Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
__The person hiding behind IP address 202.22.18.241 works at Parliament in the IT department.
I have full name, suburb, age, date of birth, photo.
Looks like somebody is going to be fired.__
That's a disturbing post. How uncomfortable that people feel it's their role to look up people on the internet and then make threats about their employment.
It's also COMPLETELY MISGUIDED.
There are multiple people behind that address. I very strongly suspect that the IT guy is not the one making the edits.
-
From the Slate story:
According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits.
Well duh. Editing Wikipedia well isn't easy -- we don't want everyone who uses it as a reference to be editing. The idea that this somehow invalidates the process is silly.
The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.
Double duh. Probably the biggest challenge of any kind of collaborative information project like this is dealing with the lunatic fringe and getting more signal than noise. Jimmy Wales once said something about his goal being to not have Wikipedia turn into Usenet. Human frailty does abound in the dozens of edit wars going on at any time, but in general, I think the process holds up remarkably well.
Upthread, Rich mentioned an unfortunate encounter with zealous Wikipedia deletionists -- I can sympathise. Juha Saarinen and I had a similar experience trying to add an article about Kiwi Foo Camp last year. We also "won" (actually, "no consensus" was reached so the article stayed) but it was a shame it had to come to that. I found the pointless hostility from one person extremely off-putting.
-
Yes Gareth, it's Wikipedia policy to encourage deleting anything unsourced and potentially contentious from articles about living people. A good Wikipedia biography (for example George W. Bush) has citations for just about everything.
It would be more common to tag unsourced material with ["citation needed"]. There are citations available for the assertions on English's position, at least in so far as his voting record and Parliamentary speeches go. So it's not exactly libellous.
-
I am not a techie type person but I am wondering if the IP address could be everyone using one terminal that might be shared, or could represent the staff of a whole office/floor of Parliament?
Yes, someone's pointed to me that it could well be an outward-facing IP address, this side of the Parliamentary firewall. I don't think it represents all Parliamentary offices, though -- the pattern of editing is too consistent for that.
Plus: Whaleoil found a number of different Parliament-associated addresses when the Scanner popped up last year:
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/?q=node/4753
Sort of ironic that he bitched about the wasting of his tax money by 202.22.18.241 ...
-
I find it a bit troubling. Young is a journalist with particular positions on some issues that would be at odds with those of Bill English. He's grinding axes rather than trying to put the public record straight.
I know what you mean. And yet, the information was public, factual and arguably relevant. It's quite a tricky question. Then, is it the role of a taxpayer-funded staffer to remove factual information about the subject of the article? It's tricky.
It's worth noting that a fairly dedicated group of people is constantly adding unflattering material to the Helen Clark article and others. A certain blogger spammed the Clark article with a huge rant about the Doone affair, and had a bit of a tanty when it was worked back by someone with a more measured approach. It usually gets worked out in the end, but much more politically motivated editing of MPs' articles seems to come from the right.
The Peachey one is more clear-cut. The original account of the incident needed editing for POV, but the topic was certainly notable. It was reported widely at the time, and simply removing it was unacceptable. It's good to see it restored.
-
And I'd also like folks to consider what the reaction would be if Helen Clark was tagged as an agnostic/atheist.
Er, her Wikipedia article__ does__ say just that. I can't see a problem with that. Like English's Catholicism, it's a matter of record.
It also comments on her wedding to Peter Davis.
-
I wonder how many people actually care about wikipedia.
I use it pretty much daily. I want it to be sound.
-
What the research says is that, because the drug turns out to be no better than a placebo (for all but the most extreme cases), the fact the pill works for someone does not tell them whether it contains the drug or is a placebo. That's all.
Yes. But you also have to look at what the research actually is, and consider its limitations too.
Direct-to-consumer advertising a la the US, implying that this pill will solve your problems and make you happy, is crazy. It's extremely like that a lot of people who don't need these drugs are getting them.
But what's being analysed here are trials conducted in advance of any real-world clinical experience with these drugs, over a much shorter treatment period than would be considered useful now.
And, as i said, this isn't entirely new analysis: the core of it is a decade old, and it continues to be debated. It's just the reporting that (in the Guardian headline's words) "scientists say" that SSRIs "don't work" that is deeply flawed.
The real story is that the drug companies cherry-picked their clinical trials.
-
It strikes me that another weakness in this study -- probably a reflection of the vintage of the trials -- is that it does not consider at all the use of SSRIs to ease anxiety disorders, only clinical depression.
A significant group of people on the autistic spectrum -- including the wonderful Dr Temple Grandin -- regard low-dose SSRIs as allowing them to actually function without the terrible anxiety that can accompany an autistic experience of the world.
The Herald is getting a bit of a roasting in its Your Views section already. I think there are people talking about Press Council complaints.
-
That's an easy thing to think Rob, but Obama's schtick isn't shallow -- the Lawrence Lessig endorsement had a big impact on me. The slate seems to be quite centrist, but that tallies with his big-tent message. And as I pointed out in the post, he's an effective legislator.
The Klein thing was shallow. Obama is a great orator, but that's not a bad thing. I like candidates who speak in sentences. But c'mon -- if you have a great speech, you give it in every town, right? Sure, Joe Klein from Time is gonna get tired of hearing it, but the people in those towns won't. Like they don't get tired of the same set from U2.
I think Klein is covering his ass: he's been raving about Obama's executive skills for a while.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 … 2279 Older→ First