I have noticed a disturbing trend in recent years that if you can't Google something, it is somehow not worthy of attention, or worse, this electronic omission arbitrates on the worth of a project.

I will give you an example: not long ago I attempted to add Barry Stone to Wikipaedia. Now, Northern UK residents may recognise this man as the community hero that he is, the man who brought peace to the drug epidemic of 2000-2004 by the use of writing classes for the junkies, and the man who has tirelessly raised the profile of domestic violence victims for about a decade. It is without any hesitation that I type Barry Stone is a National treasure whose name will be honoured in this part of the world for generations to come. He has helped publish many books of poetry and prose from people on the margins of society, the most recent of which is "Igloos in the Sun", a copy of which I hold in my hand as I type (one-handed). He has turned around the lives of literally hundreds of would-be criminals and suicide cases. The streets of Newcastle-upon-Tyne are a safer place to walk as a result of this man's tireless commitment to improving people's lives through the written word. His is a household name for many residents here, and is known to many of the community action programme coordinators as a solid booking for their projects.

But he doesn't come up on a Google search, and nor does "Igloos in the Sun", and so the wankers at Wikipaedia deleted the entry, citing that he was a person of little significance. When I e-mailed the little pricks with all the paper evidence I had on the man, they were not interested one little bit. "Not on Google, not interested..." was one maddening reply.

The bloody irony of it all is that I had to ask for my own personal entry to be removed about a hundred times before they complied, and I'm nobody!

Google is a corporation: its primary legal responsibility is to return a profit to its investors, despite its aspirations to the contrary. Would you trust McDonald's opinion on what was significant about nutrition? Would train corporation GNER post their cheapest fares on the front page of their website? Would Yahoo.com hand over political dissidents to oppressive regimes in order to expand their market share – whoops! Oh yes, they did that didn't they... Were we surprised at this ruthless behaviour, or that it contradicted their mission statement? Is Pepsi the choice of a new generation?

Why then should we trust Google with validating reality itself?

Wikipaedia is a PR dream come true: just type in "cool" if you don't believe me, and look at the free commercial for Gwen Stefanni's single of the same name. This advert was their featured article not long ago, and has been clearly typed from a press release. You see, in a hundred years' time, people will be typing in the word "cool" looking for this crappy pop-song, won't they?


Is there more to life than a search engine? With newspapers now blatantly ransacking the Internet for ideas and stories and Google hell bent on buying up every out-of-copyright text they can get their mitts on, and sometimes even just laying claim to copyright text just because they think nobody is looking, have we now entered a new Dark Ages, collective human experience and the very words and actions by which this is expressed now solely in the hands of one commercial interest?

Well, what can you expect really? We've been moving towards an omnipotent entity controlling our lives for some time now. I honestly thought microsoft was the most manipulative. Example: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/298702.html

If any corporation can control what we think, they can control what we buy. As a result, they control the marketplace. All of it.

Political movements like fascism and communisn, socialism, and all of those such things are old hat. Freedom fighter uprisings are out of date. The new way to overthrow a society is through corporations. Stop thinking of them as companies. They're closer to your new form of government. Which one will gain controll is anyones bet.

I don't think it's a new dark age. Not enough knowledge is being lost (Though all wisom and common sense is! ). It's closer to a new cold war. Tension is high. Any one of these corporate giants could destroy the world. And yet they sit locked in a stalemate. The only difference is that the world is no longer holding it's breath. It, for the most part, has no clue that this is even happening.

You want to know the real reason they didn't include Barry Stone? Because there isn't a cost effective way to squeeze a profit out of him. Money and stocks are the new nukes. Popularity the new propaganda. And ignorance is the new fear.

Welcome to the future... (I always wanted to say that!!! )

I like your idea of the increase in knowledge being at the expense of a decrease in wisdom.

In fact that sums up my discontent with the situation exactly.

Aww... I'm touched. :p

Back to the subject of Wiki being evil, I've also noticed another sneaky thing they do. They offer conflicting information on various subjects. I first noticed this when helping my little brother with a music assignment. Looking for information on one of his thrashy bands, I searched Nu-metal. I was met with a familiar band. Disturbed. Clicking on the link to said band, it proceeded to call them Hard Rock. I was at first a little amused.

But soon, after searching many varied subjects to see if this was common, I was in a fury. Wiki basically just shows you what it thinks you want to see. In some cases it was borderline on propagandic! Try it out. Use negative search terms for a controversial subject, then try positive ones. You'll soon notice that you've been up to your arse in their lips every time you search.

They get money to lie to us? And anyone calls this a helpfull service?!!!

The reason why Wiki has conflicting info: because any old schmuck can write the articles for and contribute info to them. I haven't yet broken the habit of using it for my research papers just because it's so handy, often the second or third thing that comes up in a Google search, and it has a lot of info. It wouldn't be so evil if the people who run the site double-checked what was sent into them, and if these people provided the sources they used.

The source 99% of them use is : Google, then the Internet Movie Database, then Amazon. The other 1% use e-bay... We are leaving the arbitration of world knowledge in the hands of people who never leave their keyboard, not even to pee (that's why two-litre cola is such a good seller: recycling! ) Imagine the moderation of goth.net being available to just anyone who logged-on: good idea light going on yet?

Public information is like another great free-for-all institution: the public toilet. Crap-in, crap-out, and kick the door off the stall just for the hell of it while scrawling your own personal inadequacies all over the walls... Oh look, the new wiki tagline...

And that whole "User Submission" thingie that "anyone can edit"? Not so: check out who pays to have their articles inserted by way of "donation" i.e. bribe: oh look, it's the self-same publicity houses of our trustworthy friends the mass-media, hence Gwen Stafanni gets a free commercial on the front page once in a while. So what if this flies in the face of the rules the rest of us have to follow? "Screw consistency, we've got funding!"


That people are using it as a quick and easy reference for projects (and I myself have used it on these forums, doubtless) is worrying: it is like trusting General Motors with your text books "I don't seem to be able to find the entry on Environmentalism anywhere in this thing...Hey, look, Creationism is a science!"

PS I have just signed up as HasBeen to see if I can present these complaints directly to the other users. Given that they mostly look like PR teams and professional advertising agencies, let's see how far I get...

Later...

I... that is... to say in so many words... AaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGRGGRGRHGRHRHRGRGGGHGHH...

//Drops down dead poisoned by own hate and in sheer shock at the totally biased, schoolyard rules that wikipaedia promotes as sound policy and "commitment to building a respectable body of knowledge"//


If I hated you, I would invite you to join and see for yourself.

Instead I say "Leave the wounded and RUN!"

Hmmmm...yeah, thats's pretty much how the net works. I'm actually wondering if you and a couple friends each made a site based on the man you speak of, if then you could enter it at wiki. I know it can be quite a bit of work, but if you can get google to bring it up, then they can't argue with you. And if it doesn't work then use the page to start your own little gathering of wisdom.

We may yet see a Barry Stone forum in the New Year, primarily to start some appreciation of the man's work: wiki can go suck a USB cable.

In the meantime I am going to see what I can do to chip away at the extraordinary invasion of thinly-veiled marketing all across Wikipaedia.

If I get anything achieved, I'll let you know.

This is really depressing. It's frustrating when you hear about stuff like this, how marketing controls so much, especially when it comes to information on the internet which is meant to be limitless but these guys are pretty much trying to prevent that and turn everything into a narrow please the masses for greatest profit type of thing. #(

It's like what's happening with books. I've seen how stores like WHSmith and supermarkets downsize their sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime and various other genres sections and increase the amount of 'chick' books they have. WHSmith's I don't even bother with, I tried ordering books there and they said it would arrive in six weeks, then I was told to wait another six weeks then another. When I asked what they were playing at they said they won't order a book unless another 19 people order it as well. :S So basically if you want to order anything there it's got to be popular. Morrisons are even worse, years ago you used to be able to buy all sorts of cool books there like 'Medical Curiosities and Mistakes' and other quirky stuff and now all you can get is pastel coloured 'chick' books that my mum is into and kids books. It's depressing, at least I can rely on Ottakers, who have been increasing their manga section despite the fact that it's probably a risk when it's not such a popular genre in this country (it's less well-known and popular than anime still) and I hope places like this can help increase an interest in manga in the UK. The helpfulness of the staff there when it comes to asking about manga and ordering it is surprising (I'm used to getting jerked around at WHSmiths where the staff seem inept at using their search systems and are unhelpful in general).

I agree, and what you are describing is the inevitable end result of all of those consumer survey tick box thingies that the issuers insist are harmless, fun and necessary. It's the price of a chance at winning a free i-pod or whatever, and it is way too expensive, in my aggressive and single-tracked opinion.

"Market research limits choice" is my new banner for the marches, that and "Wiki is Evil: Google is Worse"...

No matter how societies change, we always end up with that reality that anything of value has to be sought out. The dream of a world where what matters is right there at the click of a mouse is just that. I say let them hide wisdom. I am not afraid to click my mouse an extra dozen times to get there. The herd wouldn't want to know anyway. People aren't being decieved, they just don't care. Nothing is buried that far beneath the surface, honestly. I mean, I am American. Half the people (almost) put an oil company Guy in the white house. Do you really, honestly think people just aren't aware? That if you could sit htem down and prove it to them in plain talk, they would all change thier view? Nonesense. Just keep McDonalds open, and the cable TV on.

Yet is that not the very attitude that perpetuates the status quo, hideous?

This is fun: The man behind a fake posting on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia that linked a journalist to the Kennedy assassinations has apologised.

But spot the deliberate mistake:... err... not so...

See how they lie...Wiki vs Britannica in the battle for maximum publicity... Pardon me for pointing out the inaccuracies in this so-called test, but it is clearly biased bullshit. Admittedly I have an axe to grind, but even so...

The tested errors in the scientific entires in the Encyclopaedia Britannica were mainly due to up-to-the-minute information not being included. The errors in wiki are clearly indicative of (a) lazy plagarism from tomes such as, err, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (b) commercial bias by pharmaceutical reps.


This high publicity drive for the wiki project merely reinforces my fear that it is reaching to be recognised as a global source of all that is correct.

Given the clear commercial bias achingly apparent in almost every second entry, this is a terrifying prospect in my opinion.

I have much work to do it seems...


PS from the above article: Many? Many! How about "very few indeed", or even "of the 13,000 volunteers, at least a quarter of this figure is comprised of individuals or company reps doubling or tripling up on IDs"?

I tried...(this and many more) but the moderators weren't interested in consistency, honesty, or, err, addressing the points raised.

The person who made the decision to keep is a 15 year-old Korean who by his own admission is a wikiholic and scaresly leaves his computer. So the arbiter of what is officially classified as important music is in safe hands then... #(


Please bear all this in mind when searching for something you care about, and for truth's sake don't give them any money...

PS this might be the cure...

I had a very annoyiny experience with google for my last research report
I was doing a paper on Tolkien's influence on fantasy, and i tried searching for it and all google gives me is a bunch of crap on the movie or how wonderful the books are, which didn't help with my paper. Then my instructer tells me i'm not searching well because surely i would find something 'googling' it. eventually i did find stuff but it was buried in a website that i brought up searching for info on a history topic

i am also disturbed that wikipedia has such popularity. okay, one can obtain info on a topic quickly, but the quality isn't very good. the writing style is not very good and must of it is cut and pasted from other sources. because anyone can sign up and edit articles, how does a reader know what he or she is reading is actually reliable?

We don't. The only pure, untainted knowledge is something observed or taken part in firsthand. Everything else is taught to us by someone else's perception of it.

Holy fuck!! Teachers are telling students that it's okay to use internet searches for research papers now!

Back in the day, which was a while back but not that long ago, it was almost completely verbotten. Some of my professors gave automatic Ds or Fs to anyone who quoted websites for more than a small percentage (usually 2-5%) of their research. Most of them had a limit of no more than three internet resources per project, and those had to be reputable sites like online academic journal archives. The general consensus seemed to be that the internet is a good place to look for popular opinions on popular phenomenon, but, beyond that, it was a dangerous place for researchers.


The thing about the internet, which is both good and bad, is that it's a place where just about anyone can post just about anything. There's only a loose code of ethics, there's no reliable peer review process (not that it would do very much good if there were, given the peers of most webmasters), and resources appear and disappear quickly. It's not and it can't be a safe place for serious research.