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A Cautionary Tale of Open Source Social Technologies

Posted by kdawson on from the careful-what-you-let-go-viral dept.

eweekhickins writes "The 'country' drop-down menu on one organization's donations pages omits Israel as a country and includes 'Palestine.' Among other things, this means that Israelis can't donate to the organization from these pages; it also presents the risk of a PR nightmare for the organization. This EWeek story cautions that while basic Web 2.0 technologies combined with open source can be incredibly powerful and productive, they can also lead to disastrous results for an organization that isn't paying close enough attention."

9 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You mean that clicking "Accept Defaults" is ris by Mesa+MIke · · Score: 1, Funny

    > I, for one, am shocked, shocked that a program
    > might not have sane defaults for every situation ...

    An I am shocked, shocked that open source software might come attached to a socio-political agenda...

  2. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yeah, that crap really cheeses me off. Taiwan? Geeze. It gets worse... I keep hearing these Americans talking about Germany, Greece, Japan and Spain, but I've never heard of one of these places. After some intensive research, I found out these fucking idiots were gibbering about Deutschland, Hellas, Nihon and España.

    Idiots. Idiots.

  3. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Deutschland"? Sounds like some kind of barbarian lingo.

    The proper name for this province is Germania.

  4. Re:Palestinian Territories, Occupied...Iraq, Occup by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Being kind of a joker, he then changed Iraq to "Iraq, Occupied". It remains like that to this day, years later. The software, the country, or both?
  5. Re:Interesting story... by McGiraf · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The CIA world factbook is one of the best places to get geographical data on countries."

    Yes, you are right. You can trust them because they are not controlled by any government.

  6. Re:Yes Minister by rishistar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually, here is the quote: Bernard Woolley (on the phone): "No, we can't have alphabetical seating in the Abbey: you would have Iraq and Iran next to each other. Plus Israel and Jordan, all sitting in the same pew. We would be in danger of starting World War III."

    --
    Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
  7. Re:Interesting story... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    You don't like that the store down the road discriminates against non-whites? Well then, you can just go and open your own store, and everybody's happy!

  8. Re:Interesting story... by Haeleth · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey, it gets better. Look at their map -- Cuba doesn't appear on it at all! What sinister motive is driving UNICEF to deny the existence of an entire island? I bet it's because that's where Guantanamo Bay is located! Yes, it all makes sense now...

  9. Re:Israelis as a different race by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can't normally join races. You'd have to undergo plastic surgery... Like Michael Jackson.
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    Here be signatures