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THE_TOY_WEB

                                                         Sept 25, 2006
                                                         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 the web:
Part of the problem: the
"social network" sites are                       A logged-in handle is
*happy* to be toys.                              better than nothing, but
                                                 it doesn't mean the
They have no ambition                            speaker is not anonyomous.
to become anything more
serious than that.                                             (Sep, 2018)

Are they, or are they not,                               The latest jargon
a new hope for democracy?   "Bloggers" are               seems to be "verified
                            full of pretension           indentities" vs.
                            about such things,           "unverified".
                            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,
      *nothing* is reliable.
                                The real trouble, or so it
                                seems to me, with a site
    We don't need               such as wikipedia is not    THE_ROVERS
    guarantees that             lack of professional
    everyone is a               involvement, but well
    good guy, we                funded attempts at
    need ways of of             subversion, of which we're
    identifying the             going to see much more in
    bad guys.                   the future.

    Addressing the                  After his talk in       
    speech and not the              the "Long Now"          
    speaker is a noble              series, Jimmy Wales     [link]
    goal, but no one,               was asked a very
    *absolutely* no                 interesting, very
    one, actually works             difficult question:
    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
              (Aug 05, 2011)            neo-nazis.

   How we can possibly build            But how can that
   an infrastructure of the             case compare with
   future without real ids to           the resources of
   work with? Lancet doesn't            mainland China?
   publish medical research by
   anonymous contributors, why                 And what if the
   should wikipedia carry                      US Government
   summaries of that research                  (or a faction
   by anonymous agents?                        of it) is
                                               engaged in
                                               subverting
                                               wikipedia?

                                                     SURROGATE_TRUTH




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