Author: john

Watching the Wiki

Remember the tragedy of the commons? One of the problems was that nobody wants to clean up common areas. Sometimes, the work falls on an individual–like this guy who has been watching Hillary Clinton’s Wikipedia entry during the election season:

Schilling is the man who protects Hillary’s online self from the public’s hatred. He estimates that he spends up to 15 hours per week editing Wikipedia …

The fact that Schilling is married to a librarian who, he laments, “never recommends anybody use Wikipedia” (no one, no one, hates Wikipedia as much as librarians) does not diminish his vigilance. “You constantly have to police [the page],” he says, recalling the way Rudy Giuliani’s Wikipedia article declined in quality after its protectors lost interest. “Otherwise, it diverts into a state of nature.”

This makes me wonder: when can we trust a communally edited source like Wikipedia? How many people would trust an article that was on a controversial issue or one that was likely to be frequently updated because of breaking news? Can an article’s stability be measured, and might this be a function of how reliable the informaiton is?

More questions than answers on this issue… but I at least had to share the line about librarians 🙂

WordPress 2.5

WordPress 2.5 is finally out.  Hopefully the reader won’t notice any difference, even though it took quite a bit of tweaking to get the style to work :/

Lots of nice things on the back end including AJAX slickness, easy ways to add media to a post, and an asthetically pleasing interface. I’ve been watching all of the trac activity over the last few days and all I can say is: way to go WordPress team.

Connecting infrastructure investment

This quick article about a government loan to promote rural broadband scratches the surface of a connection I’d like to hear more about–how are we doing on investing in public Internet infrastructure today, when compared with past projects like highways? It turns out that it’s a difficult thing to track, but I’d agree with the author who argues it’s a “good idea–one which is long overdue.”

Perhaps we haven’t done more because of the expense of keeping up existing infrastructures?

Shaming Infringers

Winny copyright infringers ‘should be identified’ : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE

Japan is figuratively considering bringing back the stocks for copyright infringers:

a report on copyright violation issues concerning the person-to-person file sharing software Winny, proposing that Internet service providers should be required to disclose the identity of customers who have used the software to illegally exchange copyrighted movies and music. …

The service providers are required to protect the confidentiality of communications in line with the Constitution. However, the law stipulating the responsibilities of the providers allows them to disclose a person’s identity in cases where that person has clearly violated other people’s rights.

I don’t know Japanese culture well enough to say how this could turn out. It seems like an obvious effort to shame infringers, but it’s possible that it could have the opposite or even no effect.  On the other hand…

Closet pop idols breathed a little easier Thursday after the announcement of a deal between video site YouTube and a large recording rights body, allowing punters to record and post their own versions of songs by major artists like Mr. Children and Spitz without fear of legal reprisal.

Covering songs is a pretty common practice among J-Pop fans, although it appears from this article that lip syncing vids will still be off limits.