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THE_TOY_WEB
Sept 25, 2006 (raw material)
June 27, 2007
And here's a nightmare scenario for you:
wikipedia continues to increase in
popularity, to the point where it's
actually politically significant what
gets said in wikipedia articles. A Karl
Rove-type hires 100 people and tells them
to each get five wikipedia accounts, and
develop reputations as responsible
contributors. A year later, he's got 500
accounts he can play with to do spin
control.
Variation: substitute slashdot
for wikipedia. The 500 accounts
all mod each other up.
Conclusion: anonymity is only good for
toy sites; it's not for serious use. Note though, that
"anonymity" has
many meanings on
Part of the problem: the web:
the "social network"
sites are *happy* to be A logged-in handle is
toys. better than nothing,
but it doesn't mean
They have no ambition the speaker is not
to become anything more anonyomous.
serious than that.
Are they, or are they
not, a new hope for "Bloggers" are full of
democracy? pretension about such
things, but light on
follow-through.
There are some
funny obsessions
going around that
all but misses the
real problems...
The major media keeps
trumpeting cases where And this, unfortunately
wikipedia's accuracy seems to be driving
is weak: wikipedia's understanding
of itself: they feel the
Wikipedia isn't need to *respond* to
*reliable*, because these complaints, instead
you have no way of of going it's own way.
knowing if it was
written by an
authority!
Of course wikipedia
isn't reliable, The real trouble, or so it
*nothing* is reliable. seems to me, with a site
such as wikipedia is not THE_ROVERS
lack of professional
We don't need involvement, but well
guarantees that funded attempts at
everyone is a subversion, of which we're
good guy, we going to see much more in
need ways of of the future.
identifying the
bad guys.
After his talk in
Addressing the the "Long Now" [ref]
speech and not the series, Jimmy Wales
speaker is a noble was asked a very
goal, but no one, interesting, very
*absolutely* no difficult question:
one, actually works
that way.
What if the Chinese
government changed
SOURCES_CONSIDERED tactics, and
instead of trying
TWO_LEVEL to block wikipedia,
they chose to
subvert it?
He went off into
an anecdote
about dealing
with a tiny
group of 16
neo-nazis.
But how can that
case compare with
the resources of
mainland China?
And what if the
US Government
(or a faction
of it) is
engaged in
subverting
wikipedia?
SURROGATE_TRUTH
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