Governments and Wikipedia — Wisdom of Crowds or Spin Doctor?

I really love the philosophy of the Wisdom of Crowds. It’s the suggestion that as people participate in content creation, adding, modifying and contributing their own thoughts and ideas, without interference, the content gets closer and closer to the truth.

Well, guess whose been editing the Wikipedia?

• Workers in the CIA made edits to the page of Iran’s president
• The Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams
• Staff from the Australian Department of Defence have removed anti-Liberal Party comments
• Treasurer Peter Costello’s page on the Wikipedia was also edited, removing a reference to the nickname “Captain Smirk”
• Staff from the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet were also found to have made edits on controversial political topics such as the “children overboard” affair

I’m not the only one worried that politicians are attempting to change history. The Australian Department of Defence is now so worried about this activity that they have blocked staff from accessing the Wikipedia at work.

Meanwhile, the head of an online rights lobby group has questioned the use of taxpayer-funded staff to change online articles about politically sensitive issues.

Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia Dale Clapperton says the site can be changed by anyone but there should be ethical considerations as well.

“You also have to ask yourself whether it’s a responsible and reasonable use of taxpayer dollars to have public servants trying to sanitise entries on Wikipedia,” he said.

M

Where world-views collide — social computing tools in government

Last week I presented at Web Standards Group on social computing in government. It was a case study that described my work at an Australian government department last year, where I made the recommendation to use certain social computing tools — wikis and tagging — to allow two very different groups to share their world-views of information.

See: http://www.slideshare.net/magia3e/government-and-social-computing

Normally, I’d find people would just use a taxonomy to classify information and then use normal document management system to store and report on the breadth of information. The case study is a reminder that different people have different views of information and they don’t necesarily match. Just as Gary Barber noted on Nathaniel’s blog:

“The way I see the world is not the same as you. We are all separate people with different views”.

Importantly, the solution needed to take this factor into account.

The result was this:

• allow users to upload their documents to a website
• authors tag their own documents in order to classify the content
• a topic map connects the folksonomic terms to the corporate taxonomy
• definitions of all terms, folksonomic and taxonomic, were then stored in a wiki where the information on these two world views of information could be communicated and shared

This approach to sharing information is now the standard for this government department. I only wish that more would take notice that, when it comes to sharing information, there are alternatives to using a taxonomy and that one-size doesn’t aways fit-all.

M

Matthew speaks at WSG on social computing in government

Looks like this is going to be a busy few months ahead for me!

I’m going to be presenting at the next Web Standards Group meeting:

When: Thursday 26 July
Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
WhereNLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia

The presentation is titled “Goldilocks and the three bears: a story about social computing in government”

It’s a story about social computing in a typical government agency — of a recommendation to leverage existing folk taxonomies, use tagging, and even topic maps, to enable an agency to describe and report on activity amongst their key stakeholders inside a wiki.

The agenda also includes a presentation by my good friend Stephen Collins whose talking about how social computing tools can be used as a way to leverage the benefits of knowledge management across business.

It should be a lot of fun. If you’re in Canberra I hope you can make it out to the National Library of Australia.

M