aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Monday, April 07, 2008
Edits to gay soldier’s Wikipedia entry traced to Pentagon
I was traveling when the story of Maj. Alan Rogers, a gay soldier who was killed in January in Iraq, made news because media sources such as the Washington Post and National Public Radio chose not to mention that Rogers was gay in their coverage of his posthumously awarded Purple Heart and a second Bronze Star. See, for example, here, here and here.
Well, it turns out that a Pentagon computer was used last week to edit the gay soldier’s Wikipedia entry. The Washington Blade:
A Wikipedia article about Maj. Alan Rogers, a gay soldier who was killed in January in Iraq, was apparently edited by someone in the Pentagon, who removed any mention that Rogers was gay.
The user on Monday redacted details about Rogers that appeared on the online encyclopedia site. Information that was deleted included Rogers’ sexual orientation; the soldier’s participation in American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group that works to change military policy toward gays; and the fact that Rogers’ death helped bring the U.S. military’s casualty toll in Iraq to 4,000.
Rob Pilaud, a patent agent and a friend of Rogers who attended the soldier’s funeral, restored the information to the Wikipedia article the next day. Pilaud was among Rogers’ friends who created the Wikipedia page.
The anonymous poster also provided the following comment in the “discussion” section about the article:
“Alan’s life was not about his sexual orientation but rather about the body of work he performed ministering to others and helping the defense of the country,” the poster wrote. “Quit trying to press an agenda that Alan wouldn’t have wanted made public just to suit your own ends.”
The IP address attached to the deletion of the details and the posted comments is 141.116.168.135. The address belongs to a computer from the office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) at the Pentagon. The office is headed by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who was present at Rogers’ funeral and presented the flag from Rogers’ coffin to his cousin, Cathy Long.
The Army’s public affairs office did not return a call seeking comment.
RELATED: Kevin Naff has an editorial in that same edition of the Blade, The Washington Post’s gay problem—Why did editor Len Downie go to such lengths to hide the simple fact that a soldier was gay?
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Muhammad on Wikipedia criticized
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.
In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people. [...]
A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site’s polite but firm refusal to remove the images: “Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.”
The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. “It’s totally unacceptable to print the Prophet’s picture,” Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. “It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately.”
The site considered but rejected a compromise that would allow visitors to choose whether to view the page with images.
Paul M. Cobb, who teaches Islamic history at Notre Dame, said, “Islamic teaching has traditionally discouraged representation of humans, particularly Muhammad, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.” He added, “Some of the most beautiful images in Islamic art are manuscript images of Muhammad.”
The idea of imposing a ban on all depictions of people, particularly Muhammad, dates to the 20th century, he said. With the Wikipedia entry, he added, “what you are dealing with is not medieval illustrations, you are dealing with modern media and getting a modern response.”
The entry is here.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Marthapedia
How did I miss this? Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia plans to launch a new social network and user-generated content website to be called Marthapedia:
Martha Stewart, the paragon of expertise as content, is adopting the style of social media for her next website—to be called “Marthapedia.” But Ms. Stewart, who didn’t get where she is by suggesting that the hoi polloi know more than she does, made clear that Marthapedia will not be so freewheeling as, say, Wikipedia. Editors at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will check to see if the public’s ideas are better than their own, she said.
The site initially will be seeded with existing content from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, such as Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook, but will open for information and suggestions from the public, Ms. Stewart told an Advertising Week audience this morning. “It will be a very interesting site,” she said.
Martha’s not known for her community spirit; and Marthapedia won’t change that. It looks more like the ploy of a savvy marketer to co-opt and cash in on the wiki cache than to really open up to the unwashed masses:
It’s important to be in the print and online worlds; that’s where the customers are-both places. Magazines are not going to go away. They are still a viable form of communication. The magazine is core to our business, and from there, we expand to all other media. You go to our Web site for information, for inspiration, a recipe, a how-to and for pleasure. Our traffic is building quite nicely.
We’re working on a new project called a Marthapedia that [is based on] my home-keeping handbook, which is an encyclopedia on how to take care of everything around your home. There will be user-generated information that is edited. Not like a Wikipedia, but more like comments and communication that are edited.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Google’s Wiki variant
Google is testing a new Web service intended to become a repository of knowledge from experts on various topics, one that could turn into a competitor to Wikipedia and other sites.
If it attracts a following, the service could accelerate Google’s transformation from a search engine into a company that helps create and publish Web content. Some critics said that shift could compromise Google’s objectivity in presenting search results.
The service, called Knol, which is short for knowledge, would allow people to create Web pages on any topic. It is designed to include features that permit readers to submit comments, rate pages and suggest changes. However, unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to edit an entry, only the author of a “knol,” as the pages in the service would be called, would be allowed to edit. Different authors could have competing pages on the same topic.
Google said that a main idea behind the project was to bring attention to authors who have expertise on a particular topic.
Jimmy Wales said, “I’m looking forward to seeing what it ends up looking like.”
Yeah, me too… 
Friday, November 23, 2007
Conservatives LOVE reading about gay stuff. Or do they?
Except this makes no sense. While the “Homosexuality” page itself might be highly ranked, the “Homosexuality and Hepatitis” page is short and has been in existence only since October 17. There’s no way something like that would a legitimate third-most popular page, even for raving homophobes.
And the top ten doesn’t have
“Bible"? Or “Jesus Christ”?[update - better: any other controversial topic?]. Those are supposedly less popular than “Gay Bowel Syndrome”?? That’s ridiculous (I know, I know ...). Either a spider has run amok or someone is deliberately inflating the pageviews.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Wikipedia and media authority
An issue I find more fascinating than the one addressed by WikiScanner is Wikipedia’s reliance on traditional media 
to determine when a subject is ”notable” and whether a source is credible and authoritative. danah boyd makes the point:
I’m trying really hard to figure out ways in which we can get youth to think critically about the construction and production of information. I believe that Wikipedia is a great source for working through and thinking about these issues, but I’m extremely worried about the ways in which Wikipedians fetishize mass media as ideal sources. Hell, I’m worried about the ways in which my own industry [academia?] sees mass media as proof that the sky is falling. Media is often very useful for citations, but to assume that it is always right seems to be extremely dangerous, especially for a community that’s fighting an image issue concerning the ease with which things can be edited and published. I also think it’s dangerous for Wikipedia to perpetuate inaccuracies in mass media just cuz mass media said so.
To those Wikipedians out there who happen to read my blog - is there any conversation amongst Wikipedians about how to deal with mass media coverage? Is there any conversation about how mass media coverage is often biased or inaccurate? Why is mass media coverage so valued? (And why on earth am I notable because I’m profiled in mass media instead of because of why mass media was covering me?)
In comments a Wikipedia editor writes:
Most Wikipedia editors know that mass media is often unreliable… but it’s all we can agree on. “What is a reliable source” has occupied literally tens of thousands of messages. What the policy should say and when to make exceptions on it start flamewars of legendary intensity; I think some often forget that Wikipedians made the policies and thus can change them if they’re bad. [...]
There’s not one sort of Wikipedia editor, any more than there’s one sort of blogger. Some people place more importance on some things than others: effect on the subject, reliability of sources, proper procedures for verification, etc.; with people it is more difficult to come to agreement, because there’s more importance on getting it right *now* as opposed to something where the subject isn’t herself affected.
Read all of the comments. The medium process is the message.
WikiScanner
There’s a new unofficial Wikipedia search tool, WikiScanner, that lets you enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then, with just a few more clicks, you find all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia’s pages.
The NYTimes:
WikiScanner is the work of Virgil Griffith, 24, a cognitive scientist who is a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Mr. Griffith, who spent two weeks this summer writing the software for the site, said he got interested in creating such a tool last year after hearing of members of Congress who were editing their own entries.
Mr. Griffith said he “was expecting a few people to get nailed pretty hard” after his service became public. “The yield, in terms of public relations disasters, is about what I expected.”
Mr. Griffith, who also likes to refer to himself as a “disruptive technologist,â€Â� said he was certain any more examples of self-interested editing would come out in the next few weeks, “because the data set is just so huge.”
Wired has more, including a list of too-good-to-be-true Wikipedia spin jobs, submitted by the public and rankable by all, that actually turn out to be true (MPAA edits DRM, ACLU slanders the pope, Subway declares its sandwiches ‘delicious’....).
Busy with the first week of classes, I’m late to this party. Here Cory Doctorow comments on the Disney whitewashing of his entry; here Wonkette sees vandalism by the Republican Party of Minnesota as proof that Republicans Hate Harry Potter.
Crooks and Liars points to the diligent detective work of dKos diarist Democrashield for cataloging the “egregious even by FOX standards” editing of anchor entries (Fox hits back here); and from the UK, the Telegraph whacks the BBC for hypocrisy in pointing to the CIA when its own house is unclean.
All of this is good blogger fun, but really just a tempest in a teapot. The fact that kids make prank phone calls is an annoyance, nothing more (do kids even do that anymore?), and does not delegitimize the phone network. Similarly, pranksters don’t delegitimize Wikipedia; they’re an annoyance to be dealt with and Virgil’s done that nicely:
[Wikipedia founder Jimmy] Wales, who called the scanner “a very clever idea,” said he was considering some changes to Wikipedia to help visitors better understand what information is recorded about them.
“When someone clicks on ‘edit,’ it would be interesting if we could say, ‘Hi, thank you for editing. We see you’re logged in from The New York Times. Keep in mind that we know that, and it’s public information,’ “ he said. “That might make them stop and think.”
Like prank phone calls, this is an issue that is bound to fade away.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Wikipedia as news source
I’ll be reading the Sunday Times Magazine piece on Wikipedia as a news innovation on the plane home:
Love it or hate it, though, its success is past denying - 6.8 million registered users worldwide, at last count, and 1.8 million separate articles in the English-language Wikipedia alone - and that success has borne an interesting side effect. Just as the Internet has accelerated most incarnations of what we mean by the word “information,” so it has sped up what we mean when we employ the very term “encyclopedia.” For centuries, an encyclopedia was synonymous with a fixed, archival idea about the retrievability of information from the past. But Wikipedia’s notion of the past has enlarged to include things that haven’t even stopped happening yet. Increasingly, it has become a go-to source not just for reference material but for real-time breaking news - to the point where, following the mass murder at Virginia Tech, one newspaper in Virginia praised Wikipedia as a crucial source of detailed information.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wikipedia time warp mystery
An anonymous user operating a computer traced to Stamford, Conn. — home to World Wrestling Entertainment — posted an entry to pro wrestler Chris Benoit‘s biography on Wikipedia.org announcing the death of his wife Nancy at least 13 hours before police in suburban Atlanta said they found her body along with her husband’s and that of their 7-year-old son, FOXNews.com has learned.
Reporters informed the Fayette County district attorney’s office of the posting Thursday, and the agency forwarded the information to sheriff’s investigators, who are looking into it, a legal assistant said in an e-mail to the AP.
Via Cory Bergman.
LATER: the vandal has confessed, saying that the murder accusation an unfortunately timed joke.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Hydrogen and the Hindenburg
This is in the Auto section of the New York Times. I can’t say I know why:
THE May 6, 1937, crash of the Hindenburg at the Navy base here was the 20th century’s first transportation disaster captured by newsreel, audio recordings and still photos.
The advancement in communications, combined with the observations of more than a thousand witnesses and survivors, is why one calamity with a relatively modest death toll permanently soiled hydrogen’s reputation.
In 34 fiery seconds, hydrogen leaped from the No. 1 position on the periodic table of elements to the last thing any citizen would consider pumping into a car’s fuel tank.
But was hydrogen really to blame?
Even after reading it, I can’t say that I know the answer:
“In a nutshell, the catastrophe began with escaping hydrogen,” he said. “Air mixing with the hydrogen created a combustible mixture. Either a spark jumping from the electrically charged outer covering to the metal framework or the St. Elmo’s fire lit the mixture. A puff or pop indicating detonation was heard by several observers.
“It’s important to note that the Hindenburg didn’t explode. It was consumed by rapid combustion; this is evident in photographs. Heat produced in the first burning cell raised the temperature of adjacent cells, causing hydrogen to spill out of pressure-relief valves. It took only 34 seconds for fire to engulf the entire ship.” Thirty-six people were killed.
But what I think is cool about the article is that the “he” in the quotes above is one Rick Zitarosa, a supervisor for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority who lives in Point Pleasant, N.J. Amateur as expert! Someone get that man a Wikipedia account!
NOTE TO FRIEND & REGULAR READER JASON: Explain it to us in comments!
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Cass Sunstein gets Wiki
In the past year, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” has been cited four times as often as the Encyclopedia Britannica in judicial opinions, and the number is rapidly growing. In just two years, YouTube has become a household word and one of the world’s most successful Web sites. Such astounding growth and success demonstrate society’s unstoppable movement toward shared production of information, as diverse groups of people in multiple fields pool their knowledge and draw from each other’s resources. READ ON
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Wikipedia $$$ woes
Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, is quoted as having said that, “If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear” Lift conference in Geneva. Today Mathew Ingram comments:
Couldn’t Chad Hurley or Steve Chen, who are now multimillionaires, or Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs or one of a dozen other billionaire geeks cough up a measly $1-million or $2-million to keep the lights on at Wikipedia? And the second is whether this might revive interest in Jason Calacanis’s idea of running small ads on the site, which he said at one point was worth as much as $5-billion.
Oh yes, and one other thing: Why doesn’t Wikipedia do a deal with Amazon to use its S3 virtual hosting to handle the site’s data demands? Don McAskill, CEO of SmugMug, says doing that has saved the photo-sharing site about $500,000 a year, and they’re only using it for part of their site.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Anderson Cooper’s in the Wikipedia closet
LET’S GET HIM OUT!
My blogging was brought to a screeching halt yesterday by reading Kevin Naff’s editorial beef with Wikipedia over an edit to the Anderson Cooper entry. It would have been nice to link to Naff’s piece, watch SNL, and be done with it.
Instead I had to wade through the Cooper entry’s Talk page, and all of its relevant links and sources to conclude on my own that some in editorial and administrative power at Wikipedia are, if not at least subliminally homophobic, seriously tone-deaf when it comes to the gay community and gay issues.
The controversy at hand is the removal of a citation to a Blade editorial authored by Naff in reference to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s sexual orientation. Its removal was accompanied by this bolded slap at the Blade:
There is no evidence the Washington Blade is a significant, non-trivial, reliable source.
(Incidentally, the article on the paper itself (Washington Blade) will end up being deleted if it doesn’t improve, incidentally, as it doesn’t assert why this newspaper is notable, at all.)
Ouch. The suggestion is that because a publication is a gay publication, it is insignificant and unreliable. As Naff points out in his piece, “The Blade has a rich history in the D.C. community dating to 1969.” Wouldn’t that rank it among the oldest, most definitive, resources on gay issues? And here we have a Wikipedia admin threatening to delete its Wikipedia entry.
Proto is the admin and he compounds his error by reducing a gay “identity” or “orientation” to a sex act. Again and again in the Cooper discussion the reference is to his “sex life.â€Â� And with that we enter into the smear territory. Writes Naff:
[The] Wikipedia editor [Brimba, not Proto] writes, “We have an obligation to make certain that WP is not seen as a vehicle that can be used to “Out” people, or in any other way be used to damage or smear people.”
Let’s just ignore this blatantly homophobic comment. Suggesting that describing someone as gay constitutes a “smear” is a tired old insult.
Then the editor [Proto not Brimba] writes, “The advantage of including such allegations, or in other words the usefulness to the average user of WP, is minimal at best.â€Â�
Again, the use of the word “allegations” - as in criminal - suggests a serious lack of understanding of these issues. This person is clearly not qualified to edit the biography of a gay person.
The editor [Brimba again] adds, “At no point do we have verification from Cooper or any other reliable source that he is in fact gay, only speculation. Speculation is not encyclopedic, nor does it have any room in WP.”
The reality is that without speculation, we wouldn’t know about the sexual orientation of a great many notable people. But times have changed and laws have changed. No one is going to charge Anderson Cooper with sodomy if he comes out. And the point of my original editorial wasn’t so much to “out” anyone, it was to highlight how ridiculous and insulting it is for rich, famous, successful people to refuse to answer “the question.” No straight person denies being straight.
Now I’m a longtime Wikipedia fan; Kevin Naff is definitely not. Naff displays a typically journalistic bias against - and I would suspect a misunderstanding of - the way Wikipedia works. The Talk Page dialogue is a rich back and forth that pretty fairly reflects the debate on the issue in the wider society. For the moment my side is losing. (I wish that were only true on Wikipedia!)
I most definitely believe the Blade is a legitimate news source and the material should be included in the Cooper entry. But I don’t think the answer is to discredit or dismiss Wikipedia. The answer is to engage and win, go in and support NYDCSP:
I am just trying to do my best as an editor to place sourced content from reliable, verifiable third-parties ... I admit the content is critical of Mr Cooper, but this article is pretty devoid of any criticism of him as of now. To me this is unbalanced. I am not going on a fishing trip to find other suitable criticisms to make my point (that pass the “no gay rule")-- I came across this material myself over due course and found it compelling, and well within the rules, and highly relevant. I find the intensity of the two or three folks coming at it with many, many (I believe) flawed citations of WP policy to be very interesting in and of itself. But it hasn’t changed my mind a bit. I also think this is not something that can be solved over two days. It should allow for other editors to at least read if not decide to weigh in on the discussion.
So I will pledge to observe a time-out, if Proto’s compromise can be put up and observed for a week or so, and other editors can weigh in if they want to. Or not. And we come back later. Agreed?
If you’re a Wikipedia editor (I am not) get in there!
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Amazon + Wiki = Amapedia
Amazon has just released a new Wikipedia clone, called Amapedia. It’s described as "a community for sharing information about the products you like the most." So far Amapedia has had no promotion from Amazon, but it was discovered today byRogers Cadenhead. Anyone with an Amazon.Com account can edit the site. Regarding the name, Amapedia appears to be a combo of the words Amazon and Wikipedia:
ama[zon][wiki]pedia. [...]The site looks pretty raw currently and has little info in it - it is after all brand new. But a wikipedia for products makes perfect sense for Amazon. Who better to spotlight products and gather product information from the community, than Amazon? Another way to look at this: Amapedia could become the next generation of user reviews. User reviews on websites today are relatively rigid and old fashioned, so Amazon may be thinking that Amapedia will be a new platform for user reviews - it may help remove redundancy in reviews, while offering more completeness.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Microsoft & the Wikipedia doghouse
Microsoft has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse today after it offered to pay an Australian blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced web encyclopedia site.
While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries.
So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.
“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,’’ Wales said.
Yes, paying is a definite no-no. Still, I’m not fond of the Wikipedia policy that disallows interested parties from correcting inaccuracies. I understand the issue, but couldn’t Wikipedia at least allow those with a conflict of interest a “statement page” to post their corrections?
Many bloggers believe disclosure gives readers the information they need to assess the legitimacy of a post. Similarly, a statement known to be from an interested party would give Wikipedia readers what we need to assess the legitimacy of the information.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
The skinny from Wales on Wikia
I finally got round to reading Danny Sullivan’s Q&A with Jimmy Wales on his Google challenging Search Wikia project:
Q. Why do this at all? What do you see wrong with search?
For certain types of searches, search engines are very good. But I still see major failures, where they aren’t delivering useful results. I think at a deeper almost political level, I think it’s important that we as a global society have some transparency in search. What are the algorithms involved? What are the reasons why one site comes up over another one. [Wales also raised the issue of how ads might influence regular listings, perhaps search engines trying to keep commercial sites out of the free listings to make money. From there, he went on....] Those types of incentives are problematic in search. The only solution I know to that is to be transparent.
Danny’s conclusion is skeptical. Still:
I find myself oddly hopeful. I don’t think a Google killer will emerge, but perhaps some new ways of a community to be involved with search will come out of it. I wouldn’t have thought Wikipedia would work. Certainly it’s flawed, but it’s also an incredible resource. Maybe something useful will come from the Search Wikia project.
LATER: The NYTimes has a story on the Wikia search project today.
Friday, August 11, 2006
On student use of Wikipedia in research
Wikipedia recently made headlines when it banned Stephen Colbert from editing or adding articles on its pages after the comedian made humorous, false additions to the site and encouraged fans to do the same.
But Colbert’s antics may have done the world--and by the world, I mostly mean me and my peers--a favor. Until recently, many kids in my high school, myself included, used Wikipedia without questioning the integrity of its content. Before Colbert highlighted the unreliability of the site’s information, I doubt many people even realized it isn’t an authoritative, credible source.
Yes, teachers and parents constantly remind students to think twice before relying on certain online sources, but it’s easy for a student in a rush to forget that Wikipedia belongs in the category of unverified information rather than credible information--especially because its format is one of a traditional encyclopedia.
Dr. Alan Liu from the University of California at Santa Barbara has developed a draft student policy statement on student use of Wikipedia. Teachers would do well to read it, adapt it and discuss it with students.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
The Atlantic on Wikipedia
Last week I complained about Stacy Schiff’s Wikipedia profile in The New Yorker. This week The Atlantic gives me what I was looking for (though in fairness The Atlantic’s website is only a wee bit better than The New Yorker’s - neither has an RSS feed but The Atlantic at least allows its subscribers to access the contents online). 
In The Hive, Marshall Poe does a terrific job of telling the Wikipedia story. He explains that the original vision of both Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger was less about gleaning the wisdom of the crowd and more about getting volunteer experts to set up a web directory. They set out to build “an online academic journal” called Nupedia. It was the hive mind that found them:
Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The initial purpose was to get the public to add entries that would then be “fed into the Nupedia process” of authorization. Most of Nupedia’s expert volunteers, however, wanted nothing to do with this, so Sanger decided to launch a separate site called “Wikipedia.” Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Wikipedia as anything more than a lark. This is evident in Sanger’s flip announcement of Wikipedia to the Nupedia discussion list. “Humor me,” he wrote. “Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.” And, to Sanger’s surprise, go they did. Within a few days, Wikipedia outstripped Nupedia in terms of quantity, if not quality, and a small community developed. In late January, Sanger created a Wikipedia discussion list (Wikipedia-L) to facilitate discussion of the project. At the end of January, Wikipedia had seventeen “real” articles (entries with more than 200 characters). By the end of February, it had 150; March, 572; April, 835; May, 1,300; June, 1,700; July, 2,400; August, 3,700. At the end of the year, the site boasted approximately 15,000 articles and about 350 “Wikipedians.”
Friday, July 28, 2006
The New Yorker on Wikipedia
I love The New Yorker. I subscribe to The New Yorker. I hardly ever read The New Yorker.
Why?
Their website stinks - no RSS (nor even an email), they lock up half their content in print and have web only features that do little for me.
And it’s a crying shame! Articles like this week’s profile of Wikipedia by Stacy Schiff are not to be missed. Unfortunately its conclusion is off:
What can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate? When I showed the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam his entry, he was surprised to find it as good as the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was flabbergasted when he learned how Wikipedia worked. “Obviously, this was the work of experts,â€Â� he said. In the nineteen-sixties, William F. Buckley, Jr., said that he would sooner “live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” On Wikipedia, he might finally have his wish. How was his page? Essentially on target, he said. All the same, Buckley added, he would prefer that those anonymous two thousand souls govern, and leave the encyclopedia writing to the experts.
Over breakfast in early May, I asked Cauz for an analogy with which to compare Britannica and Wikipedia. “Wikipedia is to Britannica as ‘American Idol’ is to the Juilliard School,” he e-mailed me the next day. A few days later, Wales also chose a musical metaphor. “Wikipedia is to Britannica as rock and roll is to easy listening,” he suggested. “It may not be as smooth, but it scares the parents and is a lot smarter in the end.â€Â� He is right to emphasize the fright factor over accuracy. As was the Encyclopédie, Wikipedia is a combination of manifesto and reference work. Peer review, the mainstream media, and government agencies have landed us in a ditch. Not only are we impatient with the authorities but we are in a mood to talk back. Wikipedia offers endless opportunities for self-expression. It is the love child of reading groups and chat rooms, a second home for anyone who has written an Amazon review. This is not the first time that encyclopedia-makers have snatched control from an élite, or cast a harsh light on certitude. Jimmy Wales may or may not be the new Henry Ford, yet he has sent us tooling down the interstate, with but a squint back at the railroad. We’re on the open road now, without conductors and timetables. We’re free to chart our own course, also free to get gloriously, recklessly lost. Your truth or mine?
You have to wonder with a conclusion like that if Stacy really gets it. My favorite analogy was made, seperately, by two people who do: 
James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds and, more recently, by Benjamin Vershbow at if:Book. Wikipedia is like the third lifeline in Who Wants to be a Millionaire:
[T]he “ask the audience” lifeline, in which the crowd in the studio is surveyed and hopefully musters a clear majority behind one of the four answers. Here, the probability issue gets even more intriguing. Your potential fortune is riding on the knowledge of a room full of strangers.
In most respects, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is just another riff on the classic quiz show genre, but the lifeline option pegs it in time, providing a clue about its place in cultural history. The perceptive game show anthropologist would surely recognize that the lifeline is all about the network. It’s what gives “Millionaire” away as a show from around the time of the tech bubble in the late 90s—manifestly a network-era program. Had it been produced in the 50s, the lifeline option would have been more along the lines of “ask the professor!” Lights rise on a glass booth containing a mustached man in a tweed jacket sucking on a pipe. Our cliché of authority. But “Millionaire” turns not to the tweedy professor in the glass booth (substitute ivory tower) but rather to the swarming mound of ants in the crowd.
And that’s precisely what we do when we consult Wikipedia. It isn’t an authoritative source in the professor-in-the-booth sense. It’s more lifeline number 3—hive mind, emergent intelligence, smart mobs, there is no shortage of colorful buzzwords to describe it. We’ve always had lifeline number 2. It’s who you know. The friend or relative on the other end of the phone line. Or think of the whispered exchange between students in the college library reading room, or late-night study in the dorm. Suddenly you need a quick answer, an informal gloss on a subject.
And, I have to add my own perspective that what we’re seeing is a a new oral tradition. Wikipedia, Wikipedia I do love thee:
I like to believe that our broadening access to communications technologies means much of our individual rich authenticity can be captured, saved and shared. And if that means a loss of technical accuracy, I’m not convinced that’s a loss of anything worth saving.
So with Wikipedia I’ll stand by my wish for a new emergence of that old oral tradition. And enjoy its honest inaccuracies along with those presented each day by both the “objective” press and the “balanced” press.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Developing a Wikipedia research policy
If:book on student guides for using wikipedia:
Alan Liu from the University of California at Santa Barbara, posted on the Humanist Listserv an interesting draft student policy statement on student use of Wikipedia. A copy got reposted to kairosnews. When it is completed, this guide will be a useful tool for teachers who are seeing increasing references to Wikipedia in student work. Liu is providing students (and the public for that matter) with a context for understanding how to use Wikipedia in both their research and daily lives.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Not notable?
Wikipedia has declared venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson not notable. Fred authored and posted his own page then watched with interest as it was discussed. Along the way he made the argument that selfish activity matters, but in the end his page was deleted and, apparently, the discussion along with it.
I consider that a big mistake. A primary strength of Wikipedia is its breadth and depth; for that I accept its probablilistic accuracy and don’t regret its lack of definitive authority. Deleting Fred narrows that breadth.
On prohibiting articles written about yourself and your friends, first an idea then a critique. The idea: Wikipedia is in search of a business model. Why not an ad supported people directory based on the Wiki model?
Now the critique. I beleive that in the model of the oral tradition our stories, as told by us, hold real and valuable truths. Prohibiting them outright loses that truth:
When a reporter - whether the Times or the local student paper - quotes our words, they choose the context those words are placed in. That context imparts meaning. Often the wrong meaning. When we tell our stories, we choose the context. With that choice the meaning can be more honest and more complete. Certainly it’s more authentic. Adam Curry was telling his truth. [So was Fred Wilson.] That’s legitimate.
An oral tradition is less technically accurate, but it is more whole and, I think, equally legitimate. In Alex Ross’s outstanding New Yorker article, The Record Effect: How technology has transformed the sound of music, Ross describes how music once was appreciated for the variations that came from live and more impromptu performance. Now, with recordings heard over and over, what we want and reward in a live setting is the precise technical replication of that recording.
Applying those notions to information, once the stories handed down to us by those who had gone before, those who were actually there, were told with their individual idiom and emphasis. That’s how we got our rich histories. Now those tales may be more technically accurate, but are they still just as rich? And are they any more honest? I don’t think so.
I like to believe that our broadening access to communications technologies means much of our individual rich authenticity can be captured, saved and shared. And if that means a loss of technical accuracy, I’m not convinced that’s a loss of anything worth saving.
So with Wikipedia I’ll stand by my wish for a new emergence of that old oral tradition. And enjoy its honest inaccuracies along with those presented each day by both the “objective” press and the “balanced” press.
RELATED: I read the Times article over the weeekend and found it not notable. Better was Lost Remote’s reaction to Donna Bogatin’s ZDNet post calling people who don’t contribute ‘freeloaders.’
Monday, April 17, 2006
Questioning the wisdom of crowds
A couple commenters on apophenia led me to Jason Scott’s speech at Notacon 3 from a couple weeks ago. Jason says, “I’m very happy with this speech...”
A lot of people thought I was going to attack Wikipedia as being “wrong” and something that should be “stopped”, which is a useless argument/approach to take, especially if you’re into freedom of expression. My main thesis is that Wikipedia’s initial design and architecture, which is now changing constantly, failed to take the reality of humanity and the way people interact with information into account, and in doing so, has wasted a nearly-incalculable amount of energy and has betrayed, to some extent, it’s promises, credo and goals. You know, minor stuff.
I’ll have to listen again, contemplate and dig deeper into some of Jason’s good criticisms. [text] [audio] My gut tells me that while he measures Wikipedia against its lofty goals, I still consider Wikipedia an extraordinary experiment so I am much more forgiving. For example, I’m pleased that the design and architecture are changing. It seems obvious that they must.
To date I excuse Jimbo Wale’s rhetorical excesses, though I may have much more to learn. The part of Jason’s rhetoric that I find troubling is his assessment of the human character:
The most frustrating part about Wikipedia is the fact that that when you make a change, somebody who wants to undo that change is just some guy. Jimbo holds this up as the great aspect of Wikipedia is that everybody gets to get their hands in it and we’re all working together but they don’t realise we kill each other. We kill each other every day. Over shit, over Nintendo games, over the fact that somebody parked in the wrong space. We do this. We’re human beings.[...]
What I think we can learn from Wikipedia is to understand that people will always act this way… With Wikipedia, if you say given this set of behaviours, and given this stage that people could put things on, people will act this way, it’s a pretty good indicator of saying “OK, well the next time I set up an organisation the next time I make something editable by the public, the next time I make the going-on, this is what’s going to happen, people are going to go on and try to destroy it, they’re going to try to destroy it on the front end, they’re going to try and destroy it from the back end.”
Now I’m no Pollyanna, and I know human beings are not ants. But I believe we can be pulled up to our higher selves or down to our lower selves. I’d look to build Levitt/Dubner Freakonomic-style incentives into the culture and architecture of Wikipedia, even as I acknowledge that today I don’t know what that means.
And while Jason is critical of Jimbo’s “control of Wikipedia” - the inference I took was that it should be more democratic - I’ve pointed to Jeff Bates’ implication that Wikipedia would benefit from being more like Open Source, “In every open-source project, he said, there is ‘a benevolent dictator’ who ultimately takes responsibility, even though the code is contributed by many. Good stuff results only if someone puts their name on it.’”
Maybe Jimbo’s not the one. His style is vastly different from that of Craig Newmark - who literally did put his name on it even as his business card lists him as co-founder and customer service rep of Craigslist. Craig and Jimbo have very different styles but likely share a more optimistic view of humankind than Jason:
Some things are fairly universal. One of those is that people pretty much everywhere have some of the same values, and pretty much everyone out there is trustworthy.
I’d add “with the right incentives.” Craig’s found some. Jimbo’s found some too but he needs to find some more.
There is a wisdom of crowds. I cling to my optimism that now we have the technology to develop the tools that will help us harvest it. Wikipedia may not be the way; but I continue to believe that it is pointing in the right direction.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
A Wikipedia error to ponder
I’ve been a farily ardent defender of Wikipedia on accuracy, placing it in the context of a new oral tradition. But I’ve also said that it’s important to look critically at Wikipedia from within an understanding of what it is and what it aims to do.
Danah Boyd’s experience raises some great questions today:
A month ago, a discussion emerged in the Talk section about whether or not i was notable and then i was nominated for deletion. My colleagues (who are also dear friends) were accused of crafting a vanity page. People wanted “proof” that i was notable; they wanted proof of every aspect of my profile. Then, when people in my field stood up for my entry in the discussion for deletion, they were attacked for not being Wikipedians. This was really intriguing to me, especially when Barry Wellman (who is an expert on social networks and online interaction) stood up for me. (I was completely honored.) Wikipedia is not prepared to handle domain experts. Of course, this is a difficult issue - how do you know someone is a domain expert? Still, something felt strange about the whole thing.
As the conversation progressed, people started editing my profile. While the earlier profile felt weird, the current profile is downright problematic. There are little mistakes (examples: my name is capitalized; there is an extra ‘l’ in my middle name; i was born in 1977; my blog is called Apophenia). There are other mistakes because mainstream media wrote something inaccurate and Wikipedia is unable to correct it (examples: i was on Epix not Compuserv and my mother didn’t have an account; i was not associated with the people at Friendster; i didn’t take the name Boyd immediately after Mattas and it didn’t happen right after my mother’s divorce; i didn’t transfer to MIT - i went to grad school at the MIT Media Lab; i’m not a cultural anthropologist). Then there are also disconcerting framing issues - apparently my notability rests on my presence in mainstream media and i’m a cultural anthropologist because it said so on TV. Good grief.
Why does mainstream media play such a significant role in the Wikipedia validation process?
Friday, March 24, 2006
Britannica hits back at Wikipedia study
In a document on their website, Encyclopaedia Britannica said that the Nature study contained “a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results”.
The scholarly slanging match prompted an equally robust response from Nature.
“We reject those accusations, and are confident our comparisons are fair” it said in a statement.
I can’t help but feel that in the end it doesn’t matter. Jabs and parries will inevitably be exchanged, yet Wikipedia continues to grow and evolve, containing multitudes, full of truth and full of error, ultimately indifferent to the censure or approval of the old guard. It is a fact: Wikipedia now contains over a million articles in english, nearly 223 thousand in Polish, nearly 195 thousand in Japanese and 104 thousand in Spanish; it is broadly consulted, it is free and, at least for now, non-commercial. At the moment, I feel optimistic that in the long arc of time Wikipedia will bend toward excellence.
My bottom line is that today we all have to develop our own “editorial judgment;” that technology gives us the tools and we no longer need accept the fiction that there is one definitive authority. In my view, Britannica was the faith-based encyclopedia, and they, steeped in their belief system, are upset that they will no longer be.
I see Wikipedia as part of a welcome return to an oral tradition. In that argument, I say that I won’t miss the lack of technical accuracy. To be clear, I won’t miss it in the oral tradition, or the Wikipedia entry, because I agree with Ray Kurzweil that old paradigms don’t die. We’re not talking about replacing the encyclopedia. We’re talking about an additional information source that can inform the others.
I don’t want one definitive source. I don’t need one definitive source. George Orwell described a world with one definitive source. I want to be empowered to make my own decision. And the freedom to choose the consensus choice or the popular choice or the contrary choice or to propose my own choice!
Download (PDF) Britannica rebuttal document and Nature statemet.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
The faith-based book (again)
Bart Ehrman was on the Daily Show tonight. His book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, explores how scribes—through both omission and intention—changed the Bible.
He was on Fresh Air back in December. Well worth a listen. I said then and I’ll use this occasion to say it here again:
In the context of the discussion of the accuracy of Wikipedia, dare I point out the huge percentage of folks in this country who read the Bible as technically accurate literal truth?
Now, I’m no Bible scholar, not even an amateur, but I know that the technology of the day required that it came down to us either as oral stories, or it was hand written and copied. Then we toss in the vagaries of translation.
But still today I live in a country where 45 out 50 states prohibit legal recognition of my committed life-partnership based largely on people’s faith in the accuracy of that book.
And we’re upset that Wikipedia is badly written and has errors?
