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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.
...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!]
Table-ized A.I.
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).
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...
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.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
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.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
reminds me of the time the FBI/CIA were doing some curious editing of their own. quite random in their posting
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Eh?
OK, so the Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam. Which Ministry is in charge of Gundam?
Yeah, sure. 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.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam."
srsly, what were they smoking, err thinking ?
Rights?
They are at work.
I've never heard of the right to unfiltered internet access at the workplace...
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!
Um... no? You're at work, do your job. Don't screw off editing Gundam articles on Wiki.
:P
CmdrTaco said it best: Our uptime, your downtime
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.
"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.
Stick to video games, Thompson. Anime is out of your league.
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.
"News for nerds." Not "technology-only news."
Yeah, I know: it really is that simple.
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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Not the famous hacker I take it?
OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!!!!!!11111111 :P
I, for one, welcome our Gundam-piloting overlords.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
/. grapevine via Scotland. I could even read bits of the Japanese newspapers on it... Not worth the effort for the sake of /., however.
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
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...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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.
Tsutomu Shimomura takes down wikihackers too!
Book and movie to follow WITH Gundam suit!
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
'"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!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
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).
I code, therefore I am.
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.
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?
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.
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.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
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.
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?)
erm "NO WAY MAN". 12 hour days no good for brain.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
Tautologies, they are what they are.
Redefining the meaning of words to match one's own tastes and standards is quite common and unfortunate.
From (the censored) Wikipedia: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
"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.
But is it really much harder to only block links of the form http://*.wikipedia.org/*?*edit* instead of http://*.wikipedia.org/*?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official
I lolled.. hard!
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:
- 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.
- 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
Thanks, Japan, for cracking me up, and providing me with a new sig. I love you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
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.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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.
[original research?]
One Google hit, from this Slashdot article.
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.
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
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
"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
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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
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.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
"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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
"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:
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.
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.
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!
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...
Umm... yeah, I've got nothing outside the topic.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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).
> 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.
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.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Edit the uneditable, change the unchangeable, ROW ROW, FIGHT DAH POWAH
That you didn't have to do jail time for your offense.
>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!
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
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.
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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
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.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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).
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.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Excuse me? Did you just say Simpsons episodes are trivial? We don't like your sort around these pars.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
" 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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Hey, it's just using truthiness to the greatest personal benefit!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
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.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Yet another two points to be making:
:-) 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.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I meant to reply to #20886641, not the parent comment. Sorry for any confusion.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
has now ruined it for everybody there.
Jerks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It is too bad you posted this AC as that was a great post. Insightful and well written.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Don't filter Wikipedia. It is a useful site. Rather block HTTP POST instructions to Wikipedia.
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...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Sorry about that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.