infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

It’s been a while since I’ve made a legitimate post here, and part of the reason is because I’ve moved to a different blog, Terror in the Heartland. I decided a while ago that this blog has gone stale, and rather than try to reboot this blog, I would rather start fresh.

Part of the reason for moving is that I blog most and perhaps best with a linkblog or a clipping style or blog, and this blog was designed for more long-form writing. So rather than keep up my practice of blogging through daily del.icio.us dumps or posting stuff to my Tumblr, “Random Crap,” I thought I would start a blog based primarily around clips.

There’s a bunch of work I’d like to do on the layout at the new blog, so I don’t think Terror in the Heartland is quite ready for prime time, but everything on the Web is a work in progress, so I think it’s time to point whatever readers I might still have over to the new blog.

Well, with that out of the way, I’ll invite everyone over to Terror in the Heartland.

Terror in the Heartland logo

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I don’t think many media-studies folks read this blog, but I thought that I would pose a question that’s troubled me for a while. What do you call a cable content operation like CNN or ESPN? In television studies, “network” generally refers to a content operation that distributes content to a system of local affiliates, which are either independently owned or, increasingly, separate business units. “The Networks” almost always refers to CBS, NBC, ABC, and sometimes FOX, while the CW and PAX are also networks that aren’t part of “The Networks.” In contrast, cable content operations like CNN have a different business arrangement where their content is licensed to local cable operators, so they’re not really “networks” in the sense that NBC is a network.

Both of my readers are probably rolling their eyes right now at this distinction, but it’s both historically important (I’m working on a paper for “Post-Network Television”.) and relevant to the political economy of television. The words “operator” and “provider” refer almost exclusively to local system operators, and my fallback “channel” is just lame. I suppose the solution is to use the “cable” modifier, so CNN is “cable network,” but it would be nice if there was a precise term for these organizations.

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At lunch yesterday, I told one of my technically-minded colleagues that my paper “Web 2.0 is People!” was accepted into the Cultural Studies Association conference in April, and my colleague asked me, “What do they mean by Web 2.0, anyway?”
I responded by asking, “Have you read ‘Tim O’Reilly’s ‘What is Web 2.0?‘”
My colleague chuckled and said no, but asked if it was a set of technologies. I replied that it’s more of a design issue.

Today I remembered to forward my colleague a link to the O’Reilly article. Rather than dig through my del.icio.us, I thought the fastest way to find the article would be to query Google for “What is Web 2.0?” To my surprise, the article I wanted did not appear at the top of the page. Instead, it had a link that read “Web definitions for Web 2.0″ and an excerpt from the Wikipedia article. O’Reilly’s essay was the first search result. I wondered if Google was supporting natural language queries or simply returning Wikipedia extracts with the keywords “What is.”

Unsure if I really knew what is meant by “natural language query,” I typed in “What are natural language queries?”, which returned a similar page of Web definitions, and an abstract from a page at the University of Kansas. I tried a few more “what is” queries, like “What is deconstruction?” which returned a literary definition from the US Department of State. (Oddly, the definition doesn’t appear in the page Google links to.) And to make a cheap allusion to Plato’s Symposium, I decided to ask Google “What is Love?” This referred me to Princeton’s WordNet site.

Of course, Google could just be using “what is” as a particular kind of keyword, so I thought I would try few other queries. Although I quit smoking years ago, I decided to ask “How do I quit smoking?” which didn’t do anything special. Then I decided to try a “Who is” query, so I asked “Who is Ingmar Bergman?” Google answered, “Ingmar Bergman is a Swedish film director according to [the URI for the Wikipedia article on Bergman.]” Other “who is” queries were less exciting. “Who is Chris McConnell” just returned the usual results for my name, and “Who is Mike Jones?” led to information about the album by the Houston Chopped & Screwed artist.

It does seem like Google is just using word combinations like “what is” and “who is” as keywords, rather than trying to implement a comprehensive system of natural language queries. Using queries like this, however, does remind me that using labels and titles like, “How do I quit smoking” may improve the ranking of informational pages in Google and other search engines.

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I’ve decided that I have better things to do this semester than follow college football, but this morning I took a look at the conference standings after noticing that my Tulsa Golden Hurricane¹ is knocking on the door of the top 25. Despite the success of a once-failing college football program, what struck me was the division of the Atlantic Coast Conference into the “Atlantic” and “Coastal” divisions. Unlike the Big XII, which divides the conference in South (Oklahoma and Texas schools) and North (everyone else), the ACC has apparently ignored geography in constructing its categories. While it would make sense to put Florida State and Boston College² in separate divisions to save money on travel, both schools are in the Atlantic division. Then I thought the easternmost schools might fall into the Coastal division, while the landlocked schools fell into the Atlantic division, but in light of the fact that Boston College and Miami are the only schools near the shore, but fall in different division, this is not the case. Moreover, the three schools from the RTP area, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and NC State are spread across the two divisions.

When I want to know something – but not too much – about a topic, I first turn to Wikipedia. I thought, “Surely some rabid sport-dork will explain the historical grounding of these stupid divisions.” But, no, Wikipedia failed me! The Wikipedia entry on the ACC discusses how the conference includes cross-divisonal rivals, but provides no information about the history of these divisions or the reasoning behind them. If any of my readers know, share your knowledge, first in Wikipedia, then in the comments below.

1. I attended The University of Tulsa as a high school student, so I’ll root for The Golden Hurricane³ when they’re in the NCAA basketball tournament or doing well in football.

2. Or just get rid of Boston College altogether. This has been said many times, but it seems ridiculous that a little private college outside Boston is in a conference otherwise composed of schools below the Mason-Dixon line. Save on gas, BC, and go back to the Big East.

3. Yeah, I think “The Golden Hurricane” is a stupid name, too, and it invites all kinds of tasteless jokes. According to Wikipedia, the football team bought yellow uniforms in 1922 and had planned to adopt the name “Golden Tornadoes,” but at that time Georgia Tech was using that name.

It’s interesting to note that the TU marching band has a Wikipedia entry, while the football team does not. It’s also nice to see that Ken Grass, whom I studied under in middle and high school, is still directing the TU ensemble.

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Tim O’Reilly’s post on Chumby piqued my interest in the cute little device, but, even after reading the vendor’s page, I still wasn’t sure what the gizmo does. My next step, of course, was to consult Wikipedia, hoping that someone from Chumby or a FOO camp attendee created an article explaining what it does and how it works. (“Web-enabled wifi clock radio” doesn’t do much for me: I mean, will it be Web 2.0 compliant?) At the time, there was a Wikipedia article about Chumby, but the article was already nominated for deletion. It seems a little over-zealous to nominate an article for deletion when the product was introduced over the weekend.

Of course, I added a vote to keep the Chumby article, but its future on Wikipedia doesn’t seem bright. The discussion on the Articles for Deletion page are pretty revealing of what Wikipedia users regard as legitimate sources for articles. Apparently personal blogs – even Tim O’Reilly’s – don’t qualify as legitmate sources, and neither do manufacturers’ sites. The Chumby skeptics are waiting for stories about the gizmo to filter out to the mainstream or, at least, computer trade press before they’ll vote to keep the article.

Althought I’m still not sure what Chumby does, it does seems like it could be a useful device. (Hopefully a FOO Camp attendee will bring his to the next Austin Bloggers Stammtisch.) I don’t use Tiger’s Dashboard much, but offloading some of the widgets like weather, Flickr feeds, and terror alert levels to a little device that plays mp3s could be nice. However, how many devices to I want to carry around? I don’t use a smartphone, but integrating these features to a phone would probably make more sense than embedding them in a cute fuzzy package.

The real opportunity of Chumby, as O’Reilly points out, is hackability. Telcos, including the wireless carriers are notorious for wanting retain control over everything on their network. (My students are always surprised when I tell them that before the 1984 consent decree Americans were forbidden from owning their own telephones.) I doubt we’ll ever see a mobile handset as hackable as the Chumby, and technologies like J2ME which could enable end-user software development seems to be dead in the water. Chumby may never take off, but it seems like a great step in the direction of hackable personal gadgets.

Update: Here’s some inside info on the Chumby from one of it’s developers. Also, after I posted this, I made a perhaps idiosyncratic connection between Chumby and an earlier cute information appliance, 3com’s ill-fated Audrey.

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According to an Ars Technica story, the German-language version of Wikipedia has implemented a reputation system where edits made by ordinary users don’t go live until approved by users who have gained certain reputation level. This seems like an inevitable and welcome change for the English version, based on what I’ve seen on sites like Slashdot, it could also introduce new problems.

One potential problem I forsee is that adding another layer of adminstration to the encyclopedia could create the perception that Wikipedia privileges the points-of-view of the established user base – and to get this reputation level, users need to conform to the tacit expectations of existing adminstrators. On Slashdot, this is borne out in discussions about how comments that confirm the worldview of Slashdot’s adminstrators and moderators are modded up, while comments they disagree with are modded down. While Jimmy Wales has said that he wants to avoid a formal reputation system like Slashdot’s, which is based on moderation points, the issue of how regular users attain the status to approve edits remains. The article simply describes this status as a “registered user with a certain level of time and experience.” It’s not clear if it’s based on quantifiable characteristics, but Wikipedia’s current system for creating adminstrators relies on a nomination and consensus process.

I don’t have the time to dig through and try to translate the policies on the German version, but I wonder how these users assigned this privilege and how the reputation is contstructed. Moreover, I wonder about how these privileges intersect with other Wikipedia policies, like the vaunted Neutral Point of View policy. Does a user with approval privileges have the obligation to approve edits that he or she disagrees with? NPOV debates already rage across the encyclopedia. If edits are approved in a non-neutral way – or the perception exists that they’re approved in a non-neutral way – implementing this internal reputation system might harm the reputation of Wikipedia with the general public.

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I think Wikipedia is pretty awesome, but I think Jonathan Zittrain’s suggestion that the Wikiconference “is a Woodstock for the 21st century” is probably going a little too far. Although I’m sure it was made in jest, it really reveals the sort of self-importance that surrounds Wikipedia and citizen media projects to a lesser extent.

Not to belabor a silly aside, the suggestion would imply the second Wikiconference would endure in the popular memory for generations like the first Woodstock music festival. While the gathering certainly draws an emerging subculture and explores new ideas, I don’t think it has much relevance to people outside the tech and media worlds.

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I’ve already pointed to a Reuters story that tracked the evolution of the Wikipedia entry for Ken Lay in the minutes after his death was known to the public. The story looks at individual edits, which included some misinformation, and describes how the story was in flux as the news came out. It concludes that Wikipedia is a poor source of information because the article was edited several times in a short period to correct errors.

Today Washington Post technology columnist Frank Ahrens takes this silliness to the next level by using this small data set to warn readers that articles may be edited by “insane crazy people with an agenda.” I wonder if he’s written about AM talk radio in the past. Describing one edit where a contributor incorrectly wrote that the guilt of ruining the lives of investors led Lay to suicide, Ahrens notes how the editor left out an “l” from “finally” and adds the parenthetical comment,

Is it the speed with which flamers type that inevitably leads to typos? Or is it a political statement, a willful rebellion against the bourgeoisie strictures of so-called conventional spelling? Or are they just idiots? Discuss.

OK, I’ll bite. Ahrens, I’m not sure you’re using the term “flamers” correctly — I typically think of flamers as Internet users who send hostile messages or posts to other internet users, not people who post biased or incorrect information online. I’m sure newspaper reporters never turn in copy with typos. I don’t mean to defend this user, but speculating about possible political motivations behind a missing letter is silly, and using this data point to attack the credibility of an open online project is a willful misrepresentation.

Ahrens does note that this error was corrected in a minute by another editor, but his tone suggests that Wikipedia encourages the dissemination of misinformation. (“Somehow, one minute later, actual news managed to elbow its way into Wikipedia.”) If Ahrens cared to do any actual reporting, he might have noted that WIkipedia has had, since its inception, a Neutral Point of View policy that instructs editors to remove this kind of editorializing, but the journalist seems more interested in making knee-jerk claims about the integrity of his profession. He says later that “At its worst, Wikipedia is an active deception, a powerful piece of agitprop, not information.”

The Ken Lay entry provides an interesting case study on how the online encyclopedia operates, but both Reuters and Ahrens draw the wrong conclusions. I suspect that most of these edits were based on reporting from day-time cable news. If you’ve ever watched a cable news channel report a breaking news story, you’ll know that information trickles bit-by-bit, and the the on-air talent frequently speculate about the news. It would not surprise me if a newsreader learned that Ken Lay died, suggested he committed suicide, and presented this to the audience. If Ahrens is going to complain about Wikipedia changing a story over a short period of time, he should point his attention to his peer journalists on cable.

Update: There are some good comments on this post over on Slashdot.

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One of the widely reported issues surrounding Wikipedia is its utility as a research tool for children (and, sadly, undergrads). I finished high school before Netscape Navigator was released, so the idea of using the Web as a tool for grade school research isn’t really on my radar. Thinking back, I remember being pretty reliant on encyclopedias for school projects, but it’s a little hard for me to see teachers and parents encouraging students to use anything on the Web as a reference. As I’ve mentioned before, Wikipedia has a page that provides suggestions for students and teachers on how Wikipedia should be used in research. It seems like this page is either too hard to find for teachers and reporters, or news reports just ignore these suggestions.

Anyway, I ran across yet another newspaper article about the problems Wikipedia presents for school research. I get a little frustrated with these stories, since it’s clear to me that Wikipedia should only be cited as a source if you’re writing about Wikipedia. The article raises a good point about kids and Wikipedia that hadn’t occurred to me.

Ray Baker wrote that his son was doing a school report on salmon and used Yahoo! to search for information. “I was shocked by how many porn sites use normal everyday words as keywords, so a search will pick them up,” Baker said. After that, his son used Google to search, and one of the articles listed was in Wikipedia.

The article was well-written, Baker said, and the included outside links made it a valuable resource. He continued, “In my opinion, Wikipedia should be used in every school. Yes, some articles are not the best, but for the most part, it provides a wealth of information
and is constantly being updated — proof that ‘open source’ projects work and work very well.”

I’m a little concerned about the prospect of salmon fetish sites, but, on the whole this was enlightening. Now that Wikipedia has been agressive about requiring references, students can use it as a repository of links to other information and steer clear of porn for the most part.

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I’m not sure this is a situation where a copyeditor wrote an overly simplistic headline or the reporter herself is sensationalizing a story, but I lean toward the latter. The New York Times has a story titled “Growing Wikipedia Revises Its ‘Anyone Can Edit’ Policy” that discusses a refinement to its policies on page protection. The news of the story is that the project has created a for particular article. “Semi-protected” articles are locked to users whose accounts registered for fewer than four days. Wikipedia has had full protection of articles since before the presidential election, when adminstrators were locking articles about presidential candidates. However, the story doesn’t make the distinction the old page protection and the new semi-protection policy.

If anything, the new semi-protected status is more open than the old approach. A protected page could only be edited by a few administrators, while the rest of the Wikipedia community was locked out. With the new semi-protected status, anonymous users and users who have only created accounts to vandalize a page or disrupt the editing process are locked out. A few new users may be legitimately locked out of making good-faith edits, but, compared to the number of new, hostile users that could be drawn to an article through a critical blog post or astroturf campaign, it seems like a small slice of potential users. I can see how someone like Nick Carr could say that this undermines the “Anyone Can Edit” spirit, but Wikipedia doesn’t say that anyone can edit any page. Compared to many sites, Wikipedia is pretty reluctant to implement hard-and-fast rules and this rule seems to nurture article quality at the expense of users who have shown little commitment to the project.

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