An Update on Wikipedia

While many schools still ban the use of Wikipedia as a source for research projects, the latest Pew Internet research shows that percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult Internet users. The sometimes-suspect, collaborative encyclopedia is also most popular with those who have at least a college degree. By the way, Wikipedia just had its tenth birthday.

An Update on Wikipedia

While many schools still ban the use of Wikipedia as a source for research projects, the latest Pew Internet research shows that percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult Internet users. The sometimes-suspect collaborative encyclopedia is also most popular with those who have at least a college degree. An interesting paradox. By the way, Wikipedia just had its tenth birthday.

Obama Cautions Grads About Technology

It was very disappointing to read that President Obama recently told the graduates of Hampton University to watch out for becoming entangled in technology devices and then thought it was a joke to tell them that he doesn’t know how to work them. "And with iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said. "So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."

After years of urging parents to become acquainted with technology so that they can have open conversations with their children about the danger of the distractions and misinformation versus the empowerment that technology provides, I felt his comments seemed like a giant step in the wrong direction. The only way kids are going to understand the dangers of misinformation are for parents and teachers to have open, informed and honest discussions with kids about it. It doesn’t help for any parent to belittle technology these days or tell kids not to use it, especially if you admit that you have no idea how any of it works. The problems that technology create are not going to be solved by telling kids not to get involved in it, but rather by having open and clear discussions about it, figuring out how to focus on the fact that it binds us all much closer than ever before, and to set expectations about how our children should use it to explore and define their world, never accepting just one viewpoint or expecting that there is the only one viewpoint, teaching them to read, analyze and think as never before.

Australia Tries to Censor the Web

The Australian government is intending to propose legislation that would block the access of certain Web sites. The blacklist includes sites thought to carry content like child pornography, bestiality, rape and other sexual violence, or detailed instructions on how to commit certain crimes. Critics say it will not prevent determined users from sharing such content, and could lead to unwarranted censorship by overzealous officials. They are also concerned that the reasons for blacklisting sites would be kept secret, opening the possibility that legitimate sites might be censored.

What are some other outlooks on this issue? Countries such as Egypt and Iran impose strict Internet controls, and bloggers have been imprisoned. China has a pervasive filtering system. Canada, Sweden and Britain have filters, but they are voluntary. In the United States, Pennsylvania briefly imposed requirements for service providers to block child pornography sites, but a federal court struck down the law because the filters also blocked legitimate sites.

Texting at Work: Policy Change in the Wind?

The US Supreme Court is going to hear a case that could change text message policies in companies around the country. The case, City of Ontario v. Quon, revolves around the question of whether the Ontario, Calif., police force had the right to read text messages sent by its employees, including sexually explicit messages that were clearly not part of police business -- and whether Arch Wireless, then the city's telco provider, violated the employees' rights by revealing their messages. The case made its way to the 9th Circuit, which held that the police department violated one employee’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Beware of Googlebombs

So what is a Googlebomb? Well the most immediate example is an unflattering image of Michele Obama, distorted to show make her face appear ape-like, that was the first result users got when performing an image search for her on Google Images. The image was finally removed by its original host, a rather cryptic blog called “Hot Girls” and replaced with an apology in Chinese. An accompanying (and literal) English-language translation seems to indicate remorse that Google's indexing technologies ended up ranking the picture high on its results list: "I am very sorry for this article, and that this is the program automatically issued a document from the article. Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful."

Until it was removed Google posted a disclaimer link with the image reading "Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google. Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet." In short Google maintains that it is not compelled to act as a censor simply because a piece of content is offensive and disturbing. They will remove child porn or other illegal material that attacks someone on the basis of their membership in a religion, race or ethnic group, but not if an item is critical of a religion, for example. Of course no one person or group decides what image is going to come up first in a search. Mathematical equations or algorithms do it all. Perhaps just another argument that you need to dig a bit when doing any kind of search online as the first result may not always be the best.

Paying for the News

As newspaper ad revenues continue to shrink, the newspaper business is facing a tough decision about whether to charge for online information. Setting up “paywalls” that make readers pay for the information they want is a daunting task from both a technological and business perspective. And newspapers that chose the pay route have to wonder if it will create a new revenue stream or drive readers to sites where there is no charge for the news.

What do you think will happen? Are you willing to pay for the news? Is this the end of local/regional news? What happens if news only begins to come from a couple of sources? Lots of questions and very few answers at this point.

Media Credibility Numbers Shrink to New Low

It seems according to a new Pew Research Center survey on media credibility just 29 percent of Americans surveyed believe the media gets the facts right, and a scant 18 percent think news organizations are truly objective. While "Public Evaluations of the News Media, 1985-2009" does not focus on technology's impact on media, those downward trends may intersect with rising chart lines for the use of Web sites and blogs as news sources. Along with that comes better access to information for pointing out journalists' errors and overall critiques of the media. That’s good news. Now if we can just get our kids to remember that everything they read on the Internet isn’t necessarily so, we may be seeing a new era of media literacy.

Wikipedia Tries a Different Kind of Orange Crush

It looks like Wikipedia is continuing to come up with new ways to make it more reliable as a research source for homework and other projects. The site has announced a new optional feature called “WikiTrust” which will color code entries based on reliability. The color-coding tool gives users a "check text tab" that reveals author, origin and reliability of the text. The intent is to highlight spam, surreptitious changes and outright information-tampering by contributors who might have ulterior motives for making changes -- for example, a company's competitors or a politician's opposition party.

WikiTrust lets users see the edit compared to the original text, and it allows them to access information on the author of the edit. The trustworthiness of an entry is computed according to the author's reputation, as well as the reputation of users who have subsequently revised the text and the article where the text appears. Sounds like a great lesson in media literacy to me. And as the school year opens – make sure you check with your children’s teachers to see if Wikipedia is an allowable source before it becomes an issue.

Wikipedia Editing Policies to Change

While some schools still ban Wikipedia as a source for schoolwork, the site remains a first stop for many (60 million a month) looking up random facts and figures. The complaint about free wheeling Wikipedia has always been that the source of the material could be tainted to begin with or that anyone can edit anything someone else has written to add bogus facts and questionable bias. Now, though, when it comes to facts and commentary on people, that editing process is about to change. Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review on articles about living people. The new feature, called “flagged revisions,” will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. The change in policy seems to be coming from a realization that the site must mature into a vetted source if it is going to remain a cultural staple.

“We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks,” said Michael Snow, a lawyer in Seattle who is the chairman of the Wikimedia board. “There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion — whether simply misunderstood or an author had some ax to grind. There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.”

Wow! Is this the ushering in of a new era of responsibility on the Web? I’ve been complaining for months in this blog about the lack of trusted sources for general information as the encyclopedia companies are going out of business right and left. We can only hope this new ethos flourishes.