Slashdot Mirror
See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia
Decius6i5 writes "Caltech grad student Virgil Griffith has launched a search tool that uncovers whitewashing and other self-interested editing of Wikipedia. Users can generate lists of every edit to Wikipedia which has been made from a particular IP address range. The tool has already uncovered a number of interesting edits, such as one from the corporate offices of Diebold which removed large sections of content critical of their electronic voting machines. A Wired story provides more detail and Threat Level is running a contest to see who can come up with the most interesting Wikipedia spin job."
As much as it may astound us, even CIA agents are real people with real feelings and interests. (Well, to the extent that Buffy epsidoe music lyrics can count as a "real interest"...)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Why is there nothing on the discussion page? If you're fighting someone on the main page, you need to document it on the discussion page.
You do realize that the 7th Edition came out in 1827, right? Its funny. Laugh.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Second of all, the value of this quote helps a person to understand a commonly misunderstood by computer geeks. Computers are basically abacuses. They do boolean logic. They create answers. However, intelligence asks questions. We don't have a tool yet that can ask a question, and until we do, the only intelligent system in the universe that know of will be the human mind. Too often, people, both programmers and non-programmers alike, think that a computer can solve all the problem. However, that doesn't reflect reality. Human intellect needs to perceive and pose the question, and then use a tool to solve that problem, such as progamming a computer to solve that problem. But back in the working world, practical answers to real questions are quite valuable You have just shown exactly what Picasso was trying to enlighten you to. You need to have a good question first, in order to get a good answer. Or any answer, for that matter. That quote just strikes me as one of those pseudo-intellectual sayings that seems brilliant until subjected to a moment of rational thought. So you have no use for questions? That tells me you haven't spent a moments time thinking about the implications of this quote.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It's possible that many of the edits are NOT deliberate corporate acts. Rather, I would imagine a prideful employee may see some controversial items in the article and would rather see them removed. I can see a situation where I uncover a defamatory comment about my company in wikipedia. I would likely interpret it as sensationalism or determine it to be minor compared to the accomplishments of my company. After all, why focus on a few minor negatives when the positives should shine through? Some may call it spin, but I could argue the "controversy" sections fit into the same category. So how does this relate to the article? Even dedicated employees need 15 min. break to browse wikipedia once in a while. So a random employee edits at work without any real company input and voila, slashdot labels the company as corrupt for having whitewashed the article.