The Nagging Trouble with UGC

While I merely chuckled when an Egyptian official said that academics should be the only ones to select the new 7 Wonders of the World, there are moments when the uprising of User Generated Content can (and should) result in concern.

In a story from the BBC (and captured by the Travolution Blog), a new online tool called Wikipedia Scanner can search the over 5 million edits to Wikipedia pages and ID the editors.

"The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic," a "racist", and a "bigot". An entry about his audience now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded."

Beyond the DNC, the story claims that the CIA has edited the page on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Vatican has edited the page of the Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams.

And, while I am SURE that all of these editors have vitally important, insider information that we all should know...it sadly threatens the basis of the User Generated Knowledge Base.

Comments

[Max]

Orwell's dark vision of a dynamically modifiable history required the machinery of an authoritarian Stalinist state. Modern technology has given that power to Stalinists and other leftist activists to rewrite history in the fly at Wikipedia. Anything that can be bent to the purposes of the left is going to be bent until it is broken. These people have camped on some entries to keep them aligned with their propaganda. If they break Wikipedia they will move on to something else.

[DaveS]

My thoughts are geared toward the anonymity and the opaqueness of the internet. We once thought that it was kind of a mask or screen that we or any user could hide behind. The WikiScanner shows that identities are not always hidden, which should only help UGC sites. Sites like Trip Advisor have been monitoring IP addresses and postings for a while. They sniff out the bogus ones and do their best to keep things accurate. Same for WikiScanner. People will now think twice before they tweak a Wiki entry in an inappropriate direction……or at least they won’t do it on company time.

[Bill Geist]

Thoughtful responses, both.

WikiScanner does provide some transparency...but like effective pro spammers, I'm sure the nefarious among us will find a way to mask their identity or, worse, fake an identity to shift blame. Just a matter of time.

And Max, I just this year re-read 1984 (my daughter was reading it in school and our conversations reminded me of what a fascinating read it was when I was in High School). And, like Atlas Shrugged, it sure reads differently against today's backdrop. However, when the right finds out about the internet, I have no doubt that they'll be just as zealous in their attempt to restate history :)