Ramblings of the Mildly Insane

It’s official, I’m back from Vegas (actually I’ve been back since Saturday, but I’ve finally recovered). To say the trip was awesome would be an understatement.

When I initially booked my tickets and hotel, I was under the impression that I would go, learn, and get out. Yes, I did go and learn and eventually got out, but there was a lot of amazing connections/experiences in between that I was not expecting or prepared for.

Okay, let me be frank for a moment – I was scared crapless because Lynn and Chrissie wasn’t going to be there and I was pretty much on my own. I thought I would be the quiet little geek girl in the corner tapping away on her laptop — not so. When I actually got there, I realized there was nothing to worry about. I saw some familiar faces and met some new ones (I even ran into one of my customers – how cool is that?).

I finally got to meet Andre and see Anita again. Anita is still a darling and Andre is just as cool in person as he is online.

When I get the rest of my work done, I’ll be doing a proper summary of PubCon, along with the people I met. I did take pictures, but not nearly as many as I intended. There was so much going on at any one time that it was difficult to take it all in, but I was trying.

Okay, off to get stuff done, but I’ll get the real summary online (soon, I hope).

It’s that time again, I will be attending PubCon. This time, however, it will be in Las Vegas, not Boston. Chances are, it will still be cold, though.

In Boston, Lynn, Chrissie, and I had a blast — not to mention the wonderful quotes we collected. We met a lot of people, took a lot of notes (read: learned a lot), talked, and just had fun. I was saddened to hear they won’t be attending this time around, but I’m determined not to let it get me down. I’ll be taking plenty of photos, so it will be like they’re right there with me.

Now, let me shamefully steal this idea from Michael and list the people I’d like to meet when I get there (in no particular order):

• Andre Chaperon
• DazzlinDonna
• Lee Oden
• Robert Scoble
• Andy Hagans
• Shelly (don’t know if she’ll be there, though)
• SEO Fangirl – gotta love the site
• Shoemoney
• and a whole bunch of other people

People from the South Florida area. I swear, it seems like there’s next to no one here who understands what I’m talking about when I go into geek/affiliate/webmaster mode. And the one person who used to live down the street from me moved to Central Florida before we even met or knew we lived down the street from each other.

And people who love blogs/blogging as much as I do (a lot).

And, of course, anyone who feels like saying ‘hi’ to me.

Pubcon2006

My two sisters, my nephew, and I are sitting and chatting in Chili’s while waiting for the appetizers and suddenly my sister cocks her head to one side — you know, like when a dog cocks his head in confusion — then blurts, “Did your boobs get bigger?”

Wouldn’t have been so bad if half the people in the restaurant hadn’t turned to look.

“Yes sister. I bought them a couple days ago when we got back from Australia.”

I swear, you just can’t bring some people anywhere.

(Just to be clear, I didn’t buy any boobs. I was being sarcastic. And I still love my sister, despite her embarrassing me.)

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (Lord Acton said it, by the way.)

We spend too much time “defending” wikipedia and not enough time bringing new users into the fold, being polite, being nice. Teaching them about policies, about the manual of style. Editing alongside them. Admins are supposed to be “just another editor with a few extra buttons”, but too many admins today get drunk on that power. They insist that normal editors are “beneath” them, that they should be able to own articles and give their friends a hand up when content disputes arise. If you’re friends with an admin, rest assured that your buddies will call someone a name, get one called back, and then ask you to punish the other guy for “incivility.” And you’ll do it, too, without a moment’s hesitation, simply because you have the power to do it.

…

And you know what? I’m tired of it. Our articles are suffering because even the good edits of supposed “sockpuppets” are being reverted by overly-zealous admins who believe that they have to hunt for every edit made by someone they think is banned – even if it’s just a typo fix – and revert it. Yes, I have watched this in action. I have watched admins put obvious page-tagging edits like an insertion of “joe is a fag” back because the user who reverted the vandalism was someone deemed a “sockpuppet” by our completely erroneous and pointless system.

Quitting Wikipedia

Sounds like some people in the system have been corrupted…absolutely.

Though I’ve not blogged about it here, I did mention elsewhere that people should be cautious when using Wikipedia as a source for anything.

There’s a ton of good information out there, but one is wise to remember that anyone can edit the medium, and no one truly knows the educational/professional background or motives of those with the power.