Eye on Winer

It’s interesting to see how differently Dave sees himself compared to how the rest of us see him. Take, for example, today’s rant about the Wikipedia court victory:

While it may have been a good defense in court, their position is nonsense. Wales et al promote Wikipedia as an authoritative encyclopedia. Wikipedia likes certain people, and dislikes others — it tends to like people who say it’s wonderful and utopian, and dislikes people who have mixed opinions about it. I believe it’s used as a way to attack people they don’t like.

The fact that the court’s ruling was indisputably the right one is a topic for another blog, but it’s worth taking a look at Dave’s perception of Wikipedia. This is a man who has a profile which is watched over hawkishly by friends of his (Hi, Betsy!). Even the most benign insinuation of non-perfection must be sourced perfectly, while glowing happy-speak took a tremendous amount of effort to eradicate.

As it stands, Dave’s entry serves as a testament to the fact that the Wikipedia model works — if slowly and imperfectly — because for all of the furor around Dave and his contributions (both real and perceived) — his profile has finally made its way to being a fair statement of his work and his personality.

Want to know why he doesn’t like it? Check out the “Relationship to the public” section and the link to EOW — those two are a big part. And the fact that it doesn’t claim him as the creator of all things bloggy.

Dave Winer constantly pimps for credit in any field he’s touched the last 20 years. His latest complaint is that Wikipedia gives him no props for blogging:

I looked up blogging to find the names of some more obscure ones, the first hit was the Wikipedia page, and out of curiosity I searched the page for my name. It’s not there. All kinds of people get credit for building blogging as a practice and tools for blogging, but apparently, according to Wikipedia, I had nothing to do with it, nor did Scripting News or UserLand

He took this complaint to TechCrunch as well:

By coincidence yesterday I wrote up a long-standing issue I have with Wikipedia, that I don’t get any mention in articles on blogging (and also RSS though I didn’t mention that in yesterday’s piece). I’ve raised it quite a few times, even to the visionary, but since I’m not available for ‘fucking his brains out 24 hours straigHt’, the problem has never been turned over to his internal fix-committee, and people who want to know about blogging or RSS get the idea that other people did the work and took the risks that I did.

As time passes, Winer’s claim to have fathered blogging is being ignored by more writers who cover the subject. Scripting News began eight months before the term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997, so Winer’s claim is based on the shaky premise that his site was so distinctively a blog and so popular he should be called the leading originator of the form.

Wikipedia’s approach is eminently reasonable. It puts the coinage of the term weblog in context with a lot of bloglike sites that preceded it, many of which came long before Scripting News. NPR’s Andy Carvin also wrote a history of blogging that didn’t buy Winer’s bullshit.

Dave Winer is not the “blogfather.” He did not invent blogging. The medium was named by others and his role as an early adopter was no bigger than dozens of other writers and developers such as Barger, Peter Merholz, Cameron Barrett, Evan Williams and Ben and Mena Trott.

Winer should reconsider his decision not to sex up Wales, the former porn exec who’s newly unattached. They have a lot in common.

It’s interesting to see Dave take sides on an issue when he genuinely hates both parties. Like today when he sides with Valleywag over Marsden-gate. Now, I care very little about this story, so I might have missed something, but I think Dave managed to pick the wrong side… (surprise!)

They got a good story because Wikipedia, the publication that Wales runs, has rules that prevent people from editing stories they have an interest in. Wales was trading edits to Rachel Marsden’s profile for sex. They got him, and had they left out the parts you don’t like, it wouldn’t have been clear that they did.

From reading through the articles, it appears that Wales didn’t actually trade edits at all. He sent proposed corrections to editors who were only willing to add them after fact-checking them, and he recused himself from the actual editing. So, as best I can tell, the only thing Wales was “trading sex” for was access to the editor email list… considering how many editors are public with their contact information, this hardly seems like a big deal. Is it really any different from Betsy Devine’s endless cheerleading for her buddy on the various pages that she thinks he deserves a mention? (I guess it is… as far as we know, Betsy’s not sleeping with Dave)

But, really, Dave siding with Valleywag shouldn’t be too surprising. Yesterday Dave posted quite an “oh poor me” whine about how his name isn’t anywhere on the “Blogging” topic on Wikipedia… though he doesn’t really say why it should be (probably because he invented blogging, right?). On top of that, Dave probably thinks sucking up to VW will keep them off of his tail.

You can always count on Dave to pick the most personally expedient option available to him. At least he’s predictable.

Dear Dave, In a recent post of yours, you argue that:

I know that in areas where I have expertis [sic], the Wikipedia pages are the result of “edit wars” between partisans, trolls and the people being written about. It’s hard for me to know, for example, when reading a biography of Augustus Caesar (I’m a fan of the HBO series Rome) if it is the result of the same conflicted process.

The reason you think this is “hard” is because you are lazy. On the top of every wikipedia page are two links of great importance when deciding what is controlling the content: the “history” link and the “discussion” link. A quick glance at those should demonstrate what information is generally agreed upon and what is contentious.

If you’re that interested in the information you claim to be seeking, maybe you ought to do a little leg work and figure it out yourself.

Sincerely,

Eye

PS: It would be easy to omit a conviction for antitrust from Bill Gate’s resume because he was neither charged with, nor convicted of, Antitrust. Just thought you might want to know.