Author: Roger Pearse

An amusing critique of Wikipedia and the people who run it

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by accident I found myself looking at this page (not safe for work), which calls itself “Encyclopedia Dramatica”.  It has some pithy (and very rude) things to say about Wikipedia.  The format would tend to make most of us dismiss it, but much of it is at least half true, and will bring a smile to anyone who has tried to improve Wikipedia.

The average age of a Wikipedia admin is 17. WTF? And that, buddy, is skewed upwards by the presence of a handful of degenerates whose only social outlet is their band of fellow children. Yes, one of the world’s largest Internet communities is run by cliquey kids! As one would expect, leaving day-to-day operations to a bunch of greasy-palmed kids is a recipe for full-scale faggotry. Imagine the biggest losers and social misfits from high school — the hormonal angst, the zit cases, the dateless geeks, the fatties and dorks — and ponder their collective teeny-angst and anger. Now give them the power to run a massive online community and create their own governance with no oversight. When even nominal editing on Wikipedia results in user flame wars that bring in heavy-handed “administrator” attention, the question potential wiki-users should ask themselves is, Do I really want my knowledge, even my person, to be judged, juried, and executed by Piggy, Roger and Jack with his choirboys? (That’s a Lord of the Flies reference. Look it up. Or watch the movie, which was pretty cool too).

The Wikimedia Foundation is just peachy with this jacked-up state of affairs, going so far as to brag about it. As John Seigenthaler found out, they believe themselves immune to legal threats. As a non-profit, they have no assets (although Jimmy Wales has a collection of sports cars). While they claim immunity as an “Internet Host”, some would argue that the foundation’s structure makes them liable as publishers. The next step would be to pass the buck to their contributors and operations, who are suit-immune minors or anonymous.

This is only part of it.  The article at the site on Wikipedia (think very hard before clicking on this link at all — lots of porn and abuse in it) contains further gems:

World of Wikipædia?, or Wikipedia, is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game …

During gameplay, Wikipedia players can gain more authority as they progress, with “Administrator” and “Double-O Licensed” rankings granting them access to GOD MODE. While the rules for winning the game are a tightly-kept secret, it is believed that the winner is treated to a night of accolades and praise from Wikipedia overlord Jimbo Wales. …

A common misconception is that “Wikipedia is never finished.” Remember that whenever you come by a Wikipedia article was forged from the blood of thousands of angsty teenagers edit warring over really important facts about the world. Information on Wikipedia topics could generally be found through Google (that is, unless a Wikipedia article is the first hit) and other forms of reference material like books my senile uncle’s war stories, but Americ**** are too busy … to be bothered with education. …

The real problem with Wikipedia is the Wikipedians. From players to sysops, every member of its community is the scum of the internets – worse than spammers, worse than script kiddies and Nigerian scammers, and worse than IRCers. An average Wikipedia user has the intelligence of a seal…

Wikipedia is full of people with no desire to improve what it is intended for, information. Instead, they want to grow their e-***** and one day become a mod.

Well, it made me smile.  There’s much truth in all that, mixed with a substantial portion of exaggeration and one-sidedness, of course.

I wonder whether the average age of a Wikipedia admin really IS seventeen?  And how one would know?

UPDATE:  I have been looking around the web for some statistics, and finding nothing very definitive.  There’s a 2009 PDF based on a questionaire, which tells us that the average age of participants in the survey is 25.8; 25% are younger than 18, 25% are between 18-22, 25% are between 23 and 30, and the rest of us are in the remaining 25%.  But … this does not discriminate between users and editors.  Readers average 25.3, editors 26.8.  There’s no indication as to admin age. The actual number of respondents was only about 130,000.

The Wikipedia stats site does not collect this kind of information, unfortunately.

UPDATE: An interesting critique here: “The closed, unfriendly world of Wikipedia.” 

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Google translate, on the Slavonic manuscripts of the Russian State Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m having some fun using Google translate to allow me to browse the online Slavonic manuscripts of the Russian State Library.  Occasionally the results are comic: “Number 140. The Psalter of St. sensible” made me smile, although it is combined with a text by Athanasius.

The manuscripts are those of the Moscow Theological Seminary, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.  I think we should thank the RSL for putting all these images online!

The start of the collection is here, starting with 3 mss called “Gospel” and then 4 more labelled “Apostle”.  The next 3 are Psalms.  A bit further on are three copies in Slavic of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, closely followed by some copies of Basil the Great on Fasting.

Number 32 looks interesting — is that actually Severian of Gaballa on the six days of creation? “Six days Severian bishop Gavalskogo”?  That must be his sermons on Genesis.  Who knew that these existed in Slavic?

Then the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a John Damascene, Ephraim Syrus, and the Ladder of John Climacus. 

No. 63 is also Severian.  No 75 is Cosmas Indicopleustes.  No. 100 is the Annals of George Hamartolus.  No 102 is Cosmas Indicopleustes again.  Isaac the Syrian appears as 151.  167 is The Imitation of Christ by a certain Thomas Kempiyskago.

Later on the items of interest — interesting to us here, anyway, for I suspect much of this is of the highest interest to students of Russian history — grow fewer.  I notice the occasional 18th century text, and the odd one in Greek or Latin.  No. 338 is “collected works of the Fathers and Lucian” (?) which sounds interesting.  There are Greek and Latin dictionaries. No. 351 (Gr. 188) is by Theodoret of Cyrhus, “On the fishery of God”.

It is, truly, a marvellous collection.  I am deeply grateful that they have set up the website in such a web that those of us who know no Russian can still use it, and learn more than one could possibly imagine.

The entry point, in case you want to browse, is:

http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts/index.php?col=5&gotomanuscript=01

 And there is a marvellous aerial picture of the St. Sergius Lavra here at the English language site:

http://www.stsl.ru/languages/en/index.php

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Manuscripts of the Old Slavonic Methodius online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A commenter has discovered two manuscripts of the Old Slavonic Methodius online!  The manuscripts used by Michael Chub, when he edited some of the works, are apparently accessible:

Some good news. I found the scans of two Old Slavic manuscripts used by Archbishop Mikhail.

See http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts/index.php?col=5&gotomanuscript=040, the first two manuscripts (40 and 41) from the list.

Sadly one can’t download the things as PDF’s — they’d be much easier to look at in that form!

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More on the Origen status

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well, I’ve spent a couple of hours so far sifting through the Origen project materials.  It’s still very hard to work out what is where.  The Greek fragments are certainly in something of a mess, and I need to understand better what is involved and included. 

The problem is that I lost understanding somewhere along the way, back in the day — because of pressure of other things.  My fault, of course; but now I pay for it.

I probably need to print off a LOT of emails and let the miracle of paper and a ballpoint pen help me wade through it all!

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of years ago I commissioned a translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel.  This ground away between 2009-2010, and then stopped.  The fault, in truth, was mine, in that I diverted the translator onto Philip of Side, or so the emails show. 

The problem now is to work out what was, and was not done.  What I’m doing is going through all the emails and all the files and looking at date stamps on the latter.

It’s already becoming clear that a very great deal was done.  All of the Latin material — 1 preface, 14 homilies — were translated, and they were all revised after comment from me.  Homilies 8-14 were revised again after that in early 2010 — I haven’t found out why, yet — and later still, homilies 1-6 were revised and compared with the Scheck translation that came out while it was in progress.  Homily 7 seems to have missed out, but I may find different later.  I also need to check the status of the Latin text for each homily.

I haven’t worked out the status on the Greek fragments.  One last fragment, from the Codex Marchialinus, has not been done at all; but the translator was working on that recently, and I have just emailed him a prompt.

Until I know precisely what the situation is, we can’t go forward; but I am actually rather encouraged to find that things are much nearer to completion than I had thought.

I’m going to compile a set of files with the latest revisions, and a statement in a Word document, for each portion of the book, of where it is, what has been done, and what needs to be done.  Once I have this, I can work out what needs to be done, and what I can do to make it happen. 

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Michael Bourdeaux, Gorbachev, Glasnost & the Gospel (1990) now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just uploaded (by permission) the third of Michael Bourdeaux’s books here.  Written in 1990 it records many of the changes brought to the Russian church by perestroika and glasnost, but not the final break-up of the USSR.

It’s sobering to think that much of what happened here has been erased from history, in that the mainstream media never refer to it.  It’s also sobering to see how many religious ‘trends’ in modern society are identifiable, before their time, in the policies of the Kremlin.  Bourdeaux’s books are well worth a look.

I have just discovered the existence of a 1995 Bourdeaux publication, wherein the KGB archives were partially unsealed and revealed that most of the most prominent and senior Russian Orthodox clergy were in fact officers of the KGB.  Which of us ever heard of that?

Christians must record their own history, and ensure that it is not lost; for otherwise it will vanish into obscurity.

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Abbyy Finereader 11 – a dog indeed?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve scanned and uploaded two books by Michael Bourdeaux here.  The Faith on Trial in Russia volume in particular is important reading for the persecution of the Russian baptists in the USSR.

I’ve been working on Gorbachev, Glasnost & The Gospel, one of the late Keston volumes.  I scanned the pages using Finereader 8 — the last version that allowed me to drive my Opticbook 3600 at 400 dpi.  I scanned the photos and the cover in Finereader 11; and then I imported the image files from FR8 into FR11.

But it isn’t working out that well.  In fact I am giving up and going back to Finereader 10, which I used earlier today for Faith on Trial in Russia.  Because it gives odd spelling errors: a word ending in “tly ” like “currently ” will be given as “currendy”.  That wastes time.  Worse, it has decided to treat 100 pages as “Batnan” font — which looks a lot like Courier.  I don’t want to go through every page fixing that.

So I’m exporting the images and going back.  Wish me luck!

UPDATE: In fairness, I’m finding the same -dy problem in FR10.  It must be the rather odd font in use.  But much else is still better in FR10.  Words in italics are bolded in FR11; not in FR10.  The pages in Batnan are not so in FR10.  Hmm.

On the other hand, it is good that FR11 highlights “words” that aren’t in  the  dictionary — that really does help in spotting errors.

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Michael Bordeaux, Faith on Trial in Russia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in the summer I noticed that there was very little material online about the Soviet persecution of the Christians.  This saddened me, since it was something that should not be forgotten.

Keston College, which sought to publicize the situation in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, has disbanded but the Keston Institute still exists.  I was able to correspond with Michael Bordeaux, who founded Keston, and obtain permission to put a couple of his books online.  I created a PDF of one, and enquired if it might be hosted here or there — my site isn’t the best place for such — but in vain.  Then pressures of work forced me to lay the matter aside.

Today I have been running “Faith on Trial in Russia”[1] through my scanner.  The pages are yellowed, and the paperback spine is stiff, although thankfully the glue warmed and became flexible as I worked.  It is, neverthless, a risky business scanning a paperback of that period.

The book deals with the sufferings of the Russian baptists, and is an interesting and involving read.  Unlike some such books, it is not a depressing read.

What I think that I will do, is to create a page on my site, and also to OCR the book so that the search engines can find it easily.  It’s pure gold, from a historical point of view.

UPDATE: I’ve now scanned the book, and also his 1983 publication, Risen Indeed.  They’re both here.

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  1. [1]Michael Bordeaux, Faith on Trial in Russia, Hodder and Stoughton, 1971.↩

Blogging about the Fathers is like seeing airships over Jerusalem

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Oops:

Airship Graf Zeppelin in 1931

The site explains:

Two lengthy flights to the Middle East were conducted by the Graf Zeppelin in 1929 and 1931.  The ship’s flight over Jerusalem in 1929 took place at night, and no pictures of the ship were taken.  But the flight in 1931, in daylight, was photographed by the American Colony photographers and by an Armenian photographer in Jerusalem, Elia Kahvedjian.

Mail sacks were supposed to have been dropped from the Graf Zeppelin over Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa.  The airships did not moor in Palestine but flew from Germany to Cairo, then over Palestine and then back to Germany.  The flight took 97 hours and traversed some 9,000 kilometers over 14 countries.

I looked to see if there were any images online of the supersonic airliner Concorde in Palestine — it did fly to Amman at least once — but in vain.

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Bodleian to relocate books “to Antarctica”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yes, it’s true!  The Bodleian library, which receives all books in the UK for free from publishers, has moved all of its books to a large storage facility on a small island off Antarctica!

The Bodleian Libraries are 40 libraries serving Oxford University, including the Bodleian Library founded in 1602.

They are entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK and have been running out of space to store works for decades.

It will be predominantly low-usage books and maps which will be stored at the site …

Staff say that if a reader orders a book before 10am, the book will be fetched back to the central Oxford site “sometime”!  Now that’s service!

Librarian Sarah Thomas said: “This has been an important year in the history of the Bodleian.

“We have tagged and moved all our books, relocated our staff, prepared the New Bodleian building for its redevelopment, opened new facilities for readers in the heart of Oxford and refreshed and developed our IT capabilities.

They add:

The project to relocate the books is now complete and has been hailed as “an extraordinary success”.

Alright, I’m being sarcastic.  But not very; and those are real quotations from the BBC here.

What they’ve actually done is to build a warehouse in Swindon, 28 miles from Oxford, down a slow windy-twisty country lane and comes into town through a major traffic blackspot.

I think they must know that they’ve done something really stupid here.  Indeed I think we can tell that they’ve already had some flack for this one.

Why else would you put a “success” story out on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, unless you wanted no-one to see it?

If you lived in a sane world, you’d build the site on the outskirts of Oxford, on the ring road, perhaps 2-3 miles from the central Oxford site, and you’d build a light railway or monorail or something which ran continuously back and forth.  Wouldn’t you?

The only reason I can think of, for such a location, is that the price of building such a site in Oxford was made artificially high by the local council.  And a Google search reveals an Oxford Mail article stating that, yes, that this is exactly what happened.

Last year, the university was thwarted in its plans to build a £28m book depository on Oxford’s Osney Mead industrial estate after a long planning dispute, and has now bought the Swindon site.

And why?

John Tanner, city council cabinet member for a Cleaner, Greener Oxford, said: “It is a great pity if our planning decision has pushed Oxford’s Bodleian Library to Swindon….”

Green group leader Craig Simmons said: “It is good that the Bodleian was not allowed to build on a flood plain at Osney Mead…”

But there’s a sweeter plum still at the end of the Oxford Mail article, in response to criticism that shuttling books that distance by van wasn’t very “green”:

Dr Thomas said the books stored at Swindon would be predominantly low demand items and there would only be two deliveries a day to Oxford, significantly fewer than the 12 daily van journeys that  would have carried books from Osney Mead.

In which case, what use is the facility? Such is the corruption of our days, that the library actually boasts that its service will be of a poor standard, rather than apologising for it.

Honest men make things work, and do things efficiently.  But we all know what the children are like, of men who have made their own fortunes.  They tend to be spendthrifts.  They throw money away, and posture, expensively, with cash that they didn’t have to sweat to earn.

That’s what is happening here, as it does in the Third World.  Neither side cares about whether things actually work, or whether money is well spent.  Amour propre is more important.  The library is pleased to spite the council, and the councillors are pleased that they showed the library who is boss in order to protect the water-vole (or whatever).  The public interest be damned, it seems.

I don’t know whether the new folly storage facility has been named.  Perhaps I might propose something, that reflects all this.

Why don’t they name it after Paris Hilton?

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