whereIstand.com is a new wiki opinion forum that allows users to hold public figures, organizations and themselves up to one another like baseball cards and compare the stats—their stands on various issues—listed on the back.

Here’s how it works: A staffer or reader poses an issue. Then, once approved, anyone is invited to weigh in on that issue and submit a yes-or-no stance. Individuals can then compare themselves to their friends, other users or even public figures, who also submit their opinions.

Well, not exactly. A public figure’s reported stance on any issue is only as accurate as whereIstand.com users’ ability to dig up and present the evidence thereof. For example, Barack Obama did not actually log on to whereIstand.com to offer his stance on gay marriage. Rather, user brianr posted the evidence plucked from the senator’s website and voting history. Users and staff verified it, and others are now invited to “take a stand” of their own on the issue… or even compare Obama to, oh, some other politician and see where they stack up on all debates.

It can be an increasingly fuzzy line between fact and spin out there. That’s where this (almost-)straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth opinion aggregator comes in. Unclear about what Clinton really thinks about dropping out after Pennsylvania? The evidence is there, in her words. Wondering where McCain might fall on an untapped issue? Create a new debate and wait for a whereIstand.com junkie to dig up the evidence. Not what Dan Abrams says McCain’s stance is. What McCain says McCain’s stance is.

Of course, it’s not all election speak at whereIstand.com, where recent opinions range from home-field advantage in the World Series to the circulation of the U.S. penny. But until November, the site does make for a handy political cheat sheet for our esteemed candidates. OJR traded e-mails with whereIstand.com president and founder Nick Oliva to find out more about the logic behind an opinion wiki and how it might help voters decide whom they really support.

OJR: Why whereIstand.com? What void are you filling on the Web?

Nick Oliva: whereIstand.com has a unique model whereby users post the opinions of public figures and organizations (and other users verify these) on the same issues on which members take stands. This makes whereIstand.com the only comprehensive source on the Web for finding the user-verified opinions of anyone on any issue and for comparing people to each other based on their opinions.

Additionally, issues on whereIstand.com are translatable, meaning that the opinions are readable, searchable, and comparable in any language into which they have been translated. The implication of this is that a Spanish-speaking user can see in Spanish where he agrees and disagrees with the candidates for an election in Japan.

OJR: All submitted issues are reviewed for accuracy by staff and users alike. Can you talk about that process? How has it worked out so far, and what sort of issues have you had to turn away?

NO: Members propose issues that interest them in any topic – politics, health, sports, etc. Members and editors comment and debate how well a proposed issue meets our guidelines – and suggest revisions to the wording. Among these guidelines are that the issue be relevant, that the wording be free from bias, and that the wording is “open” enough to find on the Web the opinions of public figures and organizations. At the end of this collaborative process, issues that have not been rejected are framed much as they would be by a meticulous polling organization. An editor then approves the issue and that’s when people can take a stand on it or post public figure opinions.

The best issues are those where there is enough interest that people of different backgrounds and views collaborate in the approval process. The community should decide what is interesting, so we try not to reject issues that represent a legitimate controversy or difference of opinions. The issues that get rejected are usually those that are inherently biased.

OJR: What sort of things are you doing to drive traffic to the site. And, once they’re there, why should they register?

NO: One of the things that drives traffic to the site is when members invite their friends to register and take stands so they can find where they agree and disagree. It’s remarkable how surprising it is to discover some of the opinions of your friends – particular those on which you disagree.

What most drives new traffic is the public figure opinions. When you search the Web, for example, for opinions or comparisons, whereIstand is often among the top results. For example, the following search terms on Google return whereIstand.com opinions and comparisons:

mccain politics

obama outsourcing

angelina jolie writers guild

jordan athletes overpaid

compare barack and hillary

All content is free on whereIstand and registration is optional. If you have taken stands on a lot of issues, and bookmarked the issues and people that interest you, you should register so you can sign back in and access these. A big reason to register is so that others can see your stands and compare themselves to you. Some of the functionality, like proposing issues and commenting on people’s opinions, is limited to registered users.

OJR: Aside from bloggers seeking a syndication platform, who else would bookmark this site? People who really like to argue?

NO: whereIstand.com does provide a platform for bloggers to promote themselves through their opinions, but it’s really much more than that. For example, when the community jumps on a news item, frames it into issues, and starts posting opinions, you can quickly see the lay of the land just based on who is taking which stand. Since public figures are tagged with rich information about their affiliations, you can also see where groups of people stand on an issue. Sports fans may be equally divided on whether Barry Bonds should get into the Hall of Fame, but where do “sports journalists”, for example, stand on the issue? To find that out either somebody needs to do a lot of research, or you need to go to whereIstand.com.

For people that are more interested in the opinions of their friends than of public figures, whereIstand.com provides a forum to argue, but also to interact, engage, etc. Some people find it more interesting to read and comment on a friend’s recent opinions than to see and comment on the pictures from a friend’s recent barbecue.

OJR: I like the way the site aggregates public figures and invites users to compare their own views. Seems like a good way to package the presidential candidates’ positions into something relatively digestible. How do you see that feature playing out as campaign season heats up?

NO: Many people that are following the candidates closely still find it difficult to identify just on what issues particular candidates disagree. Sometimes this is because candidates change or clarify their previous positions – changes whereIstand.com keeps up with. In particular, as the campaign season heats up, whereIstand.com makes things more interesting, for example, by letting people see how the candidates for state elections compare to them and to each other.

Again, what’s most unique is that you can compare any two people and quickly find where they agree and disagree. So, for example, when the campaigns begin to float names as candidates for Vice President, you can very quickly see whether they are a good fit and where they may clash.

OJR: Finally, regarding the tech behind the site’s comparison feature, how are you determining compatible positions? What variables you are looking at?

NO: whereIstand.com doesn’t try to measure “compatibility” per se, but rather points out where there are differences of opinion. The comparison highlights whether two people tend to agree or disagree on the issues on which they have taken a stand. What’s most interesting is when you read the actual statements made that support those opinions. In that sense, whereIstand.com is like an opinion index where you go to find the answer and then click through to read the original source.

And guess what else? They’re not all housewives. They’re post-grad urbanites, barbecuing bachelors and dorm-room dollar-store shoppers.

A niche community of enthusiasts in the midst of a youth movement. Sounds like a recipe for a social-media overhaul.

And the food sites are catching on, supplementing the protocol e-zine format with souped-up community interfaces, user-generated content and third-party applications for the social networks.

The new-and-improved Chow.com, a conglomeration of Chowhound.com and the late CHOW Magazine, is at the helm of the foodie-meets-techie movement, flanking its vibrant online community with RSS feeds, podcasts, videos, Facebook widgets and, most recently, a soon-to-be-launched “wiki-recipe” feature.

CNET acquired CHOW and Chowhound last year, and the sites joined forces in May with visions of a fervent, ground-up community. Today, they attract two million unique monthly visits. Editor-in-Chief Jane Goldman took some time to talk to us about CHOW, recipe hacking and Online Food 2.0.

Online Journalism Review: First off, could you give me a brief history of the CHOW and Chowhound.com relationship?

Jane Goldman: Jim Leff co-founded Chowhound in 1997, and he sold it to CNET in March 2006. During all those years it was staffed with volunteers, paid for by the founders and a few occasional donations. I founded CHOW magazine with Carol Balacek, who ran the business side. It was completely unrelated to Chowhound. It was a print magazine, and the first issue appeared in November, 2004. CNET acquired CHOW magazine in April 2006. CNET’s intention was to combine the two, and we all started working for CNET in May.

OJR: At first glance, Chowhound.com isn’t much more than a message board on a magazine website, but it seems to be an increasingly significant piece of Chow.

Goldman: The site CHOW.com incorporates editorial content from CHOW and discussion boards from Chowhound. And yes, we’re trying to make the whole thing as interactive as possible.

OJR: Is Chowhound driving traffic to your original Chow content now? Vice versa? If so, how?

Goldman: Chowhound & Chow are driving traffic to each other, but Chowhound is the bigger site, so it probably drives more to Chow. Google drives a heck of a lot to both.

OJR: How did the CNET deal drive traffic to Chow? Was there an immediate impact? Can you compare that with the traffic growth when Chow/Chowhound actually merged in May?

Goldman: The site was launched in Sept. 2006 as chow.com, with the URL chowhound still used (as it still is) as one way to reach the message boards. Chow had been primarily a print magazine, so in one way it was a brand new launch.

There’s another example of two sites that work together at CNET: gamespot and gamesfaq. They live under one umbrella, but they’re quite different.

[Heather Hawkins, Chow's spokesperson, followed up later with additional information: Chowhound traffic was not tracked until it came on board to CNET Networks.  (If you could have seen the previous design of the site, you would see why.  It had plenty of users, but wasn't optimized for things like search, tracking uniques, etc.)  CHOW.com did not have a content-driven website before they came on board -- it was a landing page for some repurposed magazine content and an invitation to subscribe to the print pub.  We can say, though, that traffic is up more than 240 percent for CHOW.com (including the Chowhound message boards) since launch a year ago.]

OJR: Would you have any advice for two other sites thinking about a merger or that might be trying to merge?

Goldman: Considerations when you’re thinking about putting together a couple of sites–about technical stuff & search engine optimization, about branding, about how you can count traffic.

OJR: Chow.com seems to have a younger vibe than its competitors. You’re sort of the urban post-grad to their suburban housewife. Was that the positioning for the print version of CHOW, or did it sort of come with the CNET purchase?

Goldman: CHOW is definitely meant to have a younger feeling. Our users are, in fact, younger than those of the other food media, by a significant margin. Median age for our people is in the 30s; median for most other food properties is in the 40s. Our design is a little less fussy; our stories are a little more offbeat; we care a lot more about interactivity and web tools. And our information and our sources are top-notch.

The whole idea for CHOW magazine was to serve a younger audience. I knew I loved the subject matter, but I couldn’t find any media that covered it the way I wanted to hear about it – food I wanted to eat, subjects I was interested in, parties I wanted to throw. And how to cook. So I started the magazine. And now, thanks to our contributors, I know why ice cream gives you a headache, and how to make my own pancetta. Our users are, I think, often quite sophisticated eaters, but fairly primitive cooks. We explain to intelligent people how to do things they don’t know how to do.  And why they’d want to. And we entertain them in the meantime. We also have quite a lot of men. Traditionally, food media was for women. The Food Network helped change all that. And we’re pretty much gender-neutral.

OJR: I read about a “wiki-recipe” program of sorts that you’re testing. Can you tell me more about that?

Goldman: “Hack a recipe” is a feature that we’ll be launching in a few weeks. You know how you’re always tweaking recipes after you use them a few times? Adding a little more garlic, using a little less butter? Well, now you can memorialize those changes and save your own versions of our recipes. (The originals stay as originally written.) Plus you’ll be able to publish your own recipes on the site. And, of course, other people will be able to hack them and comment on them.

OJR: You seem to have your finger on the social technology pulse, from RSS feeds to podcasts to blog tracking. Any more exciting social networking ideas on the horizon?

Goldman: It’s a lot of work to build a website that does as much as CHOW does. But it’s still got a long way to go. We’ve got all kinds of new features that we’re planning to put into place. More video, more restaurant mapping, more recipe tools, more interaction among the users.

As for as social networking goes, this is a very active, involved community. The quality of the discussions is unusually good. Part of what we do is just to try to keep it that way. We have experienced moderators who work around the clock keeping people on topic — and, occasionally, keeping them civil. And the Chowhounds have been arranging their own gatherings and meet-ups for a long time now. We’re trying to make it easier and offer some tools that will help.

OJR: Has the balance of community features like those and original content such as feature articles and expert reviews shifted at Chow.com? If so, how does that affect your position as editor-in-chief?

Goldman: As editor-in-chief of Chow.com, that means that I pay attention not just to the content and the presentation, but to the entire user experience. So if our Chowhounds are unhappy with the way the search functions, then I have to figure out with our engineers, designers and editors how to make it better. Fortunately, we have some amazing engineers who have excellent editorial sense.

OJR: You state on the site that recipes are at the heart of Chow. Don’t all food sites cater primarily to people looking for a great new recipe? Do you think you approach it differently?

Goldman: Recipes, right now, are the heart of the editorial part of CHOW, and restaurant discussion is the heart of the boards. But the home cooking boards are growing a lot. And we’re working on tools to get the recipes from the boards into the recipe database on the site, so they’re searchable just like the other recipes.

OJR: Finally, ever browse the Chowhound boards for recipes yourself?

Goldman: I definitely participate in the boards. I wanted a particular bottle of wine recently that I couldn’t find. I posted the question and in 30 minutes I had three good suggestions.

Wikipedia is a good idea. There is a need for a freely available, reliable encyclopedia on the Internet. Commercial alternatives like Britannica clearly have their place. But, if only because users expect information on the Internet to be free, we should be grateful that some people are willing to volunteer their time to make that information reliable.

Are we there yet? The report that Nature Magazine released last December contended that we may be closer than we thought. It is also a positive sign for Wikipedia that prestigious organizations are beginning to take the encyclopedia seriously enough to evaluate its claims. In a follow-up interview during Nature’s Dec. 15 podcast, Jimmy Wales, president of the Wikimedia Foundation and founder of Wikipedia, said his goal is to achieve “Britannica or better” accuracy. Yet he was also modest about the report’s findings, admitting that he neither expected such a positive review nor did he think the level of quality was consistent across all subjects.

There is no question: Wikipedia has a long way to go. In order to make it better, supporters need to shift focus away from isolated articles and genres and first address the system that produces the content. By doing so, contributors will have more tools to ensure the reliability of their articles.

I came up with a list of six easy steps that project leaders could take to make Wikipedia better. It’s not conclusive, but these suggestions arose from my own research and conversations with people who are concerned about the project.

1. Consistently enforce the existing standards

In addition to dozens of clearly written policy pages, Wikipedia has impressive tools for tracing the history of an article through its “recent changes” feature. There are extensive guides on the website that instruct contributors on how to cite sources, format entries, debate controversial passages, and argue effectively. Critics who only know about the wiki format may not understand the standards that the project leaders demand.

The problem? Wikipedia’s policies are not evenly enforced. The scandal over John Seigenthaler’s biography was likely only one manifestation of this problem. Participants in Wikipedia need to find ways to uniformly enforce existing standards on all content. If it’s too much work, then questionable content should be taken offline until it can be addressed. Otherwise, there is no way to claim that the site is reliable.

2. Force editors to take responsibility for their articles by telling us their names

Currently, contributors don’t need to provide any information beyond a user name in order to join the community. Until recently, there wasn’t even a requirement to have a user account in order to edit content.

This suggestion will meet with the most resistance, but it answers the biggest complaint about Wikipedia. The current policy is indefensible. If there is an honest reason to remain anonymous (like the fear of political retribution), then it’s easy to provide an editorial workaround either by having more reviews or clearly indicating that the article was anonymously created for political reasons.

3. Supply references and reasons for content change

Right now, in order to change an article on Wikipedia, after logging in, all somebody has to do is type. Their changes will be preserved along with the article’s history, but the only way to explain the reason for a change happens after the fact, in discussion forums.

What if there was an additional field on the edit screen that forced contributors to back up every new piece of content they added with references and reasons for doing so? It would be another tool that justified the added obtrusiveness with its usefulness.

4. Make citations clear

Like any good reference tool, Wikipedia provides endnotes for authors to cite references. But these aren’t used consistently. Some of the numbered links in the articles (which resemble endnotes) are merely links to other websites, with no bibliographical information at the end of the article.

5. Let users rate contributors

Trust is the key issue — and online it matters even more. Wikipedia could easily make use of a system similar to eBay’s user rating system. Every contributor should have their own page with a list of articles and feedback. Only users with an account should be able to create feedback for other users.

6. Settle copyright disputes before questionable material is published

There is a page on Wikipedia that lets leaders debate whether an image or text is under copyright protection. The problem is that many times, the resource is already on the website. If someone is reviewing possible copyright violations anyway, why not do it before the material is published?

These steps are easy to implement from a technology perspective, but the cultural challenges are significant. Despite recent scandals, Wales said that vandalism and malicious editing are not the biggest problems the community faces.

Far more difficult is getting contributors who are passionate about their content to agree on what gets published and the reasons for doing so. Experts who join in order to donate their time and knowledge to improving content will be forced to defend themselves — and their credentials — against less qualified opponents. It is conceivable that such an affront to their pride will drive many away. That would be unfortunate.

Perhaps even more challenging will be getting the current community to agree to abide by stricter rules. But those who most appreciate the remarkable qualities of the Wikipedia community should be the first to pressure the project leaders to take the simple steps necessary in order to ensure that its articles have been fact-checked, are clear of libel and copyright violations, and meet certain standards of composition and organization. Until these steps are taken, they may never be able to convince critics — who could otherwise be valuable allies — that Wikipedia is more than just a cute toy.

Imagine Wikipedia as if it were Bombay city — a sprawling metropolis under construction by purpose-driven swarms and hoardes of people with an Internet connection. A city constantly threatened by impending monsoons, visited by floods of spam, terrorised by vandals, punctuated by unclaimed land-like stubs, a vast and virtual terra nova that refuses to stop growing.

The creators of this city lurk in the ‘talk’ and ‘discuss’ pages of Wikipedia, leaving their footprints at every alteration. The articles themselves are not unlike pheromones that attract stray ants and formulate the process by which stigmergic growth takes place in the colony. They also have their queens and drones, even labor unions that have emerged from a pseudo-democratic process.

The General Secretary of the Association of Deletionists is a user named Ambi, who goes by the description “Hunter of all things self-promotory.” He won the seat as the result of an election, reaping seven out of eight votes. The Secretary can resign or be removed from office by a 60 percent majority among the Association’s members. Inclusionists, Anarchists and Mergists have also emerged as pseudo-democratic associations. You may also come across the Cleaning Department, the Association of Apathetic Wikipedians, and the rather descriptive Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are In Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn’t Mean They are Deletionist.

In the non-hierarchical but highly active Cleaning Department of Wikipedia, user Eloquence comes around with his broom every 15th of the month, Cimon Avaro on the 31st, Delirium checks daily those articles whose 7-day wait has expired, and Cyan fills in for Delirium in his absence. Most users like Rossami, however, come when time permits. Cimon Avaro is the avatar of a Finnish contributor called Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, now one of the candidates for the 2005 Elections of the Board Of Trustees.

As the avatars started working on Wikipedia, they developed neologisms and notions of acceptable etiquette, and myths surrounding a secret Cabal that “is ultimately responsible for the development of Wikipedia. Supposedly, the Cabal acts to stifle dissent and impose their private points of view while hypocritically extolling NPOV (Neutral Point Of View). Admins who take action against users for seemingly illogical or immature reasons are often claimed to be acting on behalf of the Cabal.”

The policies and technical matters of the world’s fastest growing encyclopedia are resolved at the Village Pump, where you will find Colonel Gazpacho, self-proclaimed leader of Inclusionists, hollering his manifesto: “The situation has grown more dire since the last time I addressed you. The encroaching hordes of Deletionists at Votes for Deletion (VFD) are growing more, not less, rabid by the day and the time has come to put a stop to it. We must do battle on this territory which heretofore has been assumed to be irrevocably held in the clutches of the enemy.” It is conceivable that Colonel Gazpacho could be a 16-year old girl hobbyist in analog computers, or a 70-year old professor in the computer science department at the Indian Institute Of Technology, Bombay.

Each person can be many avatars, depending on the diversity of his or her skill set, and can contribute a drop every now and then in the vast ocean that is human knowledge. When needed, another avatar of the same Wikipedian, or even a stray visitor, can ‘clean up’ some polluted part of the living document with a bit of editing. Therefore, people do not populate Wikipedia community as they do Bombay or Mexico – an online community consists of ‘versions’ of people, their fragmented avatars. It’s more like an ant colony without ants.

“Joining Wikipedia, I thought I will write articles in mathematics, computer science, and dancing. It soon mysteriously turned out that my interests in real life took but a tiny fraction of my editorial work,” said a user called Mikkalai.

The idea of avatars is very old, in fact, it is the central idea of creation in Hindu mythology, and much older than the idea of authorless, collaborative texts. The creators of ancient Hindu treatises called the Upanishads and the Vedas share a lot of philosophy in common with Wikipedia. Collectively, they are known as Shruti scriptures, or “what is heard.” The central essence of authorless texts is discussed at length in Robert T. Oliver’s book Communication and Culture In Ancient India & China:

“Neither is it accidental that the Upanishads contain no internal evidence as to when, where or by whom they were composed. Their very thesis is that we dwell in the midst of a timeless eternity. With everything so indissolubly united that particular areas or places are of no concern. Who might be the author of an idea or a way of communicating it must be of no importance whatsoever, since truth is truth.”

One popular aspect of Hindu tradition is the mythology of Lord Krishna that has mutated and transformed him into a supernatural entity. Although we can’t be sure, he may have been an ancient day David, a common shepherd who became a hero to his people. Whatever the origin may be, the legends surrounding him grew over 5,000 years to convert him into a God worshipped by millions. The creation of popular mythology surrounding Krishna is similar to the process of constructing Wikipedia, since Hinduism is a religion based on collective myth-manufacturing. Krishna’s primary teachings are recorded in the Bhagwad Gita, which contains an important commentary on journalism, discussed later in this article.

The number of Hindu Gods and their avatars at one time was more than the number of Hindus, at a staggering 330 million deities. This aspect is also central to Wikipedia, in that the number of pages or stories (“myths” to a skeptic) far exceeds the number of the community. Joseph Campbell explained this symbiotic relationship: “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

The evolution of the Internet as collective, public dream via electronic interfaces, and the evolution of human beings into civilizations, has many striking parallels. The earliest networks were often protected by their owners, and communities were relatively secretive or “cave-dwelling.” The wiki, on the other hand, is out in the open field, where its vulnerability is on display and under attack. The process of its growth resembles agriculture and farming more than anything else.

In a certain sense then, the hyperlink is an extension of the wheel, allowing the traveler to go from one location to another, while the search engine is an explorer ship with its set of built-in navigational instruments. One could say that the word-of-mouth phenomenon is recreated by blogs, and farming on virtual terrain is akin to wikis — or fertile land.

The Journalist

“Just as people at the end of the Middle Ages rediscovered the wisdom of the Classic world, so we are re-discovering the experience of tribal life. I don’t mean by this that we will have to take up hunting and live in caves. For we have made a Great Return before and we know how it will play out. Renaissance men did not put on togas. What they did was to remember the wisdom of the classic world that had been forgotten in a millennium dark age and applied this wisdom to the world of their time.” – Robert Paterson, in Going Home: Our Reformation

In the same way that the Neolithic Revolution transformed human society totally, cultural aspects of wiki communities are a rich artifact, an unavoidable lesson for newspapers. The avatar and the journalist have some things in common, for instance, the quest for objectivity.

NPOV or “the agreement to report subjective opinions objectively”, is held sacred by Wikipedians, that is, it is Wikipedian “religion”.

When decorum fails, one is likely to see “forest fires” and “edit wars” in Wikipedia, akin to riots in a city. On a peaceful day, though, one might wonder how neutrality is made manifest in Wikipedia. In fact, is it even possible to have an article that is completely unbiased, whether in Wikipedia or in a newspaper? An explanation for this is the concept of “systemic bias” or the sum of prejudices inherently present and active in the human group we are dealing with. As the community grows and awareness about the bias spreads, it is hoped that the articles, by assimilating as many point of views as possible, will become increasingly objective.

This idea is dangerous, in that it undermines the work of an excellent, dedicated journalist coming up with a very objective report. It is dangerous to assume that the language of crowds can be so easily deciphered, or that location/access is the only important criterion for credibility. Wikipedia is a populist history of the world, a myth, a history in consensus. However, the fact that it can be changed makes it more reliable than Encarta or Brittannica.

It appears that the newspaper is making its second mistake after going capitalist – going populist. The shift of certain traditional mass media towards participatory journalism is not guided by altruist ideas, or survival, but by the opportunity of cutting costs involved in traditional journalism. It is motivated by the possibility that the traditional reporter can be replaced by a zero-cost mob reporting several points of view, even eyewitness reports. This removes the need to hire a dedicated journalist, the seeker of truth, and replaces him (or her) with a murmur of crowds.

In the Bhagwad Gita, the role of an ideal journalist is played by Sanjay, the charioteer of a blind king, who describes the Kurukshetra war as it happens. Sanjay has been given a divine ability to see things happening at a distance, without interfering with them – much like television, cellphones or the even more startling images from Google Earth. Sanjaya describes the discourse between Krishna and Arjun to his master Dhritrashtra, who represents the blindness of minds.

Sanjay is the chosen war-correspondent in this way, and his qualification for divine insight comes directly from his name, which means completely victorious, or “one who has conquered himself.” Sri Sri Paramhansa Yogananda describes this in detail in his interpretation of the Bhagwad Gita, subtitled The Royal Science of God-realisation (Chapter 1, Verse 1):

Sanjaya represents the power of impartial intuitive self-analysis, discerning introspection. It is the ability to stand aside, observe oneself without any prejudice, and judge accurately. Thoughts may be present without one’s conscious awareness. Introspection is the power of intuition by which the consciousness can watch its thoughts. It does not reason, it feels – not with biased emotion, but with clear, calm intuition.

Lord Krishna is considered the eighth avatar of Vishnu, and the thing with avatars is – they appear only when they’re needed, and then they go away.

In the meantime, as Wikipedia becomes more and more like a newspaper everyday, should not the newspapers try and become more like the journalist?

Let’s back off Michael Kinsley, okay?

The L.A. Times Opinion Editor and his staff have been catching heck from some writers after Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez announced last week that The Times would introduce “‘wikitorials’ — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.”

“This week The Los Angeles Times announced its intention to exile the square and stodgy voice of authority farther yet,” The New York Times’ Stacy Schiff declared. “Let’s hope the interactive editorial will lead directly to the interactive tax return. On the other hand, I hope we might stop short before we get to structural engineering and brain surgery. Some of us like our truth the way we like our martinis: dry and straight up.”

Cute, but Schiff’s dig assumes the pros always get it right. Let’s just say that if structural engineers showed the same skepticism toward their work as many professional editorial writers showed toward the U.S. administration’s claims about Iraq, I’d be choosing the ferry instead of the bridge whenever I needed to cross a river.

Talk of wikis inevitably elicit rants about Wikipedia, the free-for-all dictionary where users can create and revise entries, even to the point of rewriting history. Neither Martinez nor Kinsley have publicly revealed details of how their “wikitorials” will work. But the Wikipedia model need not be the only one to guide wiki publishers.