Japanese Bureaucrats Reprimanded for Wikipedia Editing

sufijazz writes "Six bureaucrats in the Japanese agricultural ministry have been reprimanded for working on the job ... for Wikipedia. The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours. These included over 250 entries about robots in anime. '"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official, Tsutomu Shimomura ... The ministry's internal inquiry followed recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the internet encyclopaedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their personal views. The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Mr Shimomura said. '"

Comments

Censorship

[metlin]

Shouldn't there be a censorship icon, rather than a funny one?

Seriously. Sure, these people may have been doing it during work, but a ban on what's probably one of the world's most popular encyclopedias because people are contributing to a compendium of knowledge (leaving their biases aside)? Isn't that a little ridiculous and over the board?

It's unfortunate, more than funny. Anime or not.

Re:Censorship

[ZiakII]

Did you miss this part? for Wikipedia. The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours

If they had gotten in trouble for doing it not during work hours I could see it being censorship, but they were doing it during work hours.

Re:Censorship

[metlin]

No, I was talking about this part -

The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry...

Sure, some people were wasting their time doing that stuff, but it is an encyclopedia, for crying out loud. Disabling access to the site from the ministry because a handful few were obsessed about spending time on it during work? Definitely over the top.

It's like blocking Slashdot because a bunch of people were commenting obsessively. Especially when you consider the fact that it is a bloody encyclopedia, not a porn site (it may amount to the same amount of time-wasted, but still, it would be of consequence to others in the ministry who may genuinely use Wikipedia as a resource).

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... no? You're at work, do your job. Don't screw off editing Gundam articles on Wiki.

Man, with attitudes like this, no wonder the Japanese are overtaking Americans economically...

Re:Censorship

[timmarhy]

People are far to quick to cry foul and scream censorship.

they aren't prevented from doing the edits, they just have to do it in THEIR OWN TIME. government computers and resources are not there to contribute to wikipedia.

Re:Censorship

[metlin]

Wait - so you are telling me that is there a ministry wide ban on an encyclopedia because all of six people spent their time obsessively editing various article.

Yeah, sure.

People are far to quick to cry foul and scream censorship.

No, people are too quick to give up their rights without thinking back to the reasons. If there was a ministry-wide obsession, fine. But six people and everyone in the ministry (in a democracy, no less) is banned from accessing the website? And people do not think this is a bit extreme at all?

Wow.

Re:Censorship

[Ferzerp]

Rights?

They are at work.

I've never heard of the right to unfiltered internet access at the workplace...

Re:Censorship

[flyingsquid]

Don't you see what is really going on here? The Japanese government is trying to stop leaks from the ministry about their top secret military research. This includes their top-secret giant robot research, and their genetic laboratory's efforts to create a race of super-soldiers with spiky blonde hair!

Re:Censorship

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I pretty much agree. I think as a first offense for excessive dawdiling, it would only make sense to ban people that have been shown to waste a lot of company time on non-work related activities. A company wide or department wide ban is definitely overboard.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

"It's like blocking Slashdot because a bunch of people were commenting obsessively."

Yeah, a lot of offices do that. Along with other potential time wasting web sites. Its not because of censorship, its because they want their employees doing their job instead of surfing the net. Plus it wastes network resources, which believe it or not are not free. Many employers ban employees from using their network for personal use.

And yes, surfing the Wikipedia is almost always personal use. It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss. Yes it certainly has its uses, but that is not one of them.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your job is to edit Wikipedia?

welcome to reality, 4-digit.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Editing a public Wiki on one's work computer would probably be acceptable within the US Dep't of Agriculture's Limited Personal Use policy as long as it didn't interfere with offical duties or use an appreciable amount of bandwidth.

http://www.ocio.usda.gov/directives/doc/DN3300-011.htm

I'm writing this post from a USDA computer right now, of course I'm not on the clock.

Re:Censorship

[raddan]

Especially when you consider the fact that it is a bloody encyclopedia, not a porn site (it may amount to the same amount of time-wasted, but still, it would be of consequence to others in the ministry who may genuinely use Wikipedia as a resource). We can't go having well-educated public servants!

Seriously, if they're that concerned about it-- run HTTP to Wikipedia through a proxy. Disable edits. I can see why they would just block it-- this is a knee-jerk reaction and blocking the whole site is fast and easy-- but it's still a stupid thing to do.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

I disagree with that assertion. I often use Wikipedia to look up terms that a client asks me about that I have never heard before, if only so that I can get someone more informed to contact them. For work use I find it invaluable.

Re:Censorship

[shanen]

Hmm... It's pretty hard to define work-related surfing. I don't think it was /., but some other non-official source where I first heard about a major business deal that had really large effects on my division of the company. That was several extra days of warning to help brace myself before the 'stuff' started officially hitting the fan.

With regards to this topic I'm kind of embarrassed to be so far behind the curve, since I live in Japan and I should have heard this story a day or two before it got to the /. grapevine via Scotland. I could even read bits of the Japanese newspapers on it... Not worth the effort for the sake of /., however.

Anyway, my basic feeling is that I would basically regard this as a waste of my taxpayer yen, even though I know a lot of office work (and not just in government offices) is just sitting around while nothing happens. Actually, I sort of approve of government officials not doing anything, and sometimes think we'd be better off if there were even fewer of them not doing it. Still, I think it would be better if they were filling their time by reading stuff more relevant to their actual jobs, though I might cut them a bit more slack if they were doing it in English and improving their English writing skills...

Re:Censorship

[unlametheweak]

Its not because of censorship, its because they want their employees doing their job instead of surfing the net. Plus it wastes network resources, which believe it or not are not free. Many employers ban employees from using their network for personal use.

Unless doing research on the Internet is part of your job description, then almost everything one does on the Internet (as opposed to an Intranet) is for personal use. It would make more sense for companies to not offer Internet access at all, or just have a whitelist of acceptable sites to use. And if you did need to do even a modicum of research for your job, then it would not make sense to blacklist one of the few most useful sites around (Wikipedia or Slashdot).

And as for the censorship issue. Yep, it is censorship. It doesn't matter whether it may be justified or not, but it still is censorship. You could look up that word on wikipedia.org if it is not being censored from you.

And why not through in one last rebuttal, even though it may seem quite redundant to the / community; Wikipedia and Slashdot are not bandwidth hogs. Sorry mate but your "wastes network resources" has not weight with me.

Re:Censorship

[stephanruby]

Seriously. Sure, these people may have been doing it during work, but a ban on what's probably one of the world's most popular encyclopedias because people are contributing to a compendium of knowledge (leaving their biases aside)? Isn't that a little ridiculous and over the board?

Yes, a little bit. They could have just blocked wikipedia's url arguments for editing and discussing pages.

Re:Censorship

[noidentity]

I guess you'd call it censorship if any company enforced limits on what sites employees were allowed to visit and contribute to during working hours? Abuse of the word waters down its meaning, leaving talk of real censorship more difficult.

Re:Censorship

[noidentity]

It's censorship only if the sole reason for blocking access is to prevent free expression of ideas. In this case, it's a blunt solution to the (apparent) problem of something that's distracting employees from the work they're there to do. Now, if the company tried to prevent them from editing the Wiki outside of work, then it would be censorship. I fear this word is going down the same path as "steal" and "theft", being watered down to "doing something I don't like". What word will we use for the suppression of expression?

Re:Censorship

[timmarhy]

1. you've never worked a day in your life have you?

2. the work place is not a democracy 3. they haven't given up any rights at all - they can still edit to their hearts content FROM HOME.

Re:Censorship

[KamuZ]

True but then again, it's cheaper and faster to block a site than install a proxy to disable Wikipedia edits.

And don't get me wrong, i know people will say they can do that with X and Y software in 5 minutes but you need to understand you are not in home or in an enviroment to test stuff, there are politics and guidelines to follow. In fact, if they could justify Wikipedia is useful for their work, i'm pretty sure they will work with something like a filter to edits or just monitoring to see what employees use. Remember, just because your employee gives you internet that doesn't mean you can use them as you want.

Re:Censorship

[metlin]

1. No, I just happen to hire other people who work for me.

2. The work place may not be a democracy, but it is the *ministry* of a democratic country that's banned the site for everyone working at that ministry.

3. It is the fact that the actions of a few have caused them to block access to the encyclopedia to everyone else. If they did not want people editing, there are other ways of doing it, rather than instituting a ministry-wide ban.

Re:Censorship

[1u3hr]

If they had gotten in trouble for doing it not during work hours I could see it being censorship, but they were doing it during work hours.

In TFA "the civil servants together made 408 entries ... since 2003".

So six civil servants made 408 entries in 3 years. An average of 22 entries per man-year.

Assume one hour per entry, they were goofing off for less than one hour every two weeks. Lots of workers goof off for at least that every day. Were these guys really worse than their colleagues? Or just unlucky to be caught? (Too many rhetorical questions?)

Re:Censorship

[timmarhy]

1. haha

2. It makes no difference, it's a work place like any other.

3. The actions of a few ruining it for everyone? NOW WAY MAN!!!!! welcome to the world.

Re:Censorship

[timmarhy]

erm "NO WAY MAN". 12 hour days no good for brain.

Re:Censorship

[unlametheweak]

Your quote:

It's censorship only if the sole reason for blocking access is to prevent free expression of ideas.

Redefining the meaning of words to match one's own tastes and standards is quite common and unfortunate.

From (the censored) Wikipedia:

Censorship is defined as the removal and/or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

In the case of employees miss-using company time, well that is a completely different issue. Whether you agree with censorship or not, or whether you want to define censorship with your own narrow terms is a completely different issue. But in the case of employees miss-using company time a more effective measure would be individual punishments and not collective punishment. A more apt approach would be individual employee counseling and verbal or written warnings. If I were a Manager I would be able to tell that productivity is down without having to ask the IT department to check up on the employees. Obviously I am not lame enough to be considered management material and NEVER expect to be offered a management position.

In general it would be better to allow personal but modest use of the Internet during none-critical or busy hours of the work day. Keeping employees happy actually seems to increase productivity and employee-retention and keep them motivated. As I've said, if the company doesn't want people using the Internet, then they shouldn't offer it. But treating employees (or students for that matter) like they live in some type of prison where they are subject to restrictions will only harbor animosity and resentment. If you don't trust your employees then you shouldn't be in management. And if your employees are untrustworthy then they shouldn't be working for you. Either way the company either made the wrong hiring decisions or they just can't manage period. Excuse my Management rant, but I've been managed all my life by incompetents. My resentment to irrational and ubiquitous mediocrecy should be excused. I must be well outside the bell curve of "normal". Perhaps slashdot should hire me ;)

Re:Censorship

[Znork]

"Unless doing research on the Internet is part of your job description,"

I'd suggest the only jobs that dont implicitly include doing research on the internet today would be those for whom you dont even need to have finished primary school to be qualified for.

Internet access has bypassed having an education in importance for how well educated and informed your workforce is. Educations fade, get outdated, and the human brain is notoriously bad at accurate recollection of rarely used data, things that internet access is particularly good at making up for.

"then almost everything one does on the Internet (as opposed to an Intranet) is for personal use."

Yeah, well, half the stuff I do at home is for work use, so I could send them a bill. Probably more common in the IT industry, but still.

Re:Censorship

[maxwell demon]

But is it really much harder to only block links of the form http://*.wikipedia.org/*?*edit* instead of http://*.wikipedia.org/*?

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Ta bu shi da yu, we all know your interest in Wikipedia, so stop astroturfing.

Anyway, I have no beef with any workplace that blocks access to Wikipedia - in fact, Wikipedia and gratuitous abuse are probably the only two things I would want avoided. In the latter case, I'd make exception where there is a need to research abuse. Timewasting at any site is also cause for castigation.

In fact, thinking of this year, this article sums up perfectly the two biggest problems I've had with one particular colleague:

1. Supplying inaccurate, misleading or biased information on the basis of research that was clearly from Wikipedia and following only Wikipedia's links on a particular subject.
   
2. His penchant for what I think is called (though forgive me if I'm not up on the terms) "loli anime", and his desire to constantly make references and occasionally provide me with links.
   

My initial experience: The first 10 mistakes I found on Wikipedia in my field - half of which were the result of fundamental "undergraduate" conceptual misunderstandings, rather than simple factual slips - I corrected. That was in a couple of days. The next dozen or so, I put a note in the talk page, having judged that a well researched rewrite would take several evenings. After a week or two, I finally asked myself if my experience was typical. I found occasional critical press articles, but what interested me more were the essays and rants by historians: particularly how they had to battle particular people.

Wikipedia is wrong and immoral on so many levels. It is not an encyclopedia because its primary criterion for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. It destroys the spirit of the Internet as comprising many autonomous peers. It is a logical consequence of the editing method that an accurate reference is never available: correctness is not proportional to number of supporters or availability of resources to defend one's contributions; what is more, even if a particular non-contentious page "tends toward accuracy" (and some do), this is a theoretical aim, entirely irrelevant to the visitor who only views the page at one moment in time. It is only technically non-profit: it provides its owner(s) with money and control well beyond what would be permitted in a UK charity.

It used to be that one could say "there is nothing you can find on the Internet that you need to go to Wikipedia to find", though I am greatly saddened that some colleagues who previously contributed to properly managed sites are now spending their time building Wikipedia - though the edit log is useful for revealing to them how their work is being mutilated by those who can't even write a coherent sentence, let alone reference. A 15 year old kid is going to have more time to stand his ground than a 38 year old researcher, so the battle is immediately lost; Wikipedia then becomes argued not in terms of academic quality but in terms of "ideally, it'd work!" or "it gets gradually better!" or, worst of all, "it's popular, so it must be good!" So is Windows.

When you donate to Wikipedia, you are mostly making Wales richer. You are helping centralise control on the Internet. You are destroying the nature of scholarship: what was once produced by educated individuals with a demonstrable record of competence is now game for all.

(Others not aware of Wikipedia's rotten-to-the-core problems might want to start at The Wikipedia Review - as with any site, beware of bias from both directions: this site does not claim to be an encyclopedia, after all ;-).)

Re:Censorship

[loganrapp]

How's about you read that second paragraph from your own link, there?

Typically censorship is done by governments, religious groups, corporations, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of official secrets, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship when it remains within reasonable bounds. Because of this, the term "censorship" often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy.

The spirit of censorship is that it's an inappropriate/repressive withholding of said information.

Stopping tax-paid workers from revising history about motherfucking Gundam during the work hours that the people pay for does not constitute censorship.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not an encyclopedia because its primary criterion for inclusion is verifiability, not truth.

This is nonsense. The Encyclopedia Britannica has articles on many things that are not true -- Greek mythology, for example. It includes these things, even though they are not true, because it is verifiable that people believed in them once. How does this differ from Wikipedia's policy?

Re:Censorship

[QuantumG]

Or, ya know, being able to zone out the futility of the office by contributing something productive to Wikipedia actually manages to keep you from going insane and killing your boss for another day.

But yeah, I suppose if you're willing to put up with them blocking your access to things instead of just quitting and going to work for an employer who is less of a nazi then they can get away with anything.

Re:Censorship

[houghi]

What companies should realize is that they try to solve a solcial problam with a technical solution. No intenet? Right, I will read a book instead.

Also if you want to block certain sites, then be prepared to close all sites for everybody, expet those that are actualy needed. Yes, some departyments might be needing to look up things, but about 99% of the things that people need to look up at a company will be withing certain websites/domains. My guess is that at my comany (500 people) we could do with about 10 sites.

Bandwith in Japan is not realy an issue as we have seen.

Not blocking everything (for everybody, including the CEO) will just be a loosing batte.

Several companies I have seen do just that and then have PCs for general usage standing around. So if you can not live withouth your personal email, you can use it during your breaks.

Re:Censorship

[mangastudent]

A 15 year old kid is going to have more time to stand his ground than a 38 year old researcher, so the battle is immediately lost....

Very true ... if you make your scope too wide. After I noticed the sorts of problems you mention (which include one fired senior MIT professor who is now a Wikipedia crank/semi-vandal), I decided to pick one topic, and specifically one article, and defend only that article.

However, if I'd picked e.g. General Relativity, that approach wouldn't work, something that big and notable cannot I suspect be defended by one person.

Re:Censorship

[owlnation]

Did you miss this part? for Wikipedia. The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours If they had gotten in trouble for doing it not during work hours I could see it being censorship, but they were doing it during work hours.

The true irony being that they were editing trivial pages from work computers for fun. Whereas in all probability their bosses or agents are altering more serious pages from anonymous computers to avoid being seen as tampering with information. Anyway, Wikipedia quite routinely bans IP addresses -- including whole country's IP address from its site -- so it's only fair perhaps for someone to return the favor every now and again?

Censorship is evil -- censorship is an intrinsic part of Wikipedia. Vanity is a precursor for evil -- Wikipedia is an exercise in vanity. Such is the nature of Wikiality.

Re:Censorship

[slashqwerty]

It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss.

I certainly use Wikipedia at work. I've used it to look up the ASCII chart. Look up the subset sums problem. Get a quick refresher on some design patterns. And a few other things. It can be quite handy on occasion.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I, Zeus, will turn you into a goose if you continue to slander us Greek gods! You have been warned!

Re:Censorship

[YttriumOxide]

I use Wikipedia very often at work - for work related things. I consider it an excellent starting point for a general overview of a topic. I never expect it to be 100% accurate, and realise fully that it can be biased. But if there's a topic I've never even heard of, and want to get an idea of what it is at a fundamental level, Wikipedia provides me the information.

To use a real world example. I work in the business equipment industry (copiers/printers/scanners/MFPs). The only kinds of scanning I was familiar with were TWAIN and the various "send" methods such as FTP, Email, SMB and so on. Someone asked me a question about ISIS... Right, first step - check Wikipedia and figure out what on earth ISIS is, determine the basics of how it works, and then answer the question. Should further questions have come (they didn't), I would then have a good base of ideas in which direction I should extend my research. Without Wikipedia, yes, I could have just Googled it and found the information I needed, but the level of trust I could put in that information would be no greater or less than my results from Wikipedia.

(and before any scanner geeks come along and tell me that I should have known about ISIS considering what I do for a living - none of our products handle ISIS and I'd only been in the industry 3 years at the time, so could hardly be expected to know EVERY piece of technology associated with the field, especially when it's not something I've direct contact with)

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

"Unless doing research on the Internet is part of your job description, then almost everything one does on the Internet (as opposed to an Intranet) is for personal use."

I would disagree with that. There are plenty of legitimate resources on the net. For instance as a Java programmer, I often find myself accessing the official JDK Javadoc and related resources from SUN.

"And as for the censorship issue. Yep, it is censorship. It doesn't matter whether it may be justified or not, but it still is censorship. You could look up that word on wikipedia.org if it is not being censored from you."

Again, the wikipedia is not the appropriate resource for such a question. The appropriate resource here would be the dictionary, where under the word 'censor' you would find

A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.

That is really not what is happening here.

"And why not through in one last rebuttal, even though it may seem quite redundant to the / community; Wikipedia and Slashdot are not bandwidth hogs. Sorry mate but your "wastes network resources" has not weight with me."

They are if half your office is using them when they should be working.

Re:Censorship

[vtcodger]

***And yes, surfing the Wikipedia is almost always personal use. It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss.***

I don't know how you came to this quite remarkable conclusion, but I think that there is a flaw in your thinking somewhere. Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. I wouldn't base an important decision entirely on what the Wikipedia says, but as a starting point, it is often (I'd say usually) a better starting point than a broadly focused Google search.

Just to make sure that I'm not fantasizing, I picked some subjects that I know enough about to judge the adequacy and where the knowledge was not gained through the Wikipedia. The articles on Black Hole Routing and Forland Basins (a geologic term) were perfectly OK. On the other hand, there wasn't anything on Python's for ... else construct. (Conventional for loop followed by a block to be executed it break is not used to exit the for loop).

Overall, I can't think why one wouldn't go to Wikipedia first. If you're doing serious research, you need to go further of course. But you need to do that with any encyclopedia -- including Britannica which is far from error/bias free and was (the last time I looked) weak on many fields like Information Technology where Wikipedia is pretty good.

The article deals with a different issue -- employees playing with Wikipedia when they are supposed to be doing what they are paid for. In fact, it specifically says that the objection wasn't to the Wikipedia per se and that there wouldn't have been a problem if the employees had been editing Wikipedia entries on subjects related to their work.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

While I don't have specific knowledge of your job function, I'm going to assume you do some sort of customer service job and your responsibilities involve answering questions your clients may have. If I pay someone in customer service to answer a question for me and then find that they are looking up the answer in an encyclopedia (be it the Wikipedia or World Book), I'm not going to be very happy with them.

The Wikipedia (or World Book, or any other encyclopedia) is great for looking up a subject you heard mentioned on TV or something you are simply curious about. In other words, it is great for dilettantish pursuits of knowledge. For example, I just used it to look up World Book to ensure the encyclopedia I was referencing was still in existence. However, if you are a paid professional, you should have sufficient knowledge of the subject you are dealing with to find a better source.

Here is a rule of thumb. The Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. So before you use it for a particular purpose, ask yourself this. Could I look this up in World Book and not feel bad about myself for doing that? If the answer is no, find a better source.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

"don't know how you came to this quite remarkable conclusion, but I think that there is a flaw in your thinking somewhere. Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. "

If your boss is paying you to write a proposal on something, you had better already be at least familiar with the subject. Or at least familiar enough with the general subject area to be able to find legitimate sources without its help.

Re:Censorship

[bigstrat2003]

And as for the censorship issue. Yep, it is censorship. It doesn't matter whether it may be justified or not, but it still is censorship. You could look up that word on wikipedia.org if it is not being censored from you. No, it would be censorship if the site were being blocked for its content. Instead, it's being blocked because it's wasting their employees' time. An extreme response, yes, but hardly censorship.

And why not through in one last rebuttal, even though it may seem quite redundant to the / community; Wikipedia and Slashdot are not bandwidth hogs. Sorry mate but your "wastes network resources" has not weight with me. Good for you, but it does have weight with some network admins/employers. Whether it has weight with you is not the issue here.

Re:Censorship

[bigstrat2003]

No one said it wasn't extreme, we said it isn't censorship. There's a big difference between the two things. The block seems unrelated to the content of the site, thus, it isn't censorship. Moreover, government office or not, they're under no obligation whatsoever to provide their employees with access to any web site at all. The response is certainly extreme, and this situation should have been dealt with differently... however, it is in no way censorship.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Interestingly, you assume wrongly. Perhaps rereading what I wrote might be nice? I deal with highly technical issues, but every now and again a client sends us a curveball. For instance, I was once asked if our product supported BPEL. I had no idea what that actually was, but a short look at Wikipedia helped point me in the right direction. I got the appropriate developer to answer the question.

Client, a fairly major bank, was actually very happy. They got the appropriate person quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

"Interestingly, you assume wrongly. Perhaps rereading what I wrote might be nice?"

I did. The only hint you gave as to your job function was that you are asked questions by clients. If you get offended when people get the wrong idea regarding your job responsibilities, write more clearly.

"For instance, I was once asked if our product supported BPEL. I had no idea what that actually was, but a short look at Wikipedia helped point me in the right direction."

But you had a general idea of the domain he was talking about, correct? You knew (or at least could have guessed) it was probably a technology format, correct? Then a true professional would have looked in a more reliable domain specific source and gotten a better, quicker answer.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The Encyclopedia Britannica has articles on many things that are not true -- Greek mythology, for example.

You are completely misunderstanding the verifiability policy. In this case, the "truth" is that "people once believed in the Greek gods", not that "there were/are Greek gods".

"Verifiability" would be noting that sufficient Google hits indicate belief in Greek gods, then writing an article that Greek gods exist. Someone would soon come along and find this nonsense and turn the article into one indicating the phenomenon of belief. This would be fiercely reverted by staunch believers, and five dozen edits later, they would be permitted to insert a small section, "Criticism of Greek god belief". Another 20 edit/reverts will involve insertion and removal of the word "controversial" from the first paragraph of the article.

Meanwhile, any tome worth referencing for something less trivial than Simpsons episodes would not have these problems, because:

1. The criteria for inclusion would be "truth" in the sense of "uncovered by the process of scholarship": referencing of reliable materials (i.e. those that have previously passed the same tests), peer review, etc.
   
2. Those who haven't demonstrated sufficient competence - as an academic must pass exams, publish papers, etc. - wouldn't be allowed near any edit functionality.
   

HTH. Seriously, though, try quoting from Wikipedia in any vaguely academically inclined setting - would would hopefully include high school and in a professional workplace (at University, it goes without saying) - and listen to your supervisor's criticisms. They're not trying to be bloody-minded, they're merely interested in advancing the state of the art in their field - and they know Wikipedia isn't going to help with that.

Re:Censorship

[DaleGlass]

Don't see what's wrong with looking it up on Wikipedia. If you look at the wikipedia page, you'll notice it has lots of links on the bottom which look like the "more reliable domain specific sources" you want.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the wikipedia page, you'll notice it has lots of links on the bottom which look like the "more reliable domain specific sources"

And that's mistake number 2 of the casual Wikipedia user (mistake number 1 is faith in the content).

By what criteria are these lists of links included? If I put up a complex troll site with "evidence" that Leonard Euler was actually a one-eyed transvestite (ok, 50%..) whose results were mostly due to his negro dwarf lover Brian, is there any reason whatsoever it should be included in a biography of Euler? Absolutely not, because my source hasn't passed any sort of academic analysis. Now assume I get some of the math-ignorant LGBT community onside, teaching them that the canonical histories of Euler intentionally suppress the truth to reinforce the straight white male hegemony. The news reaches some LGBT publications, and the fact is now "verifiable". In goes the link. In goes a comment.

What mechanism at Wikipedia exists to stop this hypothetical? Original research is explicitly discouraged, which usually extends to ruling out an investigation of the original source of some fact - the emphasis is on "how widely is it reported?", with "will anyone notice it?" coming up a close second ("assume unbiased good faith from strangers" is as retarded as "leave your Macbook Pro on a park bench with a NO STEALING sign"). This is anti-scholarship. It is the method by which successful Public Relations companies operate: astroturf popularity, sell it to lazy journalists as news.

Re:Censorship

[acm]

Man, with attitudes like this, no wonder the Japanese are overtaking Americans economically...

Wait, the article is about the Japanese goofing off at work, and you find a way to point the finger at lazy Americans?

Oh, I see what you did there...

Re:Censorship

[unlametheweak]

If I pay someone in customer service to answer a question for me and then find that they are looking up the answer in an encyclopedia (be it the Wikipedia or World Book), I'm not going to be very happy with them.

Your expectations are too high. I've done customer service in the past. If I ever sound cynical about my employers it is largely do to my work in the customer service field. My professional experience has been inadequate product training with little or no resources available to the employees to reference. It's interesting because I've only done support for major brand name products, and these companies don't bother supplying their call-centre's with useful things like manuals, or even url references to internal or external resources. And yes, a lot of times for out-of-warrenty products people pay two dollars a minute for people like me to google for information (which can be hit-or-miss). The worst case I remember was when Windows XP first came out and we were supporting people who used Windows XP. We didn't have any product training on XP and we didn't have any computers at work that had XP on it, so I would constantly be asking people "What do you see on the screen?". Yep, people were paying two dollars a minute for this. With another company I would ask the customer to get out their manual and read me what it says. It was embarrassing for me, but at least I didn't make up answers like a lot of people did. Yep my talk times were unusually high and I never got promoted or even employee of the month, but I never made things up just to get customers off the phone (as often happens).

Don't expect much if you have to call "customer service". Wikipedia in my experience often has more useful information (especially the references) about a company or product than a lot of corporate Web sites do. This is not good, but is reality. Perhaps things have improved somewhat over the years, but I remain doubtful and would never pay for consumer-level support. I've never done enterprise-level support, but have worked with and talked to enterprise support people. Expect a bit more from them, but they are often just kids straight out of college with little experience (but with many more hours worth of formal company / product training).

Re:Censorship

[jc42]

>Increasingly Wikipedia IS a legitimate resource for getting a first take on a subject that one is not familiar with. "

If your boss is paying you to write a proposal on something, you had better already be at least familiar with the subject. Or at least familiar enough with the general subject area to be able to find legitimate sources without its help.

Why? In all too many cases, if you're working on a proposal to be presented to management, the wikipedia articles on the topic will contain far more information that you can possibly include in your PowerPoint presentation.

Yeah, you can investigate the "legitimate sources" if you like. If you want to really understand the topic, you'll do that. But don't kid yourself. You're not doing further research to satisfy management. You're educating yourself. In the 10 minutes you're allotted, you won't have time to present any of that in-depth stuff. And you won't get any in-depth questions, either; the questions you'll get will be answerable from the wikipedia articles.

(What, me jaded and cynical? Nah! ;-)

Re:Censorship

[unlametheweak]

I think the point that people are trying to make here is that Wikipedia can be used as a reference (not a sole reference), and that in general it is worth using (if people had major problems with it they wouldn't be using it). I don't get the impression that people are using Wikipedia for mission critical work; for that there are many sources that should be used (including Wikipedia), but Wikipedia can be a good starting point. I also have the impression that people here are aware of the limitations of Wikipedia. Caveat Emptor is always the rule, and I'm sure the / crowd tends to use this more than others. A person should be skeptical of all information they receive no matter what the source.

Slashdot too can be a good research tool. But / also should be used as merely a starting point or to expand upon ideas. I would not imply ignorance from a researcher just because they use something that isn't as verifiable as one would like. There are times that articles in peer-reviewed, prestigious scientific journals and magazines are found to be completely bogus afterall (like the journal Nature. I will leave you one reference for good measure: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/25/britannica_wikipedia_nature/). Tools like / and Wikipedia help to expand knowledge, and are not the be-all and end-all.

It seems like you are being too critical in defending your argument against professionals using Wikipedia. I would think even people with post-doctorate degrees in subjects like Linguistics or Literature may need to use a reference to look up the spelling of a word in Google or Wiktionary (for example). Even I need to do this sometimes, and yet I can always tell when I get the American version of the word as opposed to the British or Canadian version of the word, and I know to correct this. Obvious errors would also be noticeable, but I still find non-authoritative tools useful. It's more a matter of the mindset you have when using these tools, rather than the perceived quality of the specific tools you use.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

I don't disagree that what you describe is the norm in today's corporate environment, but I do disagree that the problem is that my standards (ie, that I'm paying for someone's expertise, not for someone to look up the answer in an encyclopedia) are too high and not many companies set their expectations too low.

Re:Censorship

[justinlee37]

It is not a legitimate resource that you would use while writing a proposal you intend to turn in to your boss

I call bullshit. While Wikipedia is not an acceptable source to cite in a professional document, I think it's an amazing springboard for research if you are disciplined, and only use the primary-source citations that the Wiki editors use themselves (after investigating their credibility yourself, of course).

Personally, I think that prohibiting access to Wikipedia from any Dept. of Agriculture computer is a bad idea -- it keeps the employees there from accessing a large repository of knowledge, some of which could no doubt assist them with their jobs from time to time.

A better idea would be to block access to the Wiki pages that allow you to edit the website, while still allowing workers to review the information already there.

Of course, now that the Dept. of Agriculture employees realize that all of their websurfing at work can be easily monitored and documented, there's probably not even a need to block these websites.

Fear will keep the local technicians in line ... fear of this surveillance station (sorry, I had to).

Re:Censorship

[thue]

Sure, some people were wasting their time doing that stuff, but it is an encyclopedia, for crying out loud. Disabling access to the site from the ministry because a handful few were obsessed about spending time on it during work? Definitely over the top.

To be fair, almost all Wikipedia content is available in non-editable form in various places. For example at answers.com (for the English edition at least). Blocking Wikipedia would ensure that people don't use time on editing.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Again, you assume wrongly, as I'm not offended. Seems to be a bit of a pattern forming. It's probably best not to assume you know something based on very little information. The problem as I see it is not with what I wrote, but with the way you are reading the information set forth in a fairly brief comment.

But, no, not really. I didn't need the sort of in-depth information required from a domain specific publication. All I needed was a basic understanding of what was being asked for, then I sent it to someone who had domain specific knowledge. The client didn't need me to answer their question, they just needed me to get someone who understood what was required. Wikipedia was more than adequate, and as I said we satisfied the client's needs very quickly and efficiently.

You don't need to look up specialist knowledge sources every time a technical question is asked. Granted, often you will, but as you can see in this case, Wikipedia was more than adequate. I agree that if I had needed to provide an in-depth answer then I would have looked up a better source, you'll get no argument from me about this. But for a quick overview of a particular topic, Wikipedia really can't be beat.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Uh, no. I doubt I've ever seen someone misunderstand the original research policy so blatantly. That policy is to prevent material being introduced that has no source. The verifiability policy says that sources must be accurate, reliable and verifiable. Precisely the opposite of the scenario you present.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Blissy, wouldn't your comment be astro-turfing for Wikipedia Review? However, despite the fact that you accuse me of astroturfing, it doesn't actually make my comments any less pertinent. At least I had the courage to post under my nom de pleum.

Not sure how to respond to your concerns, as they are just vague hand-waving, with no specific evidence to back up your arguments.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Two things to note in response:

1. Try reading the verifiability policy before posting this sort of rubbish. Nowhere does it say that the verifiability of a particular topic can be satisfied by "sufficient Google hits indicate belief in Greek gods". If you can find reliable sources (e.g. the EB, or perhaps an encyclopaedia of mythology) then that will be more than enough. There seems to be confusion here between the "Google test" for notability of websites and other topics that can be referenced from other sources.

2. Don't cite Wikipedia in academic research. I'm not sure how many times we have to say it! We have never said that Wikipedia should be used as a final source in a paper. We say: treat it like any other encyclopaedia and double-check it's facts.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

All I needed was a basic understanding of what was being asked for, then I sent it to someone who had domain specific knowledge

And you use sources that, by design, can be edited by anyone and at any time, when a "fairly major bank" is involved? Merely because spending some time to produce a more informed answer might have been a fly in your home-brewed Eau d'Omniscience?

Well, this goes a little bit further to explaining some of the incompetence I encountered in the financial industry. When I was producing accounting software 8 years ago, a single tuple represented $20,000,000 of client money; a misunderstanding of requirements is, as Encyclopedia Dramatica puts it so eloquently, "Serious Business". There is no question of ever following the "cross fingers I'm right now - check later" principle that you've just demonstrated.

Anyway, you've just provided me with another way of whittling out the incompetent in screening, thank you. I shall find an incorrect fact on Wikipedia related to our field - and there are sufficient that I don't have to vandalise anything myself! - then see how many give me the Wikipedia answer.

Re:Censorship

[Kalriath]

Well, then it's obviously not meant to be treated like any other encyclopaedia, since encyclopaedias are meant to be used for research and cited in studies.

Also note, that Wikipedia often violates its own rules. For an obscure topic, it could take days, weeks, even months for someone with sufficient knowledge to tag an article as having complete crap content. And even then the content probably wont be removed, but a generic "This article contains complete bullshit. We're not saying what part is crap, just that it exists" boilerplate.

The GP is half right. He/she did confuse the "notability" with "verifiability" but it doesn't matter when people interpret the rules however they like (mostly incorrectly) anyway. And things do still turn out pretty much how they said.

Besides, I'm going to invoke WP:COI here. Clearly you have too much interest in Wikipedia [citation needed] and so your opinion here cannot be allowed.

Re:Censorship

[Oktober Sunset]

Excuse me? Did you just say Simpsons episodes are trivial? We don't like your sort around these pars.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

" Again, you assume wrongly, as I'm not offended. Seems to be a bit of a pattern forming. It's probably best not to assume you know something based on very little information. The problem as I see it is not with what I wrote, but with the way you are reading the information set forth in a fairly brief comment."

Then WTF are you whining about? Clearly you are offended and are just making a poor attempt to hide that fact for some reason, or you are a whiny jackass. You pick which.

I had stated from the start that I didn't know your particular occupation as you had not thought to state it despite the fact that you were using it as an example to prove your point. I never stated I knew what you did for a living, rather I stated that your lack of content forced readers such as myself to make assumptions about what you were talking about. This is why that is a bad practice; if you don't want people making assumptions about what you were saying you should write more clearly.

"But, no, not really. I didn't need the sort of in-depth information required from a domain specific publication. "

I said nothing about requirements for in depth knowledge. Rather had you known enough about your domain to be competent at your job, you would have known of a better and more reliable source where you could have gotten a better and more reliable answer with less effort (using something like the Wikipedia usually requires you to sort through many irrelevant topics before you get what you want, and even then you have to make a sanity check to ensure the article is valid).

And of course a traditional search engine would more than make up for the functionality of the Wikipedia for the purposes you describe, so an office still wouldn't lose anything by blocking the Wikipedia.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading the verifiability policy before posting this sort of rubbish. Nowhere does it say that the verifiability of a particular topic can be satisfied by "sufficient Google hits indicate belief in Greek gods".

"Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking or with no editorial oversight." Read that carefully.

See the problem?

The policy does not partition the set of possible sources.

"Poor reputation": a newborn baby has no reputation at all. It certainly doesn't have a "poor reputation".

Add editorial oversight - which just about every non-wiki non-forum web site has - and you have a site that is, by Wikipedia standards, not "questionable".

Now while my hypothetical Google search may well reveal reputation-less, whence non-"questionable" pages, the policy still says that articles should be "reliable". Even then, the "burden of evidence" section seems to suggest that the burden only applies to facts that are "challenged or likely to be challenged", which is a horribly weasely "edit now, ask questions later" policy - any biased party can express shock that their "facts" were put under scrutiny.

Anyway, let's look at Wikipedia's definition of 'reliable'. The crunch:

"Reliable publications are those with an established structure for fact-checking and editorial oversight."

Every single source with any form of editorial oversight - assuming it does not admit being written for humour or whatever - will claim to have an "established structure for fact-checking". The Catholic Church's publications certainly have editorial oversight, and they would certainly claim to have a fact-checking structure to reveal the glory of God, thus making them - by Wikipedia's own daft hierarchy of definitions - a reliable source for the existence of Abraham's God, with some edits and reversions by Peter. Recalling our hypothetical, Greek gods exist.

Remember, Wales intended this outcome. Original discussions concerning a Scholarly Review First, Publish Later policy were rejected in favour of the Just In Time (And By Anyone) correction model. Wikipedia is working as intended - it's just not an encyclopedia. The rules are waffly because they give people the opportunity to interpret them as liberally as possible - which is exactly what editors do; this brings in more contributors, more content, more pageviews, and ultimately, more wealth to the owner. As a business model, it's like running a cheap porn site, making false claims to bring in your models and presenting a misleading image to your customers.

Re:Censorship

[zippthorne]

No, encyclopedias are meant to provide broad overview of knowledge about a vast number of subjects. They make an excellent starting point for *beginning* research, but they are neither sources nor intended to be so. They are appropriate for citation by people learning about how to write a paper, rather than people trying to actually get enough information to write one. i.e. middle school and lower. They simply do not have the necessary detail.

Wikipedia is a particularly good encyclopedia because its contains a huge number of subjects with sufficient information to use as keywords in a web search or library search. A large number also contain direct links to useful web pages (though they must also contain links to useless web pages as a matter of course), and the citations are conveniently on the same page as the article.

It doesn't "work in theory." It works quite well right now. and while it has some fundamental flaws compared to traditional encyclopedias, it also has some very tangible benefits.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

they are neither sources nor intended to be so

The first entry on answers.com, from American Heritage: "Encyclopedia: A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field."

I simply don't see anything in that definition that indicates a lack of "intention" to be used as a source for referencing. Indeed, the main criterion in deciding whether something is suitable for citation is an affirmative answer to the question: "Was this text produced to scholarly standards?" If no, it's not a "comprehensive reference work [on] a particular field", but a random series of half-facts, thus not an encyclopedia. If yes, why can't I cite it?

You might answer, "Cite closer to the source". Now that is fair enough, when it is possible. But there are cases when an encyclopedia is the most appropriate source - despite WP:NOR's claims, encyclopedias do perform original research in bringing together contradicting facts. Consider the simple example of a historical figure's date of birth. Manuscript A might claim 1282, but manuscripts B, C, D and E claim 1283. The encyclopedia might note all these things and conclude that 1283 is more likely (perhaps commenting that A was written 200 years after the event). The best way for me to give a birth date is not to repeat what the encyclopedia has just said - indeed, that would be plagiarism - but to give 1283 and cite the encyclopedia.

Re:Censorship

[jc42]

Wait - so you are telling me that is there a ministry wide ban on an encyclopedia because all of six people spent their time obsessively editing various article.

Obsessively? Just a few messages above yours, someone pointed out that if you did the math, these people were averaging about one edit every two weeks. That hardly qualifies as an obsession. It's more like "I don't have anything to do for the next few hours; how about I hop over to wikipedia and contribute a few paragraphs to something fun."

When you look at the actual amount of time wasted, the only conclusion is that everyone is blowing this story way, way out of proportion. You'd have to look long and hard to find any office environment where people waste less time than this.

Blocking wikipedia because of such a trivial waste of time is much like shooting flies with an elephant gun. The result is going to be more disastrous than the wasted time, since the administrators are blocking access to what is probably a useful resource to lots of their workers. It's likely that their workers who know how to use it are benefitting from access much more often than once every two weeks.

Re:Censorship

[Seumas]

And when a company does that to you at work, remember to block their phone calls and email to you outside of work, work time, work hours to keep them from using your personal time for corporate purposes.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. An encyclopedia is a valuable resource in many professions. I am a CIO and I have used Wikipedia pages to reference things as diverse as cryptographic history and archival science.

Re:Censorship

[nwbvt]

And a lot of people do that as well. I know plenty of people who are virtually impossible to contact outside of normal work hours (even though I work for a company that does not block personal work during business hours).

Of course a lot of that has to do with your job function. Some job functions are perfectly doable within normal business hours, while others do require substantial unpaid overtime (I would include my job in that category, but I know my friends currently in medical school would object to my definition of overtime).

And of course those who pull an hourly wage instead of a salary (like contractors) love overtime as then they get to pull in time and a half.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Yet another two points to be making:

1. What on earth are you talking about? I think you'll find that citing an encyclopedia in acadamic research or papers will get you marked down. Try it some day. It's not the purpose of an encyclopedia.

2. What rule are you talking about? See WP:DEADLINE. Directly refutes what you have just noted.

As for COI, nice try, but no cigar. :-) My interest in Wikipedia doesn't invalidate my comments. Try reading my comments from the perspective of one who doesn't like or need Wikipedia. Unless you can point out where I'm factually wrong, I don't see the problem.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Your manuscript/date of birth comments don't really make much sense. Like you say, if there is a dispute about the date of birth, just say that it's not really known when the subject was born and explain the issue why that is. That's hardly OR, and it's normally a reasonable thing to describe in an article.

Incidently, to use your example, if you said that they were born on 1282 and cited the encyclopedia, it would make your citation wrong (or at the least, misleading). Therefore, you should be marked down.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Actually, that page reads:

"A reliable source is a published work regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand".

In context, your quote looks fine. Out of context, it looks dodgy.

As for Wales original intentions, don't know about that. I do know that he said the following:

"For God sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia."

Pretty good advise if you ask me.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

From your emotive language, I see that I've upset you in some way. Not sure why, as my original post was only three short sentences. You might want to work on your anger management. To be honest, I don't really care if you assumed wrongly, I don't know you, and you don't know me. Your response doesn't affect my life, and it never will. All I merely did was note that the assumptions weren't accurate.

I note that you are making comments about whether I am competent about my job, yet you still don't know what I do. If my office blocks Wikipedia, oh well. I was only making the point that I found it quite useful for work, and in fact I gave you an example as to how I used the encyclopedia to direct a query quickly and efficiently, which the client was very pleased about. However, as you have pointed out, there are other sources, though probably not as accessible.

Re:Censorship

[ta bu shi da yu]

Sigh. I work with technology. I needed to know what BPEL meant. I looked up Wikipedia. It explained the general topic, and it linked me to a reasonable article from Oracle on the topic. I then determined what was being asked, forwarded to the developer who can answer this question, who then gave a more in-depth answer to the client.

Incompetence? Hardly. Client was happy, we were happy. Thank you Wikipedia! No thanks to faulty logic or inaccurate assumptions by anonymous slashdot editors.

Re:Censorship

[KGIII]

It is too bad you posted this AC as that was a great post. Insightful and well written.

Re:Censorship

[zippthorne]

If you turn in a college term paper with encyclopedia cites, that's like instant 'B' unless it's from some kind of specialist encyclopedia. Like.. a textbook...

Re:Censorship

[Kalriath]

As for COI, nice try, but no cigar. :-) My interest in Wikipedia doesn't invalidate my comments. Try reading my comments from the perspective of one who doesn't like or need Wikipedia. Unless you can point out where I'm factually wrong, I don't see the problem. You missed the joke.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

if you said that they were born on 1282 and cited the encyclopedia, it would make your citation wrong (or at the least, misleading). Therefore, you should be marked down.

If there are four apparently good primary sources indicating one fact, and one apparently poor primary source gives a contradictory fact, it is not "wrong" for one publication to conclude that the fact in the apparently poor source is simply wrong and to discard it, and then a further publication to cite only the conclusion. If we took your approach of repeatedly pointing out every possibility that has the slightest bit of evidence, reliable or otherwise, we would not progress anywhere - in fact, we'd get something rather like the more horrific articles on Wikipedia, where every minority kook gets his sentence in.

What is more, if it happens to be the writer of the encyclopedia that's done the work of finding several sources and making remarks on their quality, it doesn't matter that it's an encyclopedia - the author has done the work and it would be plagiarism to simply lift that information into your own work and then cite only the primary sources. Reasoning is work, and work should be credited. If your undergraduate professor taught you to not cite an encyclopedia "because it is an encyclopedia" (i.e. just because it happens to contain a lot of information on particular topic(s)), rather than because you should be quoting closer to source when possible or because the encyclopedia is not recognised as being produced by scholarly methods, he was simply wrong. There is no reason not to quote from a reliable source that has done original work.

Your two fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of scholarship go some way to explaining why you lift up Wikipedia. If your ideals were followed, state-of-the-art astronomy papers would still feel the need to write a diatribe on Descartes' vortex theory - and because the Principia is too encyclopedic, they'd cite the basis work De Motu Corporum (or even something from Huygens discussions with Hooke and Wren?) and claim the chain of reason that leads to the sustained attack in Principia as their own.

People have been goofing off at work for

[Tablizer]

...millions of years[1]. This is not new. If you plug up one outlet, they'll just find another.

[1] Thog, you to kill it, not fuck it. Eat first, fun later [Bonk!]

Re:People have been goofing off at work for

[speilberg0]

This is not new. If you plug up one outlet, they'll just find another.

[citation needed]

Re:People have been goofing off at work for

[speaker of the truth]

[citation needed] {{fact|date=October, 2007}}

Re:People have been goofing off at work for

[unlametheweak]

This is not new. If you plug up one outlet, they'll just find another.

[citation needed] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=~%22If+you+plug+up+one+outlet%2C+they'll+just+find+another.%22&btnG=Search

Re:People have been goofing off at work for

[Speare]

If you plug up one outlet, they'll just find another.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Re:People have been goofing off at work for

[CowardX10]

>[citation needed]

>>{{fact|date=October, 2007}}

[original research]

I would reply, but boss is watching

[Anonymous Coward]

using monitoring software

Re:Stop censorship!

[Anonymous Coward]

well if those are the conditions itll never happen.

Tell me..

[nrgy]

When each were informed of the reprimanded did they magically morph into giant robots and go Super Saiyan 5? Super mega kung-fu energy blasts must of been flying all over the place.

Re:Tell me..

[Jesus_666]

No, but it did turn out they were Magical "Girls". After having seen them turn into Sailor Bubba and the Hairy Warriors most of their colleagues immediately left towards the nearest tall building to jump off of.

Now here's some news

[hellfire]

From TFA:

The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements.

I was about to have a slashtantrum about this not being news. As everyone should be thinking "You can't be wasting your employers time working for anyone else like that, even if it is Wikipedia." That would have been 'nuff said.

However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.

Re:Now here's some news

[QuantumG]

Blah. They're not slaves. If the ministry is not happy with their work output, they can fire them.

I worked for an employer once that had an IT department which banned things all the time. Including Slashdot. One day I got in trouble for using ssh tunneling through HTTPS so I could have unfiltered Internet. That was the last straw.. I threatened to quit. My employer agreed to have the restrictions removed for my machine's ip address only. I was in such a foul mood by then that I demanded they remove all the restrictions, for everyone, and they refused. Next day I tended my resignation.

Thankfully, they saw reason, tore up my resignation and removed the web proxy. People in the office who had heard nothing about my annoyance were heard to remark how much faster "the internet" was now.

About a year after that event I started working remotely for the same company because my partner's work commitments had moved us interstate. I had very rare contact with my coworkers during this time, but occasionally my employer would fly me in for conferences and celebrations. I got told that IT had now banned all workstation-to-workstation communications in the office to stem the use of a scribble-board chat program. Apparently people were using the scribble-board to draw pictures of penises (as is inevitable) and one of the likes-to-think-he-is-upwardly-mobile set was worried this could lead to a sexual harassment issue.

Something else happened to spark it.. I don't remember what, but the result was that virtually the entire developer staff threatened to quit, then went on strike, as a result of this stupid scribble-board program. Management refused to budge on the issue, but by this point cheap routers and long lengths of cable had been brought from home and a makeshift "dark net" had been setup entirely for the use of this silly drawing/chat program. Some of the guys sent me pictures.

Eventually, after IT cut off the Internet access, things came to a head and management buckled under the pressure. They got to keep their stupid scribble program and the Internet remained unfiltered. But, to this day, IT support in that office is pitiful. If you want RAM or, god forbid, software installed, you do it yourself. Of course, the geeks don't care.. the people most affected by the poor IT support is the likes-to-think-he-is-upwardly-mobile set.

Re:Now here's some news

[Anonymous Coward]

they saw reason, tore up my resignation and removed the web proxy. People in the office who had heard nothing about my annoyance were heard to remark how much faster "the internet" was now.

That is odd. The internet should be slower without blocking, since you have much more traffic to contend with.

Re:Now here's some news

[_Sprocket_]

However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the agricultural ministry has some expertise in the WTO and international trade issues. Individuals contributing to a public information resource on issues that they are professionally acquainted with seems rather ordinary... even commonplace. I also wouldn't be surprised if these individuals had a lot of other things they were doing as well (and would find themselves hard pressed to justify not seeing to other tasks in order to favor time editing Wikipedia entries).

Re:Now here's some news

[Anonymous Coward]

***Apparently people were using the scribble-board to draw pictures of penises (as is inevitable) and one of the likes-to-think-he-is-upwardly-mobile set was worried this could lead to a sexual harassment issue.***

While it sounds like the company overall sucked at the way it was handling these, in this particular instance, that kind of behavior COULD lead to a sexual harassment suit. All it takes is for one person to express that they feel this is unprofessional (which it is) and then management would HAVE to do something else to stop this behavior from happening else said employee could sue the company for a hostile work place and would most certainly win in court because management did nothing to prevent the inappropriate behavior from taking place.

I know it sounds really lame and pathetic and really, it is, but this is how the courts see it and for a business to protect itself from such things, they almost have to have policies that go beyond state law.

Brendan

Re:Now here's some news

[QuantumG]

Yep, and employees are supposed to be "understanding" of all these crap are they?

It's simply not our problem.

Re:Now here's some news

[Chmcginn]

That is odd. The internet should be slower without blocking, since you have much more traffic to contend with.

That depends on how much people are using the internet, and how much overhead the monitoring software uses. If it takes up a fair amount of system resources, it will slow the individual workstations down, even if it makes the download speed faster.

Re:Now here's some news

[toddestan]

It could be that people who didn't know the filtering was in place just assumed that the internet was bogged down when their favorite sites didn't come up too.

Re:Now here's some news

[stephanruby]

While it sounds like the company overall sucked at the way it was handling these, in this particular instance, that kind of behavior COULD lead to a sexual harassment suit. All it takes is for one person to express that they feel this is unprofessional (which it is) and then management would HAVE to do something else to stop this behavior from happening else said employee could sue the company for a hostile work place and would most certainly win in court because management did nothing to prevent the inappropriate behavior from taking place.

The sexual harassment laws need to be rewritten. Banning the use of technologies because they could potentially be used for sexual harassment is a bad idea. Instead, those types of programs should display and record the full names/login ids/computer ids of employees when they've published or sent something. Having one's full name appear on every document written (or drawn) will curb some of the most asinine behavior (although, it obviously wouldn't curb all of it).

And for the abuse it doesn't curb, sexual harassment laws should make it clear that any attempt at restricting the flow of digital information should be viewed as a kind of passive aggressive cover-up -- not as a genuine willingness to deal with the underlying problem. And to those companies that are genuinely willing to work on those problems, our laws should give them more leeway in the form of limited immunity or limited liability should something come up.

Re:Now here's some news

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and employees are supposed to be "understanding" of all these crap are they?

If you're dense enough not to understand that sending each other doodled pensis is A) a waste of company time (which, as a salaried employee (I assume?) you're being compensated for), and B) a form of sexualization in the workplace, then you probably lack the social skills to handle any job effectively.

The last thing that software developers, as a profession, need is more self-diagnosed "aspies" who believe that their social awkwardness translates directly into technical genius. McDonald's might hire the likes of you, but I (and the Wall St. firms I've worked for) sure as hell wouldn't.

It's simply not our problem.

Your continued employment and financial issues are not the problem of either your employer or your coworkers, either. Sexually harass someone, and they will fire and sue you.

sounds familiar

[wizardforce]

reminds me of the time the FBI/CIA were doing some curious editing of their own. quite random in their posting

Re:sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/14/1453223 take a look at the first post for starters

Re:sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

CIA Tries Hand At Wikipedia

Newsday, August 17, 2007

Limited to subscribers, the gist is, that Wiki's new tracking tool traced the CIA to TV shows.

Well, if you've used Wikipedia, you know that already.

The article suggests that CIA users may have done this on their off-time.

Riight...

BSG 4.0 baby!
    See you there...or not...thanks!

So which ministry is in charge of Gundam then?

[gmezero]

Eh?

Re:So which ministry is in charge of Gundam then?

[barocco]

Don't know much about Japan but in Russia, Judo-capable ironman is in charge of ministries!

Re:So which ministry is in charge of Gundam then?

[Nazlfrag]

In Japan, judo-capable ironman is in charge of you!

Wrong Ministry

[SEWilco]

OK, so the Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam. Which Ministry is in charge of Gundam?

Re:Wrong Ministry

[Anonymous Coward]

The Culture Ministry, I would presume.

Re:Wrong Ministry

[bky1701]

The Airforce, I would hope...

Oh, wait, they aren't real, you say? Well then...

Re:Wrong Ministry

[DDLKermit007]

As these guys have demonstrated. The Otaku Ministry.

Re:Wrong Ministry

[renrutal]

Which Ministry is in charge of Gundam? The Great Unified National Defensive Airfoces Ministry is.

Re:Wrong Ministry

[rgmoore]

I would guess that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is in charge of the Gundam TV series and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is in charge of the much more profitable Gundam toys and models.

Re:Wrong Ministry

[Jarik_Tentsu]

Why that'd be whoever heads the Preventers of course!

Eh, ignore me...Gundam Wing just kicks ass. =P

~Jarik

Re:Wrong Ministry

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the minister doth protest too much, methinks.

Re:Wrong Ministry

[kyousum]

OK, so the Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam. Which Ministry is in charge of Gundam?

The Ministry of Defense and it's Self Defense Force, of cause. They have displayed Gundam at their air force show in the past. Yes, I do have citation (warning: Japanese page).

Re:Wrong Ministry

[fbjon]

Haha, there's even a specs sheet like for the helicopters!

i can literally see this becoming a meme.

[erlehmann]

"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam."
srsly, what were they smoking, err thinking ?

Re:i can literally see this becoming a meme.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eveyone knows the Defense Department is the one in charge of the Gundams.

At Least They're Being Held Accountable

[Poseiden]

'Nuf said.

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been scientifically established that anime is a gateway fetish to pedophilia, bestiality, and homosexuality. If we don't nuke Japan we might not get another chance; they would tentacle-rape your children if given the opportunity.

Re:mod parent up

[geminidomino]

Stick to video games, Thompson. Anime is out of your league.

Hmm, this sounds familiar...

[Spy der Mann]

Um... no? You're at work, do your job. Don't screw off editing Gundam articles on Wiki.

CmdrTaco said it best: Our uptime, your downtime :P

I Would Like to Know...

[Kedjoran]

Which ministry IS responsible for Gundams? This new Zero jet I bought from Japan does *not* transform into a giant robot and I want lodge a formal complaint. There has to be a law saying all jets from Japan transform into robots somewhere.

Re:I Would Like to Know...

[Jesus_666]

Can it at least turn on a dime, Macross Zero style? Thrust vectoring does own the sky, you know.

Re:Why is this on the frontpage of slashdot?

[kthejoker]

"News for nerds." Not "technology-only news."

Yeah, I know: it really is that simple.

Re:They have brought Shame on themself and Family

[Tablizer]

Each of the six gentleman must commit ritual Seppuku if there is any hope to restore personal honor.

But wait until they're done correcting the "Seppuku" entry in Wikipedia to remove the death requirement.

Tsutomu Shimomura?

[Siriaan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Shimomura

Not the famous hacker I take it?

How many articles did they edit?

[Anonymous Coward]

OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!!!!!!11111111 :P

I, for one, welcome our Gundam-piloting overlords.

they do it too?

[Essequemodeia]

I have never felt more Japanese in my entire life.

Another bullet point on his resume

[denttford]

Tsutomu Shimomura takes down wikihackers too!

Book and movie to follow WITH Gundam suit!

indeed, any idiot should know

[Anonymous Coward]

that the Mega Cannon Cannon, is in fact the more powerful weapon, compared to the Hyper Mega Launcher which is only rated at 10MW.

Tin foil hat time

[maroberts]

'"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official,

Those clever Japanese, telling the truth as a lie, and burying the Gundam budget in the one for the agriculture ministry. Its the SR71 and Area 51 all over again, I tell you!

Re:Tin foil hat time

[Jesus_666]

Not that the USA haven't been doing the same... Look at the budgets of the Department of Fish and Game, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, the United States Postal Service and the Bureau of Weights and Measures, around the year 2000. I tell you, there's something strange with those numbers, almost as if there's a secret Ag&/%z%#ÌÁ\%&IOEW$%& NO CARRIER

Different Tsutomu Shimomura

[tamnir]

Just in case anyone else wondered that too: this Tsutomu Shimomura has nothing to do with Kevin Mitnick (http://www.takedown.com/bio/tsutomu.html).

Firing Civil Servants?

[Corporate T00l]

Perhaps, but I suspect that similar to civil servants in most countries, you can't fire them just because they don't generate enough output; you can only fire them if they break the rules. Thus, more and more rules.

Plus, this is Japan, famous for structural rigidity in its labor market.

Re:First Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking fail the first post. So not only are you off-topic, but you're redundant as well because the person who did get first post mentioned the same thing in a much better argument.

New meme's abrewin'?

[mecenday]

I purpose "[Blank] is not in charge of Gundam," be the 10 year anniversary slashdot meme...

Slashdot, for instance, is certainly *not* in charge of Gundam.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[feyhunde]

CowboyNeil is not in charge of Gundam

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[The One and Only]

But we just started a new meme a few days ago to highlight human rights abuses in Burma! On which note...let's just say, in repressive Burma, it's not just your internet connection that's cut off.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[maxwell demon]

In Korea, only old people are not in charge of Gundam.
In Soviet Russia, Gundam is not in charge of YOU.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[aldo.gs]

You must be Gundam here.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[denzacar]

I second that proposal.

Where and when do we vote?

Or do we just start trolling the meme around as usual?

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[RyoShin]

In Korea, only old people are in charge of Gundam.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[pcgabe]

mecenday is not in charge of Slashdot!

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[mecenday]

Lol... only one day old and you already won the meme. hooray.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[bitRAKE]

I for one welcome our new not in charge of Gundam overlords.

Re:New meme's abrewin'?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Where and when do we vote?

How the hell should I know. I'm not in charge of Gundam, and I'm also not in charge of voting!

Repoat

[Bender_]

"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official

I lolled.. hard!

My new sig

[blind biker]

Thanks, Japan, for cracking me up, and providing me with a new sig. I love you.

They Omitted the Most Interesting One

[Bueller_007]

The supplied article only discusses edits by the Agriculture Ministry. Japanese reports, of course have more details.

Someone at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare was busted for editing the Japanese Wiki entry for Nanatsuiro Drops, a pornographic video game.

I will also note that the Japanese media reported this over a month ago.

Re:They Omitted the Most Interesting One

[jamar0303]

I'd say that indeed, that does fulfill two out of three- (sexual) health and welfare.

original research?

[tepples]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=~%22If+you+plug+up+one+outlet%2C+they'll+just+find+another.%22&btnG=Search

[original research?]

One Google hit, from this Slashdot article.

That is what they want you to think...

[denzacar]

Them japs are sneaky sushi-eating-kamikaze-monkeys.

Censorship is never sustainable

[Anonymous Coward]

These public servants were probably doing a greater service to the public than ever. And blocking access to Wikipedia? That ministry will be in serious trouble for cutting such a rich source of pointers to data relevant for their work. Even if one accepts hierarchic work regimes, it's much more sensible to control how well employees do their job, not what else they do at work.

Clients hell!

[Shivetya]

I use it to find out about some fad I didn't know about that my boss has suddenly decided is our next direction. Unfortunately too many of these new fangled business ideas he either finds in magazines or the last consultant to walk in his office rarely have wiki entries, however when they do its usually bad

Popular television leads to inaccurate stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

When each were informed of the reprimanded did they magically morph into giant robots and go Super Saiyan 5? Super mega kung-fu energy blasts must of been flying all over the place.

When I was a kid, everyone wanted to test my kung-fu skills because I "looked like Bruce Lee" and all Asian kids knew karate.

I feel for the kids that now have to deal with these stereotypes!

Because nerds waste plenty of time on the internet

[Chmcginn]

Umm... yeah, I've got nothing outside the topic.

It works for me

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Wikipedia then becomes argued not in terms of academic quality but in terms of "ideally,
> it'd work!" or "it gets gradually better!" or, worst of all, "it's popular, so it must be
> good!" So is Windows.

How about "it works for me".

When I first heard of Wikipedia, I immediately dismissed it as "totally unworkable", will be dominated by trolls, kooks and spammers, based on my experience with how Usenet was destroyed.

So I ignored it, until Google started directing me to Wikipedia articles, and I noticed that these now were better than what Google otherwise would direct me to.

And yes, it has been extremely helpful at work lately, where I have had to develop a new module to a program together with a co-worker who knows more math than me (I know more programming than him). Wikipedia has enabled my to understand the math concepts he is trying to explain to me.

So I come from the opposite point of view, there is no way Wikipedia should work. Somehow, nonetheless, it does.

Actually, it seems to me that the most vocal opponents are the very kooks I was sure would be one of the groups destroying Wikipedia, angry that their pet peeves aren't presented as the ultimate truth they see it as.

Block editing only?

[EMH_Mark3]

Hm a somewhat on-topic post (yeah it's a first):

Is it possible to allow access to wikipedia while blocking users from editing it? Perhaps using URL filtering? I know it's against the wikipedia 'spirit', but it's better than no access at all.

Re:Block editing only?

[Constantine XVI]

AFAIK, you could block "http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/*&action=edit", but there might be ways around that also.

ROW ROW FIGHT DAH POWAH

[samwh]

Edit the uneditable, change the unchangeable, ROW ROW, FIGHT DAH POWAH

Just be happy...

[Per Abrahamsen]

That you didn't have to do jail time for your offense.

Area of expertice

[Per Abrahamsen]

Even if it sometimes doesn't feel so, many of us do stuff other than writing proposals.

And often what wo do (including writing proposals) is stuff that involves both our "area of expertise" and something we are less familiar with.

Justifiable censorship

[benhocking]

Justifiable censorship is still censorship. That last line merely states that the term "often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy." It is not a necessary criteria, however. Again, the company is probably completely justified in this particular form of censorship, but that doesn't stop it from being censorship. Perhaps the problem is that our culture has vilified censorship so much (usually for excellent reasons) that we have a hard time managing our cognitive dissonance when we agree with a form of it.

Re:They have brought Shame on themself and Family

[khellendros1984]

Hey, it's just using truthiness to the greatest personal benefit!

Blast

[ta bu shi da yu]

I meant to reply to #20886641, not the parent comment. Sorry for any confusion.

Some losers at work

[geekoid]

has now ruined it for everybody there.
Jerks.

They were probably bored...

[gevantry]

My guess is that the officials in questions were bored and tired of the typical "look like you're doing serious ministry-related work when you can't get away with long tea breaks" mentality. The reprimanding official no doubt saw this as a fine way to shine as a responsible civil servant safe-guarding public funds. So now the reprimanded officials are back to doing other things that make them look like they're officially busy. Maybe they've been sent out into the fields to chase down illegal Chinese Filipino farm workers being paid with Ministry of Agriculture subsidies, or maybe helping farmers figure out a way to get even cheaper legal foreign labor to keep the farms running... God know, most Japanese these days don't want to muck around in the rice paddies.

Easy solution to filtering..

[z4pp4]

Don't filter Wikipedia. It is a useful site. Rather block HTTP POST instructions to Wikipedia.

Quite possibly

[ta bu shi da yu]

Sorry about that.