BACKSTRIP

GK Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

No comment

Matt Gemmell’s conclusion regarding the comments on/comments off debate isn’t surprising: where you stand is (or should be) informed by the purpose of your blog.

As far as Backstrip goes, this is my publicly-shared commonplace book. I want to move you as fast as possible to the destination, whether that’s a point I’m trying to make or a link somewhere else. Comments would only add friction and distraction to that process - for me and you.

If I wanted to develop ideas, solicit (and collate) feedback, and/or cultivate a community, and if I was prepared to take on the burden of moderating, filtering and responding, then I’d switch them on. But that’s a lot of ifs.

In other words: comments may or may not add value, but they always have a cost.

You’re on the wrong high horse

1. Google Plus doesn’t have to accept anonyms, mononyms or pseudonyms. The service is evidently not for everyone, it’s not a monopoly, you’re not entitled to customer service - you’d have to be an actual customer to get that - and it doesn’t have to be nice about it. So get off your damn high horse…

2. …and climb up on this one. The critical issue with Google Plus is the lack of transparency. In exchange for your identity, you’ll receive a bunch of cool services without paying for them. But you don’t know how your identity is being used – it’s a fool’s bargain. This is one of the most dangerous imbalances we can have as individuals - there is no piece of information more valuable than our identity - and the imbalance is drastically tipped toward an exceptionally large, publicly-listed technology company with a dubious perspective on privacy.
   
   You can restore balance by either increasing transparency in how Google operates, or stamping your feet and pleading for anonymity or pseudonymity; the former maintains the service, the latter will result in a less effective service. So if you want the services Google can provide - which are more effective with real identities - then the logical step is to start demanding transparency.

Provenance and Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking a lot about provenance. In fact we all think about provenance to some degree - it’s why we’ll happily ignore that guy on the street shouting about the end of the world, but we’ll panic if Barack Obama interrupts our regular viewing to tell us that asteroid is heading toward Earth.

But trust - or authority - isn’t just about the author, it’s also about the process. If the message is “the Earth will be destroyed in 24 hours”, then the author (Barack Obama versus Guy) and the process (television interruption versus shouting on a street corner) are equally important. If Obama was ranting on a street corner, we’d be doubtful; if street guy interrupted our television, we’d think it was a joke. We need both.

So what then of a given Wikipedia article? Not all articles are equally trustworthy, so they shouldn’t be trusted equally. Without knowing anything about the people who wrote an article, I think we can still surface details about its history, primarily by tapping into the process — that is, the judgments of Wikipedian moderators, and some raw numbers.

To that end, I’ve put together a small extension for Firefox, which you can get here. It uses a simple set of rules that I require before I’ll trust a Wikipedia article. I don’t know what you would find trustworthy, so in future I’ll make it configurable. Just consider it an experiment for now.

Here’s how it works:

1. It looks at Wikipedia pages and Wikipedia links found on external sites.
2. It will either add a small coloured flag to the top right of a Wikipedia page (_ _ _) or shade each link on an external site; colours are determined according to these rules:
   • Red: If it has a message box requesting improvement (needs references, it reads like an advertisement etc). I consider this to be the biggest alarm that Wikipedia can send you. It’s an indicator that the process has failed in some way and that the information needs to be checked.
   • Orange: If the article is locked, or if the ratio of edits in the past month is high. This indicates volatility and tells me that information is in flux.
   • Green: Everything checks out

And here’s a trivial example of how it would appear:

A few notes:

• It’s probably not useful in its current format. It’s not tested.
• If the link doesn’t work automatically, you’ll have to download it first, then go to “Add-ons”, then “Install from file”, or somesuch (depends on your version of Firefox).
• It runs in the background, so the shading won’t happen immediately.
• Use at own risk. This is my first Firefox extension, so I don’t know what it’s capable of. It could kill your pets.