67 replies to this topic

[jehochman]

A few weeks ago Danny Sullivan invited my friend Durova to write a column for Search Engine Land. Durova is a Wikipedia administrator. In a site as large a Wikipedia, there are bound to be a few unbalanced individuals. Administrators are responsible to stop these people from causing trouble. Durova tries to keep her real life identity in the background to avoid harrassment.

Here's her first column:
SEO Tips & Tactics From A Wikipedia Insider

Soon after this was posted, some of her adversaries showed up and started posting nasty, and in my opinion, useless comments. Who would believe that people can get so worked up about an encyclopedia? I asked Danny to block one of the trolls. (As a result, I was accused of bullying Danny.) Eventually Danny just shut down the thread. Unfortunately, we never got a chance to properly discuss the article.

My question is, did you read the article, and what do you think about it?

Edited by jehochman, 20 July 2007 - 08:56 PM.

[Jill]

Jonathan, your link to her article is broken.

I didn't read it previously though. And I generally avoid the SEW forum for a variety of reasons!

[jehochman]

He, he. I fixed the link. Funny, I didn't notice the SEW conversation until somebody mentioned it to me. I don't go over there regularly.

[projectphp]

Well, its a bit long, and a bit unfocussed, and a bit aimed at no one (SEO professionals? Noobies???), and a bit, well, boring.

Would haveb been MUCH better as two articles.

The first one should have outlined who this dude(ette?) is, what they do, and what Wikipedia is about that causes conflicts with other groups.

The 2nd the "Eight underused Wikipedia white hat strategies" parts. As it is, it is just too long for me to really bother analysing in full (sorry!!!).

Besides, I still reckon there is nothing wrong with Wikipedia.

[arteworks]

And I generally avoid wikipedia for a variety of reasons.

[jehochman]

Why is that Matt?

[Jill]

Okay, I've read *most* of the article (and skimmed some).

I have to agree with ProjectPHP to a certain extent. There's definitely some good in that article, but it's also a bit much, especially for the typical SEL reader.

The one really good thing in the article was this:

Wikipedia white hat activity in a nutshell: Designate a particular individual to be the Wikipedia liaison. Have that person register an account and declare the conflict of interest on the account's user page. Then post suggested changes to article talk pages. For a variety of reasons this approach is safer and results in more durable changes than direct editing in conflict of interest situations.

I really didn't need to read any more than that.

[arteworks]

because there is no oversight and for every one educated person on there such as yourself there are 100 idiots on there, each of them with unfettered power to summarily impose their opinions on the world as if they were fact.

[projectphp]

And I didn't really find two sets of background helpful.

The article needed a single focus, because it had far too many. I think this is an example of a person not knowing who their audience is. Is it webmasters, newbies, sympathisers, enemies, the indfferent. Who? If one group was chosen, the article would have been a bit more focussed.

Instead, the article said too much and too little simultaneously.

My $0.02.

[Jill]

Yep, again, agree with Mike. I had difficulty figuring out who it was written for. It did presuppose you know certain things.

[qwerty]

I read the article earlier this week, before there were any comments added.

I found the opening mention of SEOs thinking of Wikipedia as a search engine a bit odd, but I figured it made sense for someone from the Wiki to connect with the search marketing community, so I just let that pass.

The bit about congressional staffers trying to delete negative information about politicians was, I thought, a good example of the wrong way to deal with negative publicity, and as reputation management is a growing aspect of the work we do, I thought it was quite apt.

The advice section was a little over-complicated, and I really doubt most of the people who contribute to Wikipedia now and then really need to be aware of all that. I expect that if anyone chose to become deeply involved and spend a considerable amount of time contributing there, those pieces of information would be more important, but they'd probably pick them all up while they're in the process of becoming an active editor.

[projectphp]

because there is no oversight and for every one educated person on there such as yourself there are 100 idiots on there, each of them with unfettered power to summarily impose their opinions on the world as if they were fact.

Well, I disagree (two links now, but I couldn;t be assed repeating myself).

But question: where does oversight exactly exist today? Scooter Libby gets pardoned, Evolution is challenged in schools, fundamentalism is on the rise, both religious of all kinds (Muslim AND Christian), as well as sceintific. Is it really fair to blame Wikipedia for not having "oversight" when the whole world doesn't?

And even then, the whole concept of oversight is flawed. Who oversigths the oversighters?

Really, without meaning to sound mean but ending up that way, those reasons for not liking Wikipedia, and they are extremely common, point more to the commenter's shortcomings than Wikipedia's, because if you can't work out which bits of Wikipedia are Kosher and which are Halal, you, not Wikipedia, have the problem.

There is no God on Earth that we can all trust 100% of the time to provide accurate oversight, and we should all view everything we read, see and learn, from Wikipedia to Al Qaeda videos to Tony Snow news conferences and Bush speak, as what it really is: commentary that will always need to be adjusted for the inherent bias that every speaker carries.

That is, unfortunately, the way life works, and it is delusional to hold onto the notion that there is "absolute rightness" without bias in anyything

Again, my $0.02.

[qwerty]

Who oversigths the oversighters?

Why, we super-intelligent, highly responsible, utterly morally upright yet quietly modest geniuses, of course.

[projectphp]

I can assume that I am included in that "we", in which case I wholeheartedly agree 100% with my fellow genius Bob!!!!!!

[arteworks]

There was an interesting piece recently I believe on CNN about the lack of oversight at wikipedia. Basically it said that journalism should be left to the journalists, those trained in responsible journalism. With the advent of blogs, wikipedia, and the like, it argued, there is no journalisitc oversight and no sense of responsibility for reporting the truth. Any citizen can now become a "journalist" without any sense of moral obligation to the community. The result is a "dumbing down" of society who views such sources as authoritative when in fact they are nothing more than opinion of mostly unskilled and unqualified individuals. Wikipedia holds itself out to be an "encyclopedia" yet it is edited by any individual on the planet who feels the urge to participate. When facts are inserted into articles which disagree with certain editor's opinions, the facts are summarily deleted. "Don't confuse people with the facts" is the de facto editing standard of wikipedia.

Here is on example from an article which discusses the recent posting on wikipedia of the death of the actor Sinbad, when in fact he is alive and well:

"Many universities and colleges do not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source in their scholarly research and papers because anyone can contribute to Wikipedia and there is no sustained or verifiable way to confirm all the information hanging in the ether of their 1.6 million articles before being published."

Now if colleges and universities are doing this, it is not just loud-mouthed arteworks. Wikipedia is not fact, it is not overseen in most cases by any individuals with journalistic or professional experience, it is nothing more than the conglomeration of opinion which reaches the level of publication on grounds of brute force and sheer will as opposed to basis in fact, despite the reality that wikipedia advertises itself as a factual "encyclopedia".