[IP] More Wikipedia "Gotcha" Silliness

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Date: August 21, 2007 10:12:21 AM EDT
To: dfarber@cs.cmu.edu
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: More Wikipedia "Gotcha" Silliness



                    More Wikipedia "Gotcha" Silliness

              http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000270.html


Greetings.  My concerns regarding the Wikipedia operational model
are fairly well known, e.g. "Wikipedia and Responsibility"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000257.html ).

So it was with considerable interest that I've noted the controversy
regarding a 24-year-old self-described "disruptive technologist," and
his tool to more easily track the origin of Wikipedia changes
("New York Times": Lifting Corporate Fingerprints From the Editing of
Wikipedia:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/technology/19wikipedia.html ).

But even the title of that article tends to belie the underlying
nature of a real problem -- the lack of accountability for most of
what's written or edited in Wikipedia.  The "Corporate Fingerprints"
bit is cute -- but what about all of the other fingerprints smeared
through virtually every byte of the Wikipedia database?

Apparently it's one thing to snicker about corporate folks who want
to correct what they perceive as errors (or, indeed, put their own
positive spin on "the facts.")  But there seems to be little interest
in figuring out who purposely defaces pages, plants false or
defaming information in the first place, or for that matter is
responsible for the more mundane, probably factual minutiae, even
just for the sake of establishing authenticity or expertise.

Wikipedia seems to be turning into a gigantic "gotcha" machine --
increasingly contaminated like a chunk of "Silly Putty" that's been
used once too often to pick up comic strip images.

The single best thing that Wikipedia could do to lend itself genuine
credibility would be to require that contributers identify
themselves -- by name, not by handles or childish aliases.  Or, as
an alternative, at the very least clearly indicate "in-line" when
unauthenticated text dominates an entry.

Ironically, our disruptive technologist's tracing mechanism will
probably have ever less value moving forward from today.  While it
will continue to be useful for retrospective analysis up to this
point in time, we can be sure that more and more of the primarily
targeted corporate Wikipedia editors will learn their lesson.

That lesson being, if you're going to edit your entry on Wikipedia,
be sure to do it through a public proxy or generic ISP account, not
through your corporate network.

So moving forward, we'll probably have even less meaningful
transparency concerning Wikipedia changes, and that Silly Putty
Syndrome will likely continue to escalate.

Given what Wikipedia could aspire to be, that's really a shame.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com



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