Soft Machine³ - Arts Tech and Other

UPDATE: in defense of Demand Media

Demand Media May Be Bad for Social Media, but Not for Journalism

The history of the Internet is being re-written so quickly it makes the future web a constantly moving target, even for the simple question “how will we access general information?”

(you really expect me to give up and go home?)

Overshadowing this issue is the way search engines crawl the Internet and rank pages on relevance. Google and Bing seem to be the two left standing. I remember having to sift through pages of AltaVista results back in the day. 

Search engines can be considered your primary filter for the Internet; but as they are bombarded with new content from “Content Farms” they — or we — must adapt. Some think “social search” will become the new primary filter, creating ad-hoc “ambient feeds.” These feeds would use human filtering to fight search engines defeated by 1) “SEO” gaming, or 2) drowning in a sea of mediocre content.

I already use Google reader, Twitter and FriendFeed for much of my content discovery; search engines are most useful when I need references for a topic I’m writing about.  However, it’s hard to imagine this solution working for the vast majority — who don’t “stay on top of” breaking news, and are happy enough with answers returned from any old portal like Yahoo.com or Ask.com.

Completely separate from yet completely bound up with the issue is business and profit, open collaboration and community and social issues, online public libraries and access to educational resources. Many blogs are profitable and growing, where news organizations are failing; some by federation and streamlining, some by ad revenue and huge traffic numbers. Some have started down the road of quantity over quality, and often echo each other, especially in the tech sector. This isn’t nearly as large a problem as that presented by “Content Farms” however.  The number of “hot stories” in the tech sector is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of different search engine queries at any given moment. The latter is what “Content Farms” aim to capture.

(if you don’t accept our low buyout offer, we will bury you until dead)

“Moderated collaboration or curated knowledge gardens”:

• Imdb (October 1990) — Film and television database started before the Internet as we know it today
• Wikipedia (January 2001) — Arguably the most successful open collaboration effort to date
• Stack Overflow (July 2008) — Upstart latecomer; programmer’s Q&A site with innovative “points” system

“Content farms”:

• Demand Media (May 2006) 
• Answers.com (January 2005) 
• eHow.com (April 2006)

(don’t let this happen to you)

Required reading

• RWW: Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media: Are Content Farms “Demonic”?
• RWW: Richard McManus: Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried
• Inquisitr: Duncan Riley: Why Demand Media is Good
• Inquisitr: Steven Hodson: The supersizing of content; or how we are turning the Web into an obese mess
• BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis: Content farms v. curating farmers

(live to fight another day)

Still images from 300 (film) Imdb link

Related Post: Expert Village Advanced Piano vs. Lang Lang with Orange

FROM THE ARCHIVES: November 30, 2008

Wikipedia is getting a fresh round of scrutiny amidst observations that contribution has dropped precipitously in the last year.

Related Post: Unabashed Plea: Leave Wikipedia Aloooooone (sob)

See Also: Communications During Terrorist Attacks are Not Bad - Schneier on Security

ZDNet article by Jennifer Leggio (November 28th, 2008)

Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media

The content on Page 2 leaves me with two choices. Either she does not understand Wikipedia, or is using it as a punching bag to make some grandiose claim about the shortcomings of social media and citizen journalism.

I attempted to clarify. See that FriendFeed conversation here. Note that she issues me a “correction” and did not respond to my concern that she flat out does not understand how Wikipedia works.

The Wikipedia article pictured on page 2 was seeded with valid information and grew from there. She saw it defaced for a moment, but didn’t manage to get a “screen shot.” She got the “screen shot” from a friend.

Here is the latest revision of the Wikipedia entry titled “November 2008 Mumbai attacks”. I looked for the revision she cites, and failed to find it. Needless to say, that’s beside the point See below.

At the time of this writing (half-past Midnight the morning of November 30) the article has extensive information, time lines, pictures, and 179 references. The number of entries in the Page history is in excess of 1500.

Is it possible Jennifer and her friend don’t understand that a Wikipedia article about a disaster such as this is the result of thousands of contributions? Does she not understand that for it to appear as she shows it, someone has to delete all of the content and replace it with “Bush Sucks?”

Does she not know that this sort of defacement is extremely noticeable to the hundreds of people making contributions in real time, and the next contributor will simply “undo” the defacement before making their changes?

She is betraying a stunning ignorance or bias here. I have less and less patience with lazy opinion pieces, or pieces that take cheap shots to make some trumped-up case. And in light of the tragedy of the actual events in Mumbai, I am appalled that it is reduced to “Bush Sucks.” I must say, in this case “ZDNet Sucks” also.

How many more ways can “main-stream media” fail? I’m not sure I know the answer to that one.

UPDATE:
Found the notorious defacement(s). Two of them. Lasting 5 and 7 seconds for a grand total of 12. 

OMG STOP THE PRESSES. WIKIPEDIA IS BROKEN. I CAN HAZ PULITZER NOW?

My last comment on the article:

I will eagerly anticipate articles from ZDNet on how wikipedia has attained the success it has now, and what can be improved.

I will not entertain casual sniping at one of the best examples of a massive collaborative effort to date.

I wonder if Jennifer, and others at ZDNet would care to take an “official” anti-wikipedia position, and explain that this in no way is affected by business motives and an erosion of the authority of such as ZDNet. Looking forward to it!