[WikiEN-l] Re: Raul's 6th law of Wikipedia confirmed

Sun Aug 28 15:20:04 UTC 2005

> From: Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net>
>
> "Wikipedia's steadily increasing popularity means that within the next
> year or two, we will begin to see organized corporate astroturfing
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing> campaigns."
>
> Prediction confirmed - August 28, 2005 -
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/wikipedia-worries/ 
> 2005/08/23/1124562860192.html
>
> "However, the concern continues. One anonymous reader contacted
> Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses
> Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies.."That includes planting
> of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point  
> to new
> promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of
> information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online
> meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We  
> love it."

Without challenging your prediction, I do wish to repeat that there  
is a big difference between talking about something and actually  
doing it.

There are all sorts of _apparent_ opportunities to get away with  
dishonest behavior. For example, newspaper vending machines allow you  
to pay for one newspaper and take two. I am sure there is some sleaze  
somewhere who is bragging about how he does this regularly. You might  
even be able to figure out a way to make money on this for a while-- 
say, by systematically looting vending boxes and bringing the papers  
to recyclers.

That does not mean that any newspaper company needs to pay hundreds  
of thousands of dollars to redesign and retrofit their vending machines.

That does not mean that there is no danger. I'm just saying that it  
is a big step from saying you _could_ do something from actually  
doing it on a big enough scale to be a problem.

A good example of this is airline hijackings. From the beginnings of  
air passenger travel until the late 1960s, airliners were totally  
unprotected against hijacking. I am _sure_ that people said "Look how  
easy it would be to..."  I was going to say "and nothing happened for  
thirty years but Wikipedia's article on "aircraft hijacking" mentions  
some isolated events, the first in 1931. Nevertheless, it did not  
become a systemic _problem_ until the late 1960s and early 1970s.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/