It is a common experience that ugly people have satisfactory social lives – Boris Karloff is not known to have been a recluse – and it is a popular belief for the truth of which I am unable to vouch that ugly men are particularly attractive to women.

Trivia: Lord Millett has a Chinese name, 苗禮治 (miu4 lai5 ci4), presumably because he is now sitting on the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong.

The wisdom of crowds – Wikipedia’s founder writes about what he sees as the fruits of the change inspired by Wikipedia. Although humans can be portrayed as “irrational captives to their background and identity”, Wales argues that it is possible for objective collaboration to occur if the lens of irrationality and conflict is abandoned and we accept non-initiation of force as a fundamental principle. He believes that rationality will prevail, thereby preserving the best aspects of our culture and permitting participation to thrive in the developing world. The open processes of Wikipedia, where you are likely to be challenged if there are flaws in your argument, epitomise the “virtue of the marketplace of ideas”, he says.

Other mentions

Other recent mentions in the online media include:

• Falling exam passes blamed on Wikipedia ‘littered with inaccuracies’ – Scotland’s falling exam pass rates have been blamed on Wikipedia and other online sources, which are said to contain misleading or inaccurate information that students pass off as their own.
• A Look Inside Wikipedia’s Infrastructure – Domas Mituzas discusses Wikipedia’s infrastructure, which is an “unusual” case-study of a high-performance site.
• Tim Russert colleague fired for Wikipedia leak – American broadcaster Tim Russert’s death was announced on Wikipedia by a colleague 40 minutes before NBC announced the news to its viewers.
• On Wikipedia, storms, teacups, and _why’s notability – Deletionists and inclusionists both have their place on Wikipedia; this article says that in social software, you get the flaws as well as the intelligence and flexibility when you have human participants.
• Telstra CEO in web legal spat – Telstra’s CEO Sol Trujillo’s threats of legal action if “defamatory statements” were not removed from his Wikipedia article have been revealed in a letter released by the Chilling Effects website.

From the Wikipedia Signpost.