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Wikipedia Admin's Manipulation "Messed Up Perhaps 15,000 Students' Lives"
Andreas Kolbe writes: Recently, "ArbCom", Wikipedia's highest court, banned an administrator account that for years had been manipulating the Wikipedia article of a bogus Indian business school – deleting criticism, adding puffery, and enabling the article to become a significant part of the school's PR strategy. Believing the school's promises and advertisements, families went to great expense to send sons and daughters on courses there – only for their children to find that the degrees they had gained were worthless. "In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students' lives," an Indian journalist quoted in the story says. India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper.
without further fact checking, is a complete idiot.
Or as Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust, but verify."
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
... are bogus as far as I can tell.
I've worked with plenty of Indian engineers (mechanical, electronic, and software) over the past 30+ years, and my general impression is that at least 50% have no knowledge of the subject matter at all. As far as I could tell they simply purchased a document claiming they had a degree. So, this appears to be just another example.
"Verifiability not truth" is the shelter biased and power-hungry Wikipedia editors hide behind. Post an article or fact they don't like and they'll do their level best to claim it's not a good source using nebulous definitions and intra-Wiki politics. The author of a cited article can himself say, "that's not what I meant" and it will be rejected. One symptom of this source problem is a lack of consistently followed, useful guidelines for source material. Oh, there are guideline, they're just not consistently followed and entrenched interests have allowed their definitions of a good source to slide to support various point of view various editors want to push. NPOV is a religion they follow like a Baptist in his cups.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Ive worked with numerous indian H1B holders. The ones that are smart enough to apply for citizenship and get the hell out of whatever indentured servitude theyve been thrust into are the ones I love working with. Eloquently spoken as always, they will be the ones that bring insight and technical expertise along for any meeting or project.
On the other hand, ive had many experiences with ESL H1B holders that amounted to nothing short of a phone tech in the states. Any H1B hired for any oracle product for example is a roll of the dice. Ive worked with a senior level RDBM that after an entire year of working on a project and requesting funding, quit when it was revealed the funding had all been directly applied to Oracle Gold support and remote hands. H1B sysadmins that just reboot servers all day long to fix problems, or feverishly post to message boards with an irate "please respond immediately" seem to be the bulk of what ive encountered in linux and unix. Ive been present for meeting room meltdowns and phantom disappearances where H1B holders just quit showing up for a project as well.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Here, just for you, a quote from the Slashdot headline itself, not even the article:
> India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper.
One of the problems is this bit from TFS:
A bunch of poor people, with limited access to the internet, turn to one of the only sources of information they have.
And it turns out that source isn't trustworthy.
How is the consumer supposed to know otherwise when they have no access to better information?
Yes, we all know that wikipedia isn't always an authoritative source. But for people who only can get to wikipedia through their basic cell phone plans .... that was the only source of information.
Given the available sources of information, I'd like to see you arrive at a better conclusion.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There are lots of Wikipedia admins who are social entrepreneurs of one form or another. This should be clear if you think about the fact that they are not getting paid for this. Sure there are idealists; but there are also lots of admins who get their reward out of the fact that they can use Wikipedia to influence public opinion – via the top Google search result – in line with their social, commercial or political agenda, and do so anonymously. No one should be surprised by this. You get what you pay for.
The impoverished people living in rural areas, without affordable access to the Internet, and the people that can afford to send their kids to this school, are probably disjoint sets.
Look, asshole.
Think about this. The average person in India has very little access to things like the internet. They have cheap ass cell phone plans which give them free access to Wikipedia, and not much else. What the fuck do you think "Wikipedia Zero" is? It costs them nothing to access it, whereas a data plan might be a months pay. Which they might want to spend on food and housing.
There are only so many places to try to glean information, and places to apply effort.
So you can sit in your comfortable first world life and be a smug douchebag, or you can try to accept that people in poor third world countries have access to FAR less sources of information without it costing them dearly. Which means they place far more reliance on the sources they have.
So go shove your attitude up your punk ass, and save me your bullshit.
This notion that people have perfect access to information to make perfect choices is completely bullshit when the only sources they have available to them are dishonest, or would cost far more than they'd be able to afford without a better job like they were trying to find.
Don't me such a smug little prick. Mostly it makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If Wikipedia is a necessary utility for the Indian population, wikipedia should charge or be funded by that government. Otherwise free is what it is, neighbor.
The problem with your perspective is that you want one party to carry all the blame. Pointing out that someone made a stupid decision (your label of "blaming the victim") does not mean that the other parties do not have responsibility.
Spread the blame to everyone that made poor choices: Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Wikipedia and those that enrolled without verifying their expectations.
Victim idolizing has got to stop.
Actually, the Just World Hypothesis (link ironically to Wikipedia) can help to explain the cognitive process behind the behavior that you observe with regards to "victim blaming". I found it fascinating when I first read about it (probably here on /.)