Talk:MemeTank
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[Add Subjects here] I don't know how to do this, but it would be great if we could add RSS feeds to the meme pages. So if you were doing a page on Enron-style, say, you could add an RSS feed to a google news search on the term... -Nick
Meme sources
--Stevietheman 12:55, 2 Jun 2005 (PDT) I have some potential meme material for the tank that is democracy-oriented and could be adopted here and by Democrats. I would like some help sorting it out. Please feel free to peruse the following links and pull into here what you like. [1] [2] [3] (Note that the third link criticizes the Democratic Party a little, but I think most would understand the criticism.) Thanks.
- Also, there's other sections in the third link that may also be of use, like the one related to the economy. --Stevietheman 13:00, 2 Jun 2005 (PDT)
Search results
--MH in PA 06:56, 4 Feb 2005 (PST) Please help...I have a big problem with one consequence of the "MemeTank" as it has been implemented. To see my problem, pretend you are a relatively uninitiated potential kossian who has stumbled onto dkosopedia; then search on "Kerry" and look at the search results. Need I say more?
Since I hate to raise an objection without proferring an alternative approach, I would suggest at a minimum to rename each of the "false memes" as such, so that the title is, e.g., "False meme: Kerry flip-flops". Of course, the problem with this is that many people have no idea what a "meme" is anyway. ("Debunking the Lies:..." might be more clear for average people. Speaking of memes.)
- Would't "lie:Kerry didn't earn his medals" be a far better label than "false meme"?
- Even better is the claim:namespace solution. Try claim:Kerry didn't earn his medals. Doesn't imply anything about its truth or falsehood, leaves that on the page.
- In general, raising objections without inventing solutions half-assedly is BETTER than trying to "solve the problem you have just identified". I have personally fired the fat ass of anyone who has ever seriously said they don't point out a problem without offering a solution. It's bad management, bad monitoring, bad faith in your peers, and always leads to accepting the worst "solution" too fast. I'd rather you DO it and get corrected, than propose it: if you came to someone else to report the problem it's because you couldn't fix it or decisively pin down "the real problem". So don't discourage a dialogue on the solution, or the actual issue statement, by offering premature "fixes".
My preference would be that these items not come up in the search results at all.
- Forget dkosopedia itself, you want them showing up at google and yahoo, to ensure that dkosopedia pages not Bush-funded troll pages are read by people who actually WANT to read the page Kerry is a French spy.
However I don't know any way to do that unless you eliminate having a separate page for each meme.
I'm relatively new here so I am only offering an observation and suggestions; I don't want to barge in and say how to do things, but I have to point out that I got a rather bad impression the first time I came to dkosopedia - because the first thing I wanted to know was what you had to say about Kerry.
- Well, you should care less about that than what Wikipedia says, since, that article will spread to HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF WEB SITES, because of the extreme propagation of GFDL corpus articles that show up there.
BTW, this won't be just about Kerry - if you take (or have taken) a similar approach with other high-profile Dems, it will be a problem with those search results too.
- It's not a "problem" if people looking for Swift Boat Veterans For Truth or AIDS kills fags dead or Hillary Clinton is lesbian find the appropriate article at dkosopedia itself first, and never see the articles on these things that are written up by the Republicans. ;-) We are here not to please high-profile Dems or their supporters (who can go read blogs, a total waste of time) but to actually interfere maximally with Republican spin and lies. You have to keep the names similar to ones Republicans would use, ideally, so that you can googlewash "their" articles out of the top 10 and get moderates to read your article and not the ones that the Republicans wrote.
So, what do the dkosopedia gurus here think about this? Do you agree it's a problem? If so, what should be done about it?
- DRolfe 07:56, 7 Aug 2005 (PDT) I don't want to sound mean, but... It is uncritical to base one's opinion on a website by merely looking at the titles of articles. If one takes 30 seconds to check a few of these scary links like "Kerry flip-flops" or "A Kerry win is a victory for terrorists" then it would be apparent that they are debunking the "other side". I don't see any strong argument to move or re-title all MemeTank articles just to make the search results match our clientele's biases. I apologize for not biting my tongue.
- Nor should you. But you can solve this problem VERY easily simply by following standards for the term:namespace and position:namespace, and NOT capitalizing words in phrases making them look like actual groups or real phenomena, and following some Wikipedia standards like slogan naming, e.g. slogan 'special interest' for things that are not flexible enough to be general purpose terms and not specific enough to be positions. Maybe meme and slogan should also be namespaces here? Or maybe a slogan is really just a "term", ultimately. Dunno. But you certainly don't have to imply that you TAKE the position or BELIEVE the slogan or ACCEPT the term as neutral.
Memewatch - Social Sec
wegerje 10:27, 6 Jan 2005 (PST) VirginiaDem just introduced me to the "Wall Street Welfare" notion to describe the Stock Market bailout that the Bush regime is trying to push as Social Security reform. I asked him if it was here. I came and looked myself and it's not. I don't see a Social Security section. Is it time for one? Should there be a Hot Memes of the moment box at the top of the page? Would Social Security destruction be in a Hot Meme box? Just some thoughts.
- Please distinguish the term:welfare when used to describe something other than income assistance, as in "Wall Street Welfare", from the actual position:corporations receive too much money from government, etc. I will not describe Wall Street Welfare as a slogan since it is actually a real thing. ;=) But be wary of the slogan 'welfare queen' or slogan 'fiscal sustainability' or slogan 'convicted pedophile' and other non-concepts that simply do not exist in real life (where welfare frauds rarely live all that well, sustainability is ecological not based on who prints the money, and pedophiles are convicted of specific crimes not of "being a pedophile"). It is reasonable however to use full neutral phrases like Social Security reform and then within that issue attack the position:Social Security must be invested in U.S. equities via index funds which are controlled by criminals (who weight them to include equities they want to pump, and exclude those they want to dump).
Pare down the MemeTank?
--Alex 8:45pm, 15 Dec 2004 Hi, the MemeTank page is a little large and overwhelming for a newbie like myself. Any thoughts paring the initial MemeTank page down and moving extra info into subpages? Thanks.
- An introducing the MemeTank article would be far better for you than use of subpages which are generally deprecated, and never used say at Wikipedia.
- That said, the page sucks. The main problems with it are as follows:
No one has bothered to distinguish a meme from a position in the text about memes. It seems to be taken for granted that no rational debate on a neutral issue statement can ever occur. This is really just too pessimistic, there are lots of "Republicans" out there who oppose specific Bush policies, like John McCain or even Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it's just morally wrong to insert the word "Republican" into a phrase just to mean "bad" or "stupid". As Sun Tzu advises, always leave your enemy an escape route: let a Republican change his position without having to "not be a Republican".
There is truly TERRIBLE, DANGEROUSLY BAD use of capital letters. This is making the page unreadable since anyone who reads real English knows that a capitalized name means a specific thing, not a generic thing, and the eye will reject a page full of hundreds of obviously rhetorical specific things that the brain knows have been invented into existence (as opposed to say a list of names, properly capitalized, of real people and organizations that DO exist)
Real, defensible, rationally arguable positions on what should be done or must not be done or "is true", are being mixed up with mere slogans on this page. Really they should be treated separately. For instance the term:Republicrat is not the position:Republicans and Democrats agree too much. Deal with rhetoric and substance separately, and, you'll find it easier to read.
A few positions that seemed defensible enough to be worth issue/position/argument treatment:
There's a problem with position:Republicans are unbiblical on abortion in that it assumes all Republicans have the same position. They don't. Also some Democrats and even some Greens share the Biblical position. Ideally one should not use the names of the parties when talking about positions on the issues at all, it just leads to polarization and a total breakdown in real argument
- --PatriotismOverProfits 09:33, 7 Oct 2005 (PDT)What would you suggest instead, "conservatives are unbiblical on abortion" or "the republican party is..." or... (Good work on this page by the way, is there a "how to contribute to dkosopedia" page that goes through all of these things step-by-step? I didn't notice any, so I've just jumped in plunking stuff from my websites and blogs where they seemed to fit.
Obviously all these serious positions must be treated very differently than stuff like U.S. invasion of Canada which is just paranoid nonsense that can't happen no matter how many times Tucker Carlson implies that it can, or should.
Know the difference between a term that goes in term:namespace for not being neutral, a position that goes in position:namespace, and a meme that goes in the MemeTank and is reported in main namespace because one can't distinguish the name of a group like Swift Boat Veterans For Truth from propaganda - the name of the group will always BE the propaganda!!!! But you don't have to give stupid ideas this status yourself by capitalizing them into proper names.
I am sure the page can be made less intimidating, more readable, and just as rich, simply by following the conventions and standards already in use here. See wiki best practice, issue/position/argument, meme, etc., if you are confused.
And whatever you do, don't give up: getting a LOT of accurate, rich, reliable pages into dkosopedia itself is the KEY to defeating Bush in 2006 and his crony in 2008: you want every non-Republican at every level in every city, town and village down to dogcatcher, including the independents, Greens, Mexicans who can't vote, and Canadian infiltrators, to have dkosopedia issue/position/argument pages like position:climate change caused Hurricane Katrina in their hands to confront the priveleged liars, elites, cronies and dirtbags.
And an unspun guide to every single meme ever raised since at least 2000...
TRANSFINANCIAL ECONOMICS, OR NON-TAXATION MONETARY REFORM
There is a research, and development article on Transfinancial Economics, or TFE. It is also called Non-Taxation Monetary Reform. It can be found at the following link.
http://kheper.net/essays/Transfinancial_Economics.html
If the above does not work do a simple word search including the word kheper which the website hosting my work.
Comments Requested
R.Searle
