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The Dangers of Open Content

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jul 16, 2006 09:35 AM
from the something-to-think-about dept.
Media Movies
gihan_ripper writes "Recently released open movie Elephants Dream found itself in hot water with Catalonians after accidentally using an offensive word instead of 'Català' in the subtitle menu. The cause? Designer Matt Ebb had used Wikipedia to look up the Catalan word for Catalan on a day when the entry had been vandalized. He writes about this experience on the Elephant Dream blog. We may have scoffed at John Seigenthaler over his criticisms of Wikipedia, but it gives us pause for thought when we to heavily on Wikipedia."
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  • I understand the dangers from using wikipedia (and like so many slashdotters have said, for serious work, use it as a starting point, not a source.)

    However, this is more about the troubles with doing international work - its hard to understand the sensitivities & languages of multiple (over 30!) cultures. Companies as large as Microsoft [com.com] have made mistakes [theregister.co.uk] like this before, withlout using open content.

    a version of Windows XP aimed at Latin American markets asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch."

    As the (google cache) blog author says: [64.233.183.104]

    I also hope everyone can see the humour of it, it's a successful prankster joke we should just laugh about and then move on shrugging it off.


    *shrug* - not that big a deal, and an internationalisation, not open content problem.
    • *shrug* - not that big a deal, and an internationalisation, not open content problem.

      To elaborate a bit - there's large and thriving translator communities out there for many of the worlds languages. I'd go out on a limb and say that any open project can quite easily rustle up competent (and sometimes truly expert) help for any language or localization issue.

      • Re:Dangers of international content? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tatarize (682683) on Sunday July 16 2006, @11:29AM (#15728295) Homepage
        >>I'd go out on a limb and say that any open project can quite easily rustle up competent (and sometimes truly expert) help for any language or localization issue.

        I don't think this is an issue. I mean, Elephant's Dream sucked in English and even properly translated would have issues. I think that, if rather than the dialog in the flick they said profane words... it would have been much more watchable.

        Proves we could do CGI... and we should figure out scriptwriting.
    • I understand the dangers from using wikipedia (and like so many slashdotters have said, for serious work, use it as a starting point, not a source.)

      Why would I trust it as a starting point if I can't trust it as a source?

      • Why would I trust it as a starting point if I can't trust it as a source?

        You shouldn't trust any single source.

        Wikipedia is a useful starting point as it will contain pointers (or at least useful search terms) to begin looking for other items to reference. It's no different to any other encyclopedia in that respect.

        Surely you don't use a single soruce for information for an important project?
        • Surely you don't use a single soruce for information for an important project?

          I routinely do. But then the source in question is unimpeachable and has stood the test of time and criticism. In fact, in the real world it's very common to rely on single sources, handbooks, references, etc...
           
          When writing a program, you don't look up the meaning of a command in three sources do you? When wiring a house, you don't check three different copies of the electrical code. When working on your car, all you need is your Chilton's. Examples abound of routine daily use of single sources.
          • When working on your car, all you need is your Chilton's

            You don't want to know how many times I've needed to do something that WASN'T in a Chiltons. Substitute "Factory Service Manual" for "Chiltons" and I'll agree.
            • You don't want to know how many times I've needed to do something that WASN'T in a Chiltons. Substitute "Factory Service Manual" for "Chiltons" and I'll agree.


              Sure, but that's not the problem we see here: to make the analogy correct, have you ever looked up procedure in Chiltons and found it, only to find out later that its instructions were completely (or even maliciously) wrong?

              • Re:Dangers of international content? (Score:5, Insightful)

                by gameforge (965493) on Sunday July 16 2006, @11:05AM (#15728217) Journal
                When writing a program, you don't look up the meaning of a command in three sources do you?

                Regularly. And only then do I get a complete description, if not find an error in one.

                When wiring a house, you don't check three different copies of the electrical code.

                If one, even. Really, if there were multiple versions (not copies) released at the same time, of course I would look at all of them.

                When working on your car, all you need is your Chilton's.

                And that's exactly why my interior door panel on my old 1993 Grand Am held on for dear life by three screws. Sure it was my fault for not being gentle; but the factory shop manual, I discovered, had a full blown illustration and much more detailed procedure. Chiltons and Haynes both throw five models over ten years into one book, making it useless for anything but drivetrain work. They may as well cut the interior and body work out of their manuals entirely, along with much of the electrical and vacuum system stuff.

                Again, if Pontiac made several publications with varying but similar information, I'd want all of them, and I did own both the Haynes and Chiltons manuals, occasionally referring to all of them.

                The point is, you really can't trust any source of information unless you've personally witnessed the accuracy of the information (i.e. it's your research, etc.) Information comes from imperfect humans, and you simply can't trust that 100% (if 10% in some cases). That's fundamental, not practical; if it turns out most of the info you research is accurate enough for your needs, which happens most of the time, you'll be okay for the most part.

                Wikipedia is ultimately more helpful than it is harmful, but if you choose to use it for a single source of information where it's critical that the information be accurate, you HAVE to double check the info at least, if not simply use it to acquire other sources. Reason: There's no blaming Wikipedia and holding them responsible for your embarassing and possibly consequential mistake in your work.
          • When writing a program, you don't look up the meaning of a command in three sources do you? When wiring a house, you don't check three different copies of the electrical code. When working on your car, all you need is your Chilton's. Examples abound of routine daily use of single sources.

            No - I don't use an encyclopedia for any of them, I would use a specialised source, perhaps using wikipedia/other encyclopedia to find out what that specialised source was. That was the mistake the guy we're discussing made
        • It's no different to any other encyclopedia in that respect.
          But do you really think an encyclopedia like Britannica would have had the same error? I doubt it.
              • Well, it was in Wikipedia. . .

                  • Re:Dangers of international content? (Score:4, Interesting)

                    by Raul654 (453029) on Sunday July 16 2006, @01:21PM (#15728691) Homepage
                    Did you know that Britannicaresponded to less than half of the mistakes picked up by Nature? And to date Britannica has not fixed any of them? (Wikipedia fixed every last one) And that, of the ones they did respond to, a number of Britannica's responses were laughable. One nature reviewer said that a particular Britannica article on a particular plant genus could apply to any of 10 other genesus. Britannica's response - "It's OK, because we're not an encyclopedia of botany and don't claim to be". In other words, "it's not a bug, it's feature"
      • Why would I trust it as a starting point if I can't trust it as a source?

        because it is convenient and mostly correct. Very few sources are 100% accurate. Especially something as large and comprehensive and open as Wikipedia.

        The shame is that the DVD was already pressed before the translator who found the problem was able to see it. He should have sent out tapes or burned DVD's to the translators before pressing the batch for the wide release.

        I do hope that this isn't the only thing we discuss about this
      • All sources are opinion, fact is mearly an opinion. The problem with Wikipedia is working out whose and how accurate the opinion is. Of course it makes a good starting point from which to find other opinions and you can form your opinion from more reliable sources.
    • It's a shame, too, as the Elephant's Dream project looks to be material put out under a Creative Commons licence; people are encouraged to remix and re-edit the content to the extent that the makers even provide a torrent of a lossless Ogg video file (in HD, too- yay!).

      More of this sort of thing, I say!

      I suspect that if this kind of thing happened to Sony or Univeral Studios or another Holywood outfit that this incedent would be a half-assed lawsuit before you could say 'wiki', probably featuring some

      • It's also a warning to defacers of content that there is the potential for being targeted if you piss off the right people.

        I doubt very much that defacing Wikipedia would make you responsible for the embarrasment or monetary losses suffered by people who took that information at face value and didn't bother to check it, even in Legalistic America.

        But, just to be safe: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. And, since I felt the need to say that, one might wonder if I believe in my own advice

  • Wikipedia grammar? (Score:5, Funny)

    by thc69 (98798) on Sunday July 16 2006, @09:37AM (#15727938) Homepage Journal
    when we to heavily on Wikipedia

    Nuff said.
  • I find this funny that it's right on the heels of the new release of Blender article. I believe the saying goes:

    If you have an open mind, people will throw a lot of garbage into it.
  • We appear to have slashdotted the blog. Can we have more of these articles please?

    And to stay remotely on topic - don't publish ANYTHING that you've obtained from ANYWHERE as a single source bit of information. Research. Research and re search again.

  • it doesn't seem like this is too bad a problem... still, it does show you I guess that Wikipedia can't always be trusted and maybe shouldn't be in a professional setting. Of course it might show that it is important to double check any source because nothing is infallible

  • All this really does (Score:5, Informative)

    by also-rr (980579) on Sunday July 16 2006, @09:42AM (#15727956) Homepage
    is show the importance of checking multiple sources, especially when you are relying on it for something important! However, I believe that Wikipedia is already looking at a stable version, in which a stable and unstable branch of the project are maintained with the unstable changes merged in reguarly. This would remove problems like this one, for the most part anyway.
    • Mod parent up. Anyone versed in serious writing, be it journalism/english lit/history test/etc knows that you must validate your sources at a minimum of 2 times, preferably 3. When you have a sole source of knowledge, it must be identified as such.

      Remember "All the President's Men"? Bernstein and Woodward did what CBS forgot to do w/ the supposed Bush service records -- validate with independent sources. When you don't you get burned, sooner or later.
  • I have always believed that when you need something translated into a language you need to have a native speaker at least review what you have done. So many companies have screwed this up to the point that things like japanese/english is a standing joke.

    If you are going to devote so much effort to producing a product (closed or open source), then why the hell do you piss around with half arsed guesses as to how to translate text?

    On the other hand I did have an interesting time with a russian girl once. We
    • So many companies have screwed this up to the point that things like japanese/english is a standing joke.

      While Engrish can be pretty amusing, English/English can be just as bad. By that, I mean that documentation and words written by native English speakers are often atrocious. For an example simply read the last sentence of the story submission.
  • Frankly, Mr. Ebb should have known better. As a copy editor at what may be the most prestigious college paper [dailytexanonline.com] in the U.S., I can attest to Wikipedia's occasional (though not pervasive) errors. Because of these, I have a standing policy of referring to Wikipedia only for corroboration, not confirmation. Anyone who fact-checks - for a living or otherwise - should already have in mind things like source bias, credibility, etc.

  • is open content the real problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by a10_es (579819) on Sunday July 16 2006, @09:55AM (#15727992)
    I'm catalan. And I can say that lately there's been a lot of hatred against our nation pushed by some spanish political parties (Yet I don't to turn this into a political discussion). This problem appeared because of a vandalized entry in wikipedia, but could also have appeared if a person had modified the film or written it wrong from the start, so the problem here is not the reliance on open content, but the reliance on people's goodness, which in the open [content, source, ...] is mostly there, but can be displaced by some feelings, most of them learnt and fueled since childhood. But the same thing's been happening throughout the history. Surely if you looked on recognized encyclopedias some time ago, a lot of entries about slaves would be unaccpetable by today standards. The same happens over conquered soil after a war, when the losers become the vermin that had to be erradicated and the winners the saviors of the people (and usually end up being as bad as those they overthrew). And many other examples could be given. So the problem here is the open content or close-minded people?
  • I pondered a similar question when it came to marking schools on WikiMapia - Does the benefits to students/moms being able to pinpoint their child's school for their own mapping purposes justify the risk in pointing out these locations to potential paedos and other child predators?

    I decided to take solace in the fact anyone that serious would have already mapped it themselves rather than depend on an open-source map ganked from Google in the first place.

  • De-vandalized (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tirs (195467) on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:06AM (#15728016) Homepage
    Just for your info, guys: I just visited the article and removed the offensive terms, also leaving a small explanative note about the term itself just in case someone hears it again knows what it is all about.

    A_10_es: si et plau, dóna-li una ullada quan puguis, a veure si m'he deixat alguna cosa. Gràcies.
    [A_10_es: please, give it an eyeball when you have a moment, to see if I forgot something. Thank you.]

    That was a sample of Catalan language; will somebody give me a +1=Informative? ;-)

    • Re:De-vandalized (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tim the Gecko (745081) on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:34AM (#15728108)
      Just for your info, guys: I just visited the article and removed the offensive terms, also leaving a small explanative note about the term itself just in case someone hears it again knows what it is all about.

      You edited a version from April 7th and therefore you overwrote all the edits people have made over the last three months. You also managed to miss about 10 stray "Polacos" scattered through your old starting version of the article. The article was reverted and had no "Polacos" at all, but it now seems to have been reverted to your version again.
      I hope you will have a long and happy relationship with Wikipedia, and get an account there

  • Proofreading? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wonko the Sane (25252) * <wts42@yahoo.com> on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:09AM (#15728022) Homepage Journal
    Isn't this more of a case study of not proofreading the final product rather than relying on an unreliable source? The list of names could have been emailed to all the translators first before finalizing the DVD.

    Joeri and thousands of screaming fans here were rightfully pestering me to get it done as fast as possible,

    I think I found the real problem.
  • I do a fair bit of international coding. Problem is, I am not fluent in many of the languages I am building software. When putting together my language bundles, I always have someone do a quick walkthrough of the application who knows the language and context. You cannot count on software to give you a proper translation. Last year I was building some portlets for a French company. I added navigation and hit the fish to translate some of the finishing touches. I added a 'back' button - only to find the word I used was a person's back (not return to the previous step) in my i18n resource bundle.

    How do they say - nothing is as permanent as that which was deemed temporary? Not uncommon for stuff like this to not get checked by QA.

  • Amateur mistake. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScentCone (795499) on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:18AM (#15728062)
    By now, everyone knows that research on spelling, regional colloquialisms, and obscure information is best (and most accurately) satisfied by a visit to MySpace. After all, it's the busiest destination on the web now, and millions of people can't be wrong.

  • danger of careless people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fermion (181285) * on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:21AM (#15728075) Homepage Journal
    This is no different than reading something anywhere and then quoting it as fact. The only difference is that wikipedia is not static, and so the errors can change from minute to minute. Therefore this is not a problem with open content, but a problem with dynamic open content.

    All of this can be easily solved by fact checking before the distribution of a static content.

    I do understand the problem. I can be careless. But when I am I do not blame my carelessness on someone else.

  • Remember that the Seigenthaler article was tehre for weeks and months. So forget the idea that it's just that people might come across the article on the minute or hour that it had a vandalized version.

    For example, the FSLN [wikipedia.org] article has an introduction, and then begins "The FSLN was formally organised in 1961 by recent KGB recruits Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez and Silvio Mayorga." The rest of the article goes on in that sort of tone. I don't know how many people in the world thin

  • Scoff at Seigenthaler? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wordsmith (183749) on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:26AM (#15728087) Homepage
    Why scoff at Seigenthaler? I met the man a few months ago, and we discussed his history with Wikipedia. He was very level-headed and reasonable about the whole thing. He acknowledged it's an interesting social experiment, but was very worried for what it can do to the reputations of good people if taken seriously as an information source.

    It's worth noting that Seigenthaler DID eventually track down the malicious poster. Seigenthaler's an adamant free-speech advocate (and a head-honcho muckety-muck at the First Amendment Center), with an extreme distaste for libel and slander laws - he'd rather see lies and mischaracterizations flushed out through the marketplace of ideas. So he didn't sue, but he did go on TV and demand an apology from the malicious poster. That seems like a reasonable thing to me; the poster embarrassed Seigenthaler through his lies, and Seigenthaler embarrassed the poster through a demand for truth.

    Seigenthaler also told me that when the poster's boss threatened to fire the poster, Seigenthaler called and asked the boss not to; he said the matter was settled was the truth was on the record.

    He said the incident pushed and strained his belief in the marketplace of ideas, and that he was awfully tempted to go ahead with a libel suit. I'm glad ultimately he stayed true to his core values.
      • Both points are true - my failable memory is to blame. But there's some irony in that you point to Wikipedia to illustrate one of them. :)

        But the overall message is right - that Seigenthaler had a very reasonable concern, and addressed it reasonably. And unlike many who've been wronged, he didn't push for the heavy-handed solution of government regulation; on the contrary, he worried that similar abuses might eventually lead to it, and he saw that as detrimental to the idea of free speech.

  • Authors and Authority (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday July 16 2006, @10:42AM (#15728130) Homepage Journal
    The problem is not "open content", Wikipedia, or vandals. The problem is people who rely on a single unaccountable source for any knowledge. That is a recipe for failure.

    This has also been the problem with "authoritative" sources, like the Encyclopedia Britannica, NY Times or White House Spokesman. Those sources are highly managed, consciously or unconsciously, so they don't usually go as obviously haywire. Instead they mislead to usually workable misconceptions. In the service of the writer/speaker or the organization that produces/publishes them.

    Now that the world is finally filling with lots of smalltime publishers, as publishing has become so cheap, easy and scaleable, we're all seeing the limits of sources. So we all must learn what the past publishers learn: power of the press belongs to people with presses, and power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only way to handle the corruption is to match power against power, cross-reference information from independent (of each other) sources.

    Wikipedia will be even better when it includes an independent "fact checking" feature, like automated Google/Yahoo/MSN searching of citations. Until then, its superior power to managed press is just raw power that requires users to do that for ourselves.

  • apologize, repair, move on (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Simonetta (207550) on Sunday July 16 2006, @11:02AM (#15728210)
    Seriously, you got caught in some asshole's juvenile prank. Defacing a public resource (wikipedia) to reflect an immature joke at the expense of the next person to use that resource.

        So apologise, repair the mistake, and move on. Just because some jerk doesn't understand the usefullness of an open source public resource doesn't change the utility of that resource. And anyone who is 'offended' by the prank needs to understand this. This is like sueing the streetcar company for racism because some pissant spray-painted a racist remark on a streetcar. The correct response is to find the person responsible if possible, and if not, then to teach your own children why civilized people don't do such things.

  • great design for *starting* an encyclopedia (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcrowell (177657) on Sunday July 16 2006, @11:22AM (#15728266) Homepage

    This is a good example of a more general problem with WP, which is that the design was optimized for getting an encyclopedia off the ground initially, not for maintaining it in the long-term. It's analogous to an internet startup company that kludges up their software real quick using Visual Basic code, lots of gotos, and no comments; what they care about is getting it working initially, so they can make their IPO.

    A lot of people don't realize that WP's design emerged after an initial period of uncertainty and experimentation over what model to use. There were alternative models, like Nupedia's [wikipedia.org], but they failed mainly because they were too cumbersome for new writers to get involved in.

    My experience as a WP editor over the last few years has been that in the early stages, both the number and quality of the articles improved rapidly, but that within the last year or so, there have started to be severe quality problems. In the early stages, the problems came from not having enough users. For instance, the early versions of the article on astrology were ridiculously credulous, and when I tried to make it more balanced, I couldn't make any progress, because there were only roughly three of us working on the article, and the other two were true believers. I gave up on the article, but when I came back and looked at it again in a couple of years, the problem had been pretty well corrected, presumably because the continuing influx of new users made it impossible for a couple of fanatical true believers to continue using the article to push their POV.

    But recently, there's the opposite problem. There are so many people editing WP that it's become virtually impossible to keep a good article good. It's an interesting exercise to look at an article that became a featured article, say, a year ago, and compare its quality then with its quality now. In most cases, you'll find that it's gotten worse because of lots of random, uncoordinated edits by people who may have a POV to push, or who may just not be very knowledgeable.

    WP's design is an exteme design, going about as far as it's possible to go toward openness and ease of use. I don't think that design is working at this stage in WP's evolution, which is why I've mostly stopped editing on WP.

  • It's totally worthless. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChaosDiscord (4913) * on Sunday July 16 2006, @11:44AM (#15728354) Homepage Journal
    Between the trolls [www.gnaa.us], complete loons [timecube.com], insane geological theories [nealadams.com], loons [stormfront.org] engaging in revisionist history, bad biological science [jesus-is-savior.com], and racists [kkk.com]. Clearly because some parts of the internet are bad, the entire thing is totally worthless. But if you say this sort of thing, you get shouted down by people who've drunk Tim Berners-Lee's kool-aid. Clearly the logical course of action is to spend my time loudly complaining about how awful the Internet is, how anyone posting content to the web is wasting their time, and how only a web-cultist would claim that even though the web is flawed that there is any value to it.

  • Professionalism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brandybuck (704397) on Sunday July 16 2006, @12:15PM (#15728432) Homepage Journal
    Professionals use professional translation services. 'Nuff said.

  • growing pains (Score:3, Interesting)

    by macsox (236590) on Sunday July 16 2006, @12:29PM (#15728484) Journal
    this is the fundamental problem with wikipedia -- and it's unfixable.

    as it remained cultish and unknown, this was not a problem, both from the random vandalisation and trust of unfamiliar users standpoints. now, there are multiple issues as people think of it as the equivalent of britannica.

    another is this -- it is very difficult, in certain circumstances, for objectivity to survive. i, for example, work in politics. information about a candidate for office in my city is erroneous and biased intentionally. however, i lack the clout within wikipedia to have my corrections upheld by editors -- the candidate's opponent's supporters are merciless about arguing and re-subjectifying the content. there's no recourse.

    we've developed a new AOL (new users not understanding the internet and causing and experiencing challenges) -- from the standpoint that wikipedia has grown to the point that users don't know it's not perfect and can be harmful, and there are going to be a number of growing pains as a result.
    • From reading the summary of the article, it appears "català" is the correct term. You misread the statement, which says "using an offensive word instead of 'Català'." I don't know if the article actually references the "offensive word" since MirrorDot appears to have cached the page while it was down...
    • Oh, now I see! Darn old Slashdot linked to the wrong revision! Maybe they meant this one [wikipedia.org] where they used the word "Polaco" everywhere? It took eleven hours for it to be fixed in this [wikipedia.org] revision. I guess all the Wikipedians with this article on their watchlists were asleep at the wheel?
    • Yea, totally. I mean, what are humans anyway, besides bald monkeys? And what are bald monkeys? Just a bunch of skin, muscles and intestines wrapped around a skeleton full of blood and crap and other offensive smelling and tasting substances. And what are skin, muscles and intestines wrapped around a skeleton full of blood and crap and other offensive smelling and tasting substances? Just a bunch of protons, neutrons and electrons put together. Not only that, but those protons, neutrons and electrons have on

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