Is it right to censor Wikipedia to save a life?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

David Rhode is a double Pulitzer-winning journalist with the New York Times who just escaped seven months as a captive of the Taliban – yet you won’t have heard about it.

It’s extremely newsworthy, but coverage of the kidnapping would have made Rhode a more valuable hostage. The higher profile the captive, the more attention the captors and their demands get – and the lower the chance of a happy ending.

In situations like this, news organisations often agree to hold off on reporting certain events. They lose a story in the short term, but a reporter gets a better chance at coming home.

In any case, for better or worse, everyone gets their story eventually.

This mutual cooperation used to be relatively straightforward to organise – journalists, especially war correspondents, are a pretty cliquey bunch – but it is one of the long list of things that have received a thorough shaking-up in the internet revolution.

Wikipedia, in particular, was a major problem.

(more…)

The people vs Wolfram Alpha

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Since Wolfram Alpha launched at the weekend, I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read in which the author asks it inane questions and laughs when it falls flat. Even our own Darien Graham-Smith (along with several others in the office) seems almost delighted to prod and poke at it to find instances where Wolfram’s big pre-launch claims can be mocked – usually by comparison to Google or Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, this is something that was bound to happen given the publicity the site has received in recent weeks from the mainstream press. The big problem occurs because most people are attempting to hastily test the new engine without any real reason to be using it. (more…)

Wikipedia: the defence

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Reading Oliver Kamm’s critique of Wikipedia on the First Post was an eye-opening experience. It was the first time I’ve enjoyed reading something that so completely failed to grasp the subject under discussion. Take the following paragraph, for example.

“Whereas science and learning pursue truth, Wikipedia prizes consensus. Wikipedia has no means of arbitrating between different claims, other than how many people side with one position rather than another. That ethos is fatal to the advancement of learning. Ideas are refined by being tested; scientific method presupposes scrutiny, experiment and conflict.”

The problem is that this argument, while beautifully stated, has all the substance of a passing cloud. Of course “ideas are refined by being tested,” but when has this ever been the job of an encyclopaedia?

(more…)

The invisible Internet pioneer

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

A museum has opened in Mons, Belgium, with an exhibit to internet pioneer Paul Otlet.

No, I haven’t heard of him, either.

Although, after reading about him, he seems like one of the most brilliant minds of the past 100 years – and one of the nuttiest.

In short, he proposed the Internet as we know it – and Wikipedia – and begun to develop his ideas into a feasible system. Except he started work in 1934 – a damn site earlier than Tim Berners-Lee and his pals started putting together the modern Internet.

(more…)

It may look cool – but what’s the point?

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

I’ve stumbled upon Chris Harrison’s superb WikiViz project and, while it’s undoubtedly a brilliant thing, there’s some debate in the office: what’s it actually for?

It caught my eye thanks to the odd, yet fantastic concept – a visual representation of Wikipedia. The result is an truly gigantic image which has to be divided into 64 squares, each of them at a size of 2781 x 2781 pixels. These are very large images.

Select one of the pictures, and wait for it to load – I suggest making a cup of tea while you’re hanging around – and then have a look. Thousands of articles all linked together by vertices and edges, joined together depending on how they’re connected on the real Wikipedia site. It’s one of those things that I can just look at for ages, exploring and finding new stuff, a bit like Google Earth.

Except, I can’t help feel that they’ve missed an opportunity. I’d like the whole thing to be zoomable and interactive, rather than it being an image. I can fly around the visual version of Wikipedia and then click links when I want to read the article. It should be in 3D, with full control.

Perhaps I’m asking too much. It’s a brilliant demonstration of visualisation, as it is, but after seeing how cool this is, I’m clamouring for more.

What do you think – genuinely interesting exercise, or diverting – but ultimately pointless – distraction?