Comments on: The Ugly (but necessary?) side of Wikipedia

By: mortgage refinance

mortgage refinance — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:41:50 +0000

mortgage refinance…

nice!…

By: home mortgage calculator

home mortgage calculator — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:34:32 +0000

home mortgage calculator…

good luck…

By: Frog

Frog — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:51:29 +0000

You are not very intelllagent. Is Wikipedia your god. you want everything for free? Go find a different source for news. The vandalism is the best thing about wikipedia

By: Klaus Lum Burger

Klaus Lum Burger — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:50:51 +0000

LOL yes, I think we can all agree wiki vandalism is very funny, when its done intelligently…saldy I don’t see enough of it, as its ofte corrected too quickly.

By: Challenge Everything at

Challenge Everything at — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:51:00 +0000

[...] I’ve firmly established my distaste for EA’s business model back in March, but now that Battlefield 2142 is actually on shelves, I can add another tick mark to the ever-growing list of reasons to loathe EA: The invasive, data-collecting software, which Kotaku has already labeled as spyware, made by IGA Wordwide used to personalize the already monumentally lame in-game advertising. It’s a known fact that EA Games played on Xbox Live are monitored heavily, but what kind of data do they collect? On their Web site, the EA games privacy policy lists the following: “… your name, e-mail address, phone number, mobile number, home address, birth date and credit card information. In addition, we may collect demographic information such as gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, media, Internet IP address and connection, information about online activity such as feature usage, game play statistics and scores, user rankings and click paths and other data that you may provide in surveys or online profiles, for instance.” Yeah. Wait, credit card? What kind of information could they be looking for there? Aside from this being a heinous act of privacy invasion, you can’t just say no to this. Well, you kind of can — if you want to avoid the data mining, you can play offline. And by that, I mean unplug your Cat 5 cable from your computer. Keep in mind, though, that with games like Battlefield 2142, playing offline is about as fun as playing Super Smash Bros. solo. But you can’t stay offline forever — at some point you’ll need to write an essay, and until Wikipedia reaches print form, you’re gonna have to hop on the ‘net. The ‘click paths’ mentioned on the list mean IGA’s software will monitor what sites you go to and what links you click on. This will determine in-game advertising: Say you go to Chick-fil-A’s Web site. Now you’ll see those omnipresent cows hanging from a billboard behind a giant mech. Nothing more futuristic and dystopic than EAT MOR CHIKIN. The whole thing about monitoring raises a point question, though: Let’s say you “accidentally” click a link that leads to a pornographic Web site. You might just inadvertently boost the game’s ESRB rating from “T” to “AO” — who knows what business deals EA has and what ends they are willing to go to, to provide custom-tailored content to users? “Game Experience May Change During Online Play.” No fooling. [...]

By: free credit report

free credit report — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:45:01 +0000

free credit report…

oscillate Bridewell.arbitrary proceedings shouldering free credit report http://www.secu...dit-report.com/ …

By: Martin Rodgers

Martin Rodgers — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:40:25 +0000

Compare the internet to a library and Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It comes down to a lack of editorial control which means that you can have no confidence in what you read on a site like Wikipedia. I just updated a listing on Stephen Stills to say that he released a reasonably good album last year;, but what do I know – I could just have easily have slandered him. Relying on people’s good faith doth not a sustainable editorial policy make.

By: Lassi

Lassi — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 01:38:24 +0000

It seems like a piece of wiki-vandalism. Everyone uses a computer now days, it doesn’t take much intelligence to edit a post, so ofcourse, some idiot might come up and vandalise it. I guess maybe they could filter out some cuss words, but that borders on censorship. I thought for wikipaedia u had to create an account, and if you abuse the account your IP gets banned?

By: MJ

MJ — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 05:48:55 +0000

I wonder whether Wikipedia needs some sort of registration/reputation system, a la eBay. Idea would be that not only would you need to register, but that your reputation/credibility as someone who contributes to Wikipedia is rated by your peers.

Feels like a registration process by itself (like that of Yahoo! Mail) also raises the hurdle for someone to perhaps think twice before choosing to spam or vandalize a post.

Leverage this with Gary’s idea of a ‘peer review’ process, and maybe, just maybe, you get a community driven solution to the problem, while at the same time creating a reputation/credibility mechanism that helps readers better evaluate the integrity of what they are reading.

By: Michael Mahemoff#

Michael Mahemoff# — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:54:03 +0000

Michael,

I run a couple of wikis and have to deal with spam and general absurdity from time-to-time. Two observations:
* You can subscribe to RSS feeds of changes, and I think most wikis support RSS feeds for specific pages. So people can protect their “pet articles” by keeping track of changes. I expect that’s why problems are fixed so quickly. Unfortunately, the display of diffs usually sucks.
* In the spirit of open-ness that propels wikis forward, I like the idea that anyone can freely edit because it also means fixes happen straightaway. What I’d really like is a display mechanism to highlight recent changes, which one would then treat with more caution. And, by highlighting those changes, would also encourage people to fix such errors faster.

Come to think of it, why base recency on time? Why not instead base it on eyeballs? e.g. Mark as “Under Review” any items that have been viewed by less than 1000 unique clients.

By: Gary Culliss

Gary Culliss — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 23:16:56 +0000

Michael, Wikipedia should have a feature requiring that some other user approves changes before they are posted. In other words, someone could makes a proposed change and it would be posted to a “changes” area (the opposite of “change history,” sort of like a “proposed future change”). Then, when someone comes along to read the entry, they can be asked to approve the proposed change. There could be some technical rule that prevents the same IP address from making the change to prevent self-approval, etc.

By: Martin (HomeOfficeVoice)

Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:52:00 +0000

Yeah Michael could have fixied it himself – what he was doing was bringing attention to the fact that we might just be relying on Wikpedia too much.

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:39:54 +0000

Nivi, your comments are always insightful and intelligent. Thank you.

By: J. J.

J. J. — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:23:28 +0000

Oh yeah, I meant to mention that I put a warning on the IP address that performed the vandalism. This is the action you should take - IP addresses can be blocked if there are repeat attempts to vandalize. See also Wikipedia:Vandalism.

By: kareem

kareem — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:14:44 +0000

I’ve heard Jimmy Wales speak about Wikipedia several times. He’s said that at any given time, an entry on the site could be wrong / vandalized, but the average time to fix an entry is something silly–like under five minutes.

Kareem

By: J. J.

J. J. — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:12:51 +0000

Wikipedia vandalism really is pathetic. Your post makes me think twice about recommending Wikipedia to others as a great reference – at least people with kids!

Nivi, I’m not sure what your point is – language in movies and music is a whole other ball game! Are you saying that the word used above is not a big deal?

By: Nivi

Nivi — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 11:09:03 +0000

Mike, Have you seen any movies or listened to any hip hop in the last 10 years?

By: Espen Antonsen

Espen Antonsen — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 08:21:29 +0000

Free and open editing was necessary to bring Wikipedia to where it is today. However, today and in the future it will mean more & more problems for Wikipedia as a source of facts. I think Wikipedia should allow creation of new articles and editing of stubs by anyone. But well written articles should only be edited by registered users. Anonymous users should be able to suggest changes to the article which administrators must approve.

By: Stephen Sclafani

Stephen Sclafani — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 06:26:18 +0000

Your post is a little naive, Michael. The sad fact is that there are a lot of otherwise intelligent people out there that believe in some very ignorant things. One can search Google/Yahoo, if so inclined, and find hate sites on just about every group of people. The people who run these sites, and the people who visit them, are smart enough to edit wikis.

I like your idea of filters, and I also like the idea of implementing some kind of trust system, but I think as long as Wikipedia is open they will have problems with vandalism. The good news is, as you provided an example of, that there are many dedicated people out there looking for and fixing these defacements. The defacements I have seen have been fixed within a couple of minutes of being posted.

By: Casey Parsons

Casey Parsons — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 05:21:06 +0000

Thanks, Michael.

We all encounter hatred and malice far too often. There are real problems in America and around the world, but I’m confident things are getting better. We can see how drastically things have changed in only the last few decades. There will always be some who believe themselves to be superior, or others to be inferior. I hope, and believe, that things will get better.

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 05:01:00 +0000

It’s a good point and I should have done that. The fact is that even though I know in the back of my mind that I could edit it out, it didn’t even occur to me.

I’m hoping that by writing about it and making a suggestion I can help prevent this in the future.

By: Figo

Figo — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 04:41:47 +0000

You know what I don’t get? you could have edited that entry yourself. instead you chose to write about it in your blog, and wait for someone else to actually act. would you call it typical “web 2.0″ behavior?