On Sourcing Quotes and the Wikimedia Way

This morning, I came across this Charlie Parker quote that I really loved:

“Master your instrument, master the music, then forget all that bullshit and just play.”

My first instinct was to tweet it. My second, more practiced instinct, was to check the source first. It’s really not that hard to at least do a quick check, and I’ve discovered lots of misattributed quotes this way.

A quick search surfaced a bunch of unattributed variants on that quote, as well as this entry from Wikiquote:

“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.” –As quoted in Acting Is a Job: Real-life Lessons About the Acting Business (2006) by Jason Pugatch, p. 73; this statement has occurred with many different phrasings, including: “Learn the changes, then forget them.”

A book on acting is not the most credible source, probably no better than the blog post above. But at least it’s the start of a trail, one that anyone can follow to the end, if they so desire.

The ethos of sourcing facts is theoretically easier in this connected age, but the reality is that our connectivity seems to discourage it. We read funny or provocative things that speak to us, we click once, and boom, we’ve instantaneously shared it with hundreds of our followers without giving any thought to whether or not it’s true. That’s a problem.

Furthermore, social media tools seem to be actively evolving to discourage sourcing. I was guilted into this practice of sourcing-before-sharing after reading a rant by Evan Prodromou, who pointed out that a quote that was being widely and rapidly shared was actually misattributed.

Here’s the problem: Even though he posted it publicly somewhere, I can’t find it. It’s not on his blog, and it’s not on Status.net (the company he founded, which very much values persistent data), although he alludes to the rant there. Which means that he posted it on Facebook or Google Plus, which means that I can just about forget about ever finding it, since neither of those services seem to care about making posts persistent and findable. (Read a similar criticism that Kellan Eliott-McCrea had about Twitter.) Which means that this knowledge trail, minor though it may be, has been unnecessarily broken.

This is yet another reason why I appreciate Wikimedia so much. There is a deeply embedded ethos in that community around sourcing truth. Sometimes, this ethos surfaces some quirky challenges around epistemology,  such as the recent Philip Roth affair, but even situations like these only serve to make us smarter and more self-aware.

The wiki tool enables this ethos to some extent, but the reality is that its source is cultural, not technical, and the community is trying to apply this ethos to all forms of knowledge, not just encyclopedic. No one else is doing this. That’s unfortunate, because we need a lot more of it.

MediaWiki Plugin for Laconica v0.1

I’ve been playing with Laconica for a while now, mostly on Identi.ca but also on some self-hosted sites for various projects. For the Grantsfire project, we thought that Laconica would be a great way to keep others updated without flooding our inboxes, so I installed the latest version. I noticed that there’s now a plugin API, so — with encouragement from Evan Prodromou — I decided to scratch an itch I’ve had for a while and write a Link As You Think Mediawiki plugin.    (N5W)

It wasn’t too bad. My main challenge was figuring out PHP. I’ve looked at a lot of PHP code in my day, but I’ve never written a line of it until today. I thought I could skate by without spending too much time understanding PHP’s idioms and idiosyncracies, but — as is often the case — trying to skate by ended up taking more time than learning how PHP worked. The Laconica codebase is relatively clean, and I learned a lot by reading it.    (N5X)

Many, many thanks to Evan Prodromou and all the Laconica hackers out there. It’s an awesome tool, and it’s enabling me to do some cool stuff that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.    (N5Y)

WikiClock: The Next Killer Wiki App

Got back from Montreal and RoCoCo 2007 last Friday with a pile of notes and a case of the flu, which pretty much killed my productivity this weekend. Fortunately, spring conference season for me is over, and I’m boycotting all summer conferences with the possible exception of Wikimania in Taipei this August, which means I’ve got plenty of time to digest and regurgitate. As usual, it’ll come in bits and pieces, starting with this post.    (MAV)

RoCoCo pretty much kicked butt. Much props go to Evan Prodromou, Anne Goldenberg, Antoine Beaupre, and the entire Montreal Wiki community for pulling off such a great event. Lots of participants traveled to attend, including several Europeans, which made the experience much richer. This included representatives from every PHP-based Wiki (Tim Starling of Mediawiki, Andreas Gohr of Doku Wiki, Reini Urban of PhpWiki, Patrick Michaud of PmWiki, and Marc Laporte of TikiWiki), which was awesome. I was happy to see old friends from afar and from not-so-far, and I met several great new folks. WikiOhana is a wonderful thing.    (MAW)

The best session was Evan’s, “Wiki And…,” which he nefariously scheduled at the same time as my Wiki Interoperability session so I couldn’t attend. That didn’t prevent me from learning about his incredibly brilliant idea: WikiClock, made possible by Gordon McCreight‘s most excellent service, pageoftext.com.    (MAX)

What is WikiClock? It’s a clock on a Wiki that tells you the current time in GMT. How does it know the current time? Someone edits the time. Who edits it? Whoever feels so motivated.    (MAY)

WikiClock is a great example of a totally ludicrous application of a Wiki. The point of Evan’s session is that Wiki-enthusiasm can lead to overly narrow thinking. Wikis are great, but they’re not the end-all-and-be-all of collaborative tools. There are a whole slew of good tools out there. Use the right one for the right job.    (MAZ)

The story doesn’t end there, however. What makes WikiClock all the more ridiculous is that people are actually using it. You heard me right. The buzz from Evan’s session started propagating pretty quickly. If you check WikiClock right now, chances are the time is correct. And if it’s not, well, correct it!    (MB0)

WikiClock is that rare breed of joke, where you laugh, then you stop and think, “You know, it’s really not that bad of an idea.” Next thing you know, it’s no longer a joke. I know of only one other joke like it: Parrot, the virtual machine for dynamic languages that started off as an April Fool’s joke.    (MB1)

Kirsten Jones on Perlcast

Socialtext‘s Kirsten Jones talks about Socialtext Open and its REST API on this week’s Perlcast. It’s a good interview, and the last question reminded me of a funny exchange at WikiWednesday this past week:    (LH0)

Kirsten: PHP is for girls.    (LH1)

Evan Prodromou: Hey, Michele would object to that!    (LH2)

Kirsten: That’s because she’s a woman. PHP is for girls, Perl is for women.    (LH3)

WikiWednesday and Web Mondays

Two “days” coming up worth attending, for those of you in the Bay Area. Tomorrow is WikiWednesday at Socialtext in Palo Alto. Three good reasons to go:    (LGI)

Next Monday is the third WebMonday Silicon Valley, this time at Cooley Godward Kronish in Palo Alto. Sadly, I won’t be able to make this one, but I spoke at the last one, and I had an one excellent time.    (LGM)