Fake Comments on BackType

I didn't know I was a 13-year old Girl with a Potty Mouth

As an Information & Knowledge Management professional, I continuously scan the web for new entrepreneurial start ups presenting innovative ways to manage information. One such start up is BackType which is described by its founders as:

...a conversational search engine. We index and connect millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media so people can find, follow and share comments. BackType was founded in June 2008 by Christopher Golda and Michael Montano.

I signed up for a BackType account last October, filled out my profile, uploaded my information, added a profile picture, etc., I toyed with it for a week or so and then promptly forgot about my account.

It wasn't until I was taking a look at Microsoft's Bing that a Bing search on my name turned up my BackType profile and a preview of the content it contained. I had to make a double take to digest the foul, hate-filled flame rant that appeared in my profile and was attributed to me.

After a quick jump to my long forgotten BackType account, there they were... 100's of comments that were listed on my profile, sporting my profile picture and all. All of them had different user names under my photo and about 40% were not even written in my language. I don't like to think that I am a perfect square, but as a tenured university professor, I don't wish to build up a rep for promoting bestiality with albino squirrels.

It looks like BackType has addressed this issue by providing an option in the user profile to turn on comment moderation and provides email alerts that comments need to be moderated. It looks like a great solution, but I don't recall receiving an email from BackType describing the problem and its solution. I've managed to page through all of the comments one by one and mark all of them as fake (there is no batch utility). I'm not severely peeved, but it would have been cool to discover this sooner.

Update

As you can see from the comment below Christopher Golda offered a quick explanation to the problem. When configuring my BackType account I was asked for the following:

"Include the URLs of the websites you comment with – these are the websites you fill out in the comment form when you write a comment – put each entry on a new line."

I incorrectly understood these instructions to mean "Include the URLs of the websites you comment ON --". I included YouTube in the list and instantly created a hard line connection to flame war nirvana. So don't do that. What the instructions are asking for are the URLs I input into any comment form when asked for MY website. BackType crawls the comments automatically and uses this list to attribute comments to me.

Problem solved. I'm happy to be me again. Thanks for the quick comment, Christopher! =]

On Being Blocked

Google Knol: Wikipedia, but with Robots

I’ve been a contributor to Wikipedia since March 2006. As an academic I have an innate need to share what I’ve learned with others so that we can debate issues, understand each other’s points of view and ultimately arrive at a common view of reality. General Ivory Tower stuff.

One of the difficulties with debates is that the early positions often differ greatly. Depending on how different, one view can be considered “true” and the other “false” on face value. As we evolve the argument we advance our understanding and the hard line between the initial positions often blur – not every time, but often.

As you can glean from its name, Wikipedia was formed to serve as a wiki-based encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The Wikipedia entry for “Encyclopedia” reads “a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge.” Information science holds that in order for communication to contain “information” it must be “true”. And so we’ve set up a great conundrum: how do we go about adding information into the compendium if not every editor considers it to be the truth?”

Collaborative Hyperbole Filter

One of the great functions that wikis do serve is that of a “collaborative hyperbole filter”. While not exactly a true/false detector, the filter does remove excessive opinion from matters of fact. For example, the entry for La Salle University may start out as “La Salle University is…”


After a few iterations, editors have removed superlatives and opinion-driven adjectives leaving bare factual information that is viewed as accepted “truth”.

Abstract Models and New Interpretations

But what happens when a Wikipedia article contains information on the development of abstract models and philosophy? Of course, this is the meat of academic research – the creating of a hypothesis and its correlation with experimental results. I’ve been more than frustrated by fellow editors that simply edit information without discussion or worse than that, refuse to utilize logic in a discussion. Consider the following example (hyperbole filter: OFF for dramatic effect)

“…the sky is blue because the water in the oceans is blue and the atmosphere has water vapor in it.” -t3k0vR10rd (talk)

Discussion:

t3k0vR10rd – There is a hint of understanding in your post, but current scientific modeling views the blue sky effect as being based on the strong scattering of high frequency (blue) light in deference to the weak scattering of low frequency (red) light. The blue light is scattered at various angles from its original forward direction and when it hits our eyes, we perceive blue. -drphysics (talk)

drphysics – I’m sure your theory of blue sky is great but Wikipedia is not a place for original research – please read the page on Wikipedia:NOR. I’ve reverted your changes back to my original version. -t3k0vR10rd (talk)

t3k0vR10rd – No, it’s not my original research… It is a currently accepted model by the physics community. I’ve changed it back to the accepted physics model. -drphysics (talk)

drphysics – Wow, you don’t know how to read the NOR policy. My summer camp councilor had just learned about the blue sky effect in his earth science class when he told us about it. If it was in his high school textbook then it must be much more accepted than the new ideas of researchers. Wikipedia is for the common person. If you have new research, send it to a journal. I’ve reverted your changes again. I’m a Wikipedia admin and if you change it back, I will have you blocked. -t3k0vR10rd (talk)

I’ve never pressed the issue far enough to be blocked, but I have had pages nominated for rapid deletion and ultimately removed from Wikipedia. One such page was on the topic of interdisciplinary education and editors felt the topic was too niche and not deserving of an entire page. Wikipedia has pages dedicated to episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants apparently leaving no room for information about advances in education.

Enter Google Knol

And then came Google Knol. Here was a model that allowed single editors to create pages or “Knols” involving topics on which they are knowledgeable and passionate. Editors could choose to collaborate or head out alone. Opposing Knols on the same topic would coexist and readers would be able to comment on and rate both Knols. I signed up right away and began to create.

As the Knol beta evolved, the editing tools improved and they even developed integrated analytics to be able to track page views, user ratings, comments and related Knols. I wrote a couple of Knols based on writing projects that I had not published in the open literature. Things were going well.

And then I recently decided to compare the Knol visibility with my blog. I started posting some of my older editorial articles that I have been publishing since 2000 to this blog and simultaneously created Knol versions. I then found out the Knol content policy was evolving and in addition to the prohibition of patently illegal and offensive content, Knols that appeared to be simply lifted from content available elsewhere on the web were to be avoided.

RoboCops

In typical Google style, the content policy is policed by computer algorithms, not human editors. The content robots quickly found both versions of my Knols on the web and promptly removed the Knols from the system. Because my account was a repeat offender, I signed in a few weeks ago to find the terse message “This account has been blocked.” No explanation and no path for recourse. I’ve emailed Knolhelp a few times, but so far no response. I’m still holding out hope that things will get resolved.

When Knol was initially launched, blog headlines stated Google Knol: Another version of Wikipedia.

Well they were close…Google Knol: Wikipedia, but with Robots.

UPDATE 4-9-2009

KnolHelp responded to my email request and a real live person has unblocked my account. I didn't get any feedback on why the account was blocked so I have no confirmation of what I did to trigger the blocked account.

All I do know it that I am now really gun shy to post anything on Knol. After spending weeks developing content for dissemination on the web, having it suddenly blink out of existence is not cool.

Dropbox to the Rescue (Again)

A Convenient Method for adding Attachments to Wiki Pages

I just can't say enough about Dropbox.

I'm a heavy user of Wetpaint for my classroom and group wikis. One of my courses in software development requires that we pass a large number of code snippets around and while attachments to each wiki page works, it has some minor drawbacks:

• Wetpaint accounts (both and pay and free) limit the total number and size of attachments (understandably so...)
• Attachments appear at the very bottom of the wiki page, below the content and page discussion threads

Again, not a deal killer, just would be nice if we could mention a file in the body of the page, include a hyperlink in line with the text and continue with the prose.

Dropbox "Public Files" to the rescue. Simply:

• Copy the file you wish to share into the "Public" folder that was created in your Dropbox folder at install
• Right click (or control click) on the file to pop up the options menu
• Click on the Dropbox submenu
• Click on the "copy public link" menu item
• Highlight your link text in your blog or wiki and paste the public link
• Presto... all done

The public link to the "Top Secret.txt" demo file created in my Dropbox install appears below:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/141947/Top%20Secret.txt

After creating a link you can grab the Top Secret.txt file by clicking on the linked filename in this sentence.

The link is to the copy of the file that lives on the dropbox servers, so the link to your actual computer is still safe behind your log in and password.

I continue to be amazed...