Fisking the Fisk

I took Jeff Jarvis to task for Fisking, the act of ruthlessly ripping apart an article or arguement point-by-point. Weblogs are rediculously easy Fisking tools. You copy a body of text and intersperse your own commentary. Generally, the commentary is short and quippy and stands out from larger blocks of quoted text. Its actually easier than writing your own point or and fits with the copy-paste culture of blogspace. The strength of the Fisk is we can fact check your ass and reveal the devil detail by detail. The downside is the form of the Fisk actually inflames personalities.

With almost any post or article, Google to find contrary points from other sources and enough time and it can be perceptually discredited. Easier than a hand-wave of a TV pundit.

Contrast this with any contoversial page within Wikipedia. Wikis de-emphasize personality, reveal group voice, and put emphasis on content. However, the impermanence of the page as opposed to the post doesn't satisfy the communications of many. Which is why many controversial issues within Wikipedia are escalated to dicussion lists (which would be better done by blog). In the worst case, you take advantage of the infinite space in a wiki to offer differing definitions of the controversial entry, with the original page as a fork point.

The result provides readers an easier to read (and contribute!) collaboratively edited understanding. Trying to achieve the same thing by blog makes readers rely on their abilities to navigate collaborative filtering to gain implicit understanding.

Jeff's Fisk isn't the point of this post, the point is different modalities bring out the best or worst in us as individuals or best in us as groups.