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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.
Eh?
OK, so the Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam. Which Ministry is in charge of Gundam?
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!
"News for nerds." Not "technology-only news."
Yeah, I know: it really is that simple.
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.
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.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said a ministry official
I lolled.. hard!