Links for 2010-08-11

“There’s no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature: most people simply don’t want to work for free. They like the idea of the Web as a place where no one goes unheard and the contributions of millions of amateurs can change the world. But when they come home from a hard day at work and turn on their computer, it turns out many of them would rather watch funny videos of kittens or shop for cheap airfares than contribute to the greater good. Even the Internet is no match for sloth.”

“3. Myth: Publishing your writing is a good way to make money.
Truth: You can make more money doing almost anything else.

Big numbers are bandied about all the time in publishing news, but they’re pretty much meaningless to the average published writer who is working a second job because the vast majority of writers do not make enough to support themselves. Don’t believe it? Look at the numbers.”

“I want to blog for the general public, but most of my hits are currently coming from Twitter. My Twitter feed is full of mainly London-based skeptics and science writers so my temptation is to blog about the media stuff they’re interested in. Take the blogpost you’re reading as one example. I can see how you could easily get sucked into navel-gazing about the process of science blogging.

To avoid this fate, I’ve decided to enlist a real, live Member Of the Public (M.O.P). My M.O.P will read all my blogposts and give them M.O.P marks out of 10 for Readability and Excitement. If this scheme works, M.O.P. marks will appear at the bottom of each of my future posts.”

“It’s well-established by now that African American and Latino students graduate college at lower rates than do their white and Asian peers, so it follows pretty naturally that many individual colleges would have lower graduation rates for those groups than for white students, too.

But in two new reports that the Education Trust released Monday, the advocacy group tries to hammer home the idea that big gaps in the academic performance of minority and white students are not an inevitability. It does so, starkly, by using its College Results Online database to compare the graduation rates of black and Latino students with their white peers at individual institutions, showing widely varying outcomes at colleges and universities with comparably prepared and composed student bodies. “

“I am not being sarcastic here–or at least not entirely. In fact, I’ve reread both Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn several times in recent years, precisely because Twain draws such fascinating portraits of children whose behavior is familiar, even if we now describe it differently. As a mother of boys, I find this weirdly reassuring: Although ADHD and ODD are often dismissed as recently “invented” disorders, they describe personality types and traits that have always existed. A certain kind of boy has always had trouble paying attention in school. A certain kind of boy has always picked fights with friends, gone smoking in the woods, and floated down the river on rafts. “