia articles and running ads along with them. Their Alexa rank puts them in something like 300th place. Google is going to bring back the Wikipedia site before the Answers.com site almost always. Yet somehow they are getting good traffic. Wikipedia is open source, which to me means, anyone can duplicate it. That poses an interesting question of Wikipedia protecting its property? Part of the answer is in its delivery. It probably has the best delivery. Some of the reasons for this are, high Google rankings, its established track record, and name recognition.