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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. '"
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.
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).
"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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
***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
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)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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