The other day I went to start adding info on physical immortality to wikipedia. Amazingly, there is already a plethora of information on the subject. There is currently a short summary of our site (see this thread http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act...l=wikipedia&s=)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_Institute. Some of the areas, such as caloric restriction, could probably still use more info. Wikipedia is now a widely used source of information so adding more info on immortality may be worthwhile.

Excellent.. Thanks Chub. I find myself using Wikipedia on a regular basis.

Also, WikiPedia's Cryonics topic is worth a read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics

I am going to nominate "immortality" as a feature article. In order to have a reasonable chance of getting picked I think there needs to be an overview section and a couple of pictures. Right now the section on "technological immortality" is somewhat small (only a couple paragraphs). Also, the imminst part is linked directly from the main immortality page in the see "also section". We may want to update that section a bit with some info on the book and updated membership statistics. Here are the links to the immortality section and the info on feature articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fea...icle_candidates

Agreed...

I nominated it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fea...icle_candidates.
It could still be improved so if anybody has any ideas go ahead and edit it. Also, you can voice your support or opposition of it on the link above.

Thanks Chub.. i've been adding a bit to my profile as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Klein

not sure about the 'stub' thing though.

Well so far we have one neutral vote who will change to pos with a few simple changes.



I agree with this guys point about the afterlife in religions part. Oddly none of the many people who worked on it before me mentioned much of this either. Any help would be appreciated. As for the pics I'm not sure what would be good (or even how to add them yet). Maybe a few generic symbles of immortality and a picture of religious people in heaven? Can anyone think of any good physical immortality pics? Also, please support the article by casting a vote here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fea...icle_candidates. So far no neg vote but no pos either. If anyone wants to work on the article here is the link again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality.

Hi chub..

Generic symbols of immortality are likely also religious.. but maybe some symbols from math or physics might work.. , infinity is a good one. Perhaps a clock face with a bunch of infinity symbols where the numbers should be..

As to "Why Immortality".. well there's enough material here to provide a section for that.. Nick Bostrom's article had some good stuff in it just as one example.

Chub could you tell me where to cast the vote at the link. I went to the link saw your comment and one other but couldn't figure out how to put my own comment in thanks! Also who writes the content, anyone? I got that impression. I'd imagine someone from imminst wrote the content for imminst but I could be wrong...it certainly seems like imminst is spreading the meme already Bruce and Michael have blurbs at Wiki how cool!

The article had a heavy emphasis on physical immortality before I even touched it. My additions for the most part have actually been on the side of religious immortality, because I have been trying to balance the article for the feature article voting. I'm not sure who was working on it before, but I don't recall anyone from imminst mentioning it. In the last couple days, a couple others (not sure where from) have been working on it as well. They have cleaned up the writing and improved on a few of the parts. I intend to add a "quote" section and a "why immortality?" section, plus some more symbols. Right now the votes are 1neg 1neutral, and it is unlikely to improve much since voters are influenced by the other votes they see. The article is much improved from the version originally submitted (and voted upon). My main plan now is to keep working on it, and if the neg voters don't change their vote, resubmit the improved version next month.


To cast vote just sign up (no email verification required), go to "edit page", and add your vote below the others.

I did that and gave it a positve vote it could be improved upon a bit but good entry for the most part.

For the vote to count it has to go under the other two votes here. Right under the neutral and object posts. On this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fea...icle_candidates

Sorry to announce this, friends, but while the "immortality" article languishes on the featured pages poll, the Immortality Institute article has been listed on Wikipedia's Votes for Deletion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vot...ality_Institute

Why would a purported open-source encyclopedia that contains articles on minor characters in nearly every insignificant PC and Video game ever created attempt to delete an article about the ImmInst? I can offer some clues, but regardless whether you agree with my analysis, those who are interested in preserving the article need to visit the above link, register a user name and vote "Keep".

I shouldn't be so bold as to single out any one person or one organization as a threat to life, but in my analysis, the governing mob at Wikipedia does represent a preference for hastening the temporal nature of much of the human species. It is correct to call the governing collective a "mob" as defined in a recent book "Smart Mobs". But this mob is not neccessarily smart. It is intelligent in that it represents the character of the person who instigated the mob.

To understand how Wikipedia got to be the way it is - a quasi-democratic mob that operates in much the same way as a lynch mob - one must understand that until earlier this year, Wikipedia was not a charitable foundation, but instead was the private property of a man who declared himself "God King" of Wikipedia. Mr. James Wales, a retired futures trader, operated Wikipedia from the facilities of Bomis.com. Bomis represents itself as a company building the world's largest human-edited Internet directory. Among the services that attracted (and helped select) users to Bomis successful for-profit venture - and that built the profits that now subsidize Wikipedia - were the Bomis Babe Report, a soft porn site, and Jerk-Sauce, a right-wing blog with links to several other far-right political sites.

So a former futures trader who operated an Internet service that featured soft porn and right-wing punditry declared himself "God King" and began selecting "administrators" who were equipped to block certain users from Wikipedia. Wales recently said anyone who had questioned the actions of his administrators, when he checked them out, "turned out to be a complete and total ass." In selecting the original cadre of Wikipedia admins, and in fostering the emerging administrative style, Wales developed a mob that mirrored his own world view. There is a degree of political and cultural diversity, but generally, personal aggression and brash intolerence for unfamiliar ideas became standard elements of the administrative approach at Wikipedia. James Wales is now the chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, which is controlled by Wales and two other Bomis partners. Bomis.com now provides most of the resources, by way of in-kind donations, that keep Wikipedia operational.

Wikipedia is indeed now a major source of information (though its relative size is probably misrepresented by those who use "hits" or "site visits" as a measure and include the hundreds of daily hits by frequent flyers in the administrative cadre), but it is also a wasteland of unverified conjecture, erroneous information and misinformed prejudice. The unfortunate atmosphere resulted when a political pundit filled a vacum by allowing his favorite players to run rough-shod over what could have been a valid collaboration among well-informed writers and editors. There is no democracy at Wikipedia, but instead an unruly form of mob rule in which the loudest and most aggressive participants dominate discussion and control direction.

That is my opinion. Do what you will about the vote for deletion, but expect to be hazed, abused, ridiculed and shunned if you show a well-informed interest in one topic without first winning the approval of the few full-time-plus Wikipedia addicts who control the administration. My best guess is that a few regular users are threatened by the presence of other users who have affiliations outside of Wikipedia, or who don't readily submit to the will of a dominant cadre. This would be typical, in a relatively open group, of entrenched leadership that wants to defend their control against the possibility of a more open discourse.

This post has been edited by standup: May 20 2004, 01:07 AM

Thanks for the info standup. Immortality Institute article is gone. I added imminst to the links section on immortality where it really belongs anyway.

The immortality has been much improved since I submitted it to be voted on. I will submit again in a month (that's the required amount of time right?).

Quite helpful, standup. I was unaware of the nature of Wikipedia's administration process. I would have thought them to lean more toward inclusion of information rather than the opposite.

Thanks for the followup chub.

The archived reasons for deletion can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:VfD...ality_Institute

Anybody know the policy for submitting an improved version of an article that gets deleted?

Wow many mistakes in first reason,

If we resubmit we will need to make some of this information more clear.

The immortality article is starting to look a bit better than it used to. It has quotes and pictures now. There are still a couple unfinished paragraphs and no paragraph on why immortality yet. I will nominate it again after Jun 15 (you have to wait a month to retry).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

Go ad free, join ImmInst as a Full Member.