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The Media Government The Internet United States Politics

Bloggers - Beowolf Cluster of Fact Checkers? 105

Posted by timothy from the parallelilizable dept.
d3ik writes "Wired has an interesting take on bloggers role in journalism and politics. I've never been comfortable with news discussions sites being called blogs... but I guess "news discussion sites" isn't as catchy. Anyway, the article makes some good points on the role of bloggers in fact-checking (read: tearing apart) some of the stories and claims that the huddled masses would normally take as fact."
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Bloggers - Beowolf Cluster of Fact Checkers? More

Bloggers - Beowolf Cluster of Fact Checkers?

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  • Absolutely agreed with the article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:52PM (#10322055) Homepage Journal
    So much so that I think the government needs a few dozen blogs for cross-checking the CIA. Maybe next time a blog from an Iraqi scientist will show us that WMD is a lie before we go to war.
    • Blogs from people are also not absolute fact. You don't really know who is behind the keyboard. Don't take anything you don't see with your own eyes as fact.

      In fact, with today's CG, don't even take that as fact. You're living in a dream world Neo.

      Chris
      • Um, yeah, life is subjective. Truth is subjective. Fact is subjective. I mean, hundreds of years ago it was FACT that the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around us.

        The only facts I can find are those that are facts for me, not for anybody else.

        Hence Democracy.
        • Wow. I mean just wow.

          Truth is subjective

          Wow.

          So are you arguing that 100s of years ago the world really was flat? That "The World is Flat" was true then but not now?

          I say it was never true, but people thought it was correct, but they were wrong.

          And we're probably wrong about many of our "theories" about science today. But we're closer to the truth than, say, Copernicus.
          • "So are you arguing that 100s of years ago the world really was flat? That "The World is Flat" was true then but not now?"

            Not at all. I'm saying that if you would have walked down the streets of any European city in the early 1400's saying that the world was round, you would have been unanimously pronounced as factually wrong. And if you said the reverse, you would have been pronouced factually right. I'm saying facts always have been, and always will be, subjective. The only reason we consider the
            • Oh, the sweet irony.

              You're saying:

              "if you would have walked down the streets of any European city in the early 1400's saying that the world was round, you would have been unanimously pronounced as factually wrong"

              It has been well known that the earth is round (really spherical, but whatever) ever since the ancient greeks, perhaps earlier. Columbus sailing to the New World had absolutely nothing to do with showing the earth was round - everyone knew it was, Columbus just did his math wrong and thought it

              • OK, so what you're saying is that even though the commonly accepted story of Columbus' voyage is factually wrong by your subjective account, it still gets taught in public and private schools the world over.

                Thank you for proving my point. Fact is subjective.

                And hey, as long as we're being nitpicky, the Earth isn't "really spherical", the southern hemispehere is slightly squatter than the northern, IIRC. that and I doubt it was a smear campaign against the Spanish, since it was Spain that financed his v
                • OK, so what you're saying is that even though the commonly accepted story of Columbus' voyage is factually wrong by your subjective account, it still gets taught in public and private schools the world over.

                  Thank you for proving my point. Fact is subjective.

                  Wrong. This just proves that "truth" is subjective. The "fact" remains. There has to be something that is right, that's what I call "fact". There is then something that you belive to be right, and you can call that "truth". Doesn't make it rig
                  • "Wrong. This just proves that "truth" is subjective. The "fact" remains."

                    This is funny, I'm having the same debate with two different people using the opposite terms as each other.

                    OK. Prove it. Prove Christopher Columbus even came here. (and yes, I'm just being difficult and no, I don't really believe he didn't) Just because a bunch of people wrote books about it doesn't make it so. You didn't see him here and neither did I. We're all just taking somebody's word who we trust. Fact , and truth, a
                    • "OK. Prove it. Prove Christopher Columbus even came here."

                      Proof only exists in mathematics.

                      "Fact , and truth, are subjective. Truth is of the individual, fact is of the plebescite."

                      Incorrect. Facts exist whether you know them or not, whether you believe they are "true" or not.

                      "Well, in your own words, that's what *you* call fact. And what you didn't say was that there has to be something that is right - for *you*. You are not in charge of what other people think is right."

                      It's called "reality". Whether
                    • hope you guys never get to hear of the anthropic principle weak or strong there is no truth or facts its just a model in our heads useful models can stay not useful have to go ie water boils at 100c fact, truth or observation?
            • It seems that you are confusing facts with agreement of what is true. Facts are comprobable werever you do or do not is your decission. The agreement on true isn't because it's just an agreement.

              Let's deconvolute this a little bit more.

              Not at all. I'm saying that if you would have walked down the streets of any European city in the early 1400's saying that the world was round, you would have been unanimously pronounced as factually wrong.

              Wrong, you woul be incinerated by the inquisition (not just the S
        • Just because facts are subjective doesn't mean that truth is. Facts are not synonymous with the truth.

          Rob
          • Well, I like to think that what I consider to be fact is indeed synonymous with truth, but then that's me doing the thinking...

            And come on, "truth" is even more subjective than "facts". At least people who throw "facts" around like to pretend that there's a preponderance of evidence to support their position. "Truth" is something religions talk about, for crying out loud. I mean, ask the Heaven's Gate folks about the "truth". Ask the Branch Davidians. Ask the Jim Jones-ers.

            If anything, "truth" is ev
        • ---
          Truth is subjective
          ---
          What is really sad is you probably don't even realize you just made a totally non-subjective definition of truth.
      • Blogs from people are also not absolute fact. You don't really know who is behind the keyboard. Don't take anything you don't see with your own eyes as fact.

        Blogs can ask the right questions on occasion but they are a lousy place to find fact.

        Even when the blogosphere arrives at the right conclusion it can get there by asserting facts that are demonstrably false. A week ago we had a bunch of Republicans swearing that no typewriter ever had proportional spacing then started wittering on about kerning.

        • To my knowledge, George Bush has never argued in favour of a draft; to date, it's been (rather) liberal Democratic Senators...
    • Reading best-rated down, this was a great set of nonpartisan comments until I came across yours.
    • Because, of course, we all know that Iraqi scientists would tell the absolute truth about weapons programs under Saddam Hussein. After all, those heads from raped women stuck on pig poles around Baghdad were to keep the common folk in line, not the important scientists.
  • Imagine that.

    --riney
    • Actually, this is right in line with what us open source people should expect. The advantage from open source is that debugging scales extremely well with user base - not that the bug fix programming scales, just that the bug finding scales well.

      This is just finding the bugs in the news, open source style!

  • I agree (Score:3)

    by I_Love_Pocky! ( 751171 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:56PM (#10322100)
    I'd like to second the oppinon of the author about the term blog. I find that term to be almost as anoying as "the information super-highway." Luckily that term mostly died out, and hopefully this one will too. To me blog sounds like something a 13 year old girl would say in an instant message (kind of like "LOL" or "OMG").
    • I'd like to second the oppinon of the author about the term blog. I find that term to be almost as anoying as "the information super-highway."

      So much that was hip 4 years ago is old now. The word 'blog' is only the tip of the iceberg. If I worked at a company named like the following, I'd be embarassed.

      Razorfish LoudEye Broadwing Broadlink BroadRazor RazorEye LoudRazor LoudBroad ClearBroad RazorClear RazorBroad


    • Oh man I thought I was almost alone on this one. I HATE that term. I watched a news story about blogs and they showed /. on TV. It made my skin crawl to hear folks call it a "blog".
  • The part where the blogs make up their own shared reality just as disjoint with the real world as mass media is.

    Blogs: Now your authorities are copy-catting non-professionals!
    • "Blogs: Now your authorities are copy-catting non-professionals!"

      And compared to those previous "authorities", the blogs are looking pretty damn good right about now. Blogs are simply the ultimate manifestation of free speech. You can read Matt Drudge *or* Eric Alterman. Or somebody completely different. Anybody can post anything and at least have a chance at it being taken seriously. Call me crazy, but I think free speech is still a good thing, even if a sizable chunk of those speaking freely are r
  • I think that instead of shaping up the news media, blogger attacks are just going to make them more timid. I can't remember the last time I was watching a news conference and when someone asked something I shouted at the TV "that was a DAMN FUCKING good question."

    Most of the questions asked nowadays are softball questions. "Mr. Bush, are you going to let Mrs. Bush decorate the Oval Office, or will you hire an outside decorator. And what would you like the voters to know about that decision?"

    Now that Dan R

    • Re:Failed by our news media (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:11PM (#10322257) Homepage Journal
      Now that Dan Rather went out on a limb and got burned, nobody else is going to go out on a limb. That means that nobody is ever going to ask Mr. Bush where the WMD are, where Osama is, how many have to die, did you really do coke at Camp David, and why the hell aren't we doing anything about the Sudan, Iran, or North Korea?

      I've made the point before (here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org]) that that is exactly what was intended.

      Karl Rove is a sneaky, underhanded devil, and darned proud of it. I think he's behind the whole forgery scam, and you don't have to be an Underpants Gnome to see the pattern:

      1. Fax obvious forgery to CBS. The 24-hour news cycle ensures its publication.

      2. Wait for right-wing bloggers to "expose" the forgery, and thereby discredit the "liberal media".

      3. ???

      4. ELECTION!

      I'm afraid that Rove knows how to use the "blogosphere" (another ridiculous term with no reasonable synonym) to his advantage. It's second nature to him, really -- the book Bush's Brain [bushsbrain.com] documents how Rove used the old-school equivalent to get Baby Bush elected Governor in Texas. Back then, it was a matter of spreading whispers through the East Texas cafes and barber shops. Now, it's even easier.

      • Re:Failed by our news media (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Do you and the rest of the "Karl Rove! Kaaaarllll Roooove!" crowd realize how pathetic you are? Would your world collapse if you had to acknowledge that one single thing might not be George Bush's fault?

        Look, I'm no fan of the guy. But the fact is that it was Dan Rather and CBS and (brace yourself) the liberal media who tried to pull off the lie here. Citizenship requires calling them on it, instead of hiding behind this "Karl Rove mind control!!!" horseshit. Is your worldview really that fragile?

        • the liberal media who tried to pull off the lie here

          That claim compares very amusingly with the standard defense of Bush's pre-invasion falsehoods: "He wasn't lying, because he believed it at the time"

          The same defense can be applied to both.
      • Or it could be the Clintons trying to clear the way for a run by Hillary in 2008.

        See, I can make shit up too!!!!

      • Re:Failed by our news media (Score:4, Interesting)

        by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @05:28PM (#10323988)
        The release of the fake documents was _not_ due to the 24 hour news cycle. It was shoddy journalism. We now know that at least two of the four experts CBS conferred with questioned it's authenticity. 60 Minutes alumni such as Morley Safer and Andy Rooney have gone on the record saying they would not have run the story.

        Furthermore, you hadly have to be right-wing to want to "expose" (why is this in quotes? are you suggesting right wing bloggers knew ahead of time Rove faked these?) the document as fake. Anybody without a left-wing slant could buy into why they were phony. This group includes: people with a right wing slant, moderates, left wing people not blinded by ideology.

        As far as discrediting the "left wing media" (there's those quotes again), If Rather wanted to believe those documents so bad that we was willing forego journalistic rigor, he deserves to be discredited. My turn for quotes: If we play devil's advocate and assume Rove was really behind this, his plan wouldn't have progressed an inch if any professional "journalism" was taking place at CBS.

        One last thing. Rove is noted for this kind of thing, and it's at least plausible that he really was behind it, I won't deny that. But that doesn't let CBS off the hook or indict "right wing" bloggers.
        • indict "right wing" bloggers.

          Neither does it increase your credibility among anybody who hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid.Blogspace works even better for disseminating attractive lies among True Believers than for distributing facts.

          How many right-wing bloggers still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and had WMDs which will be discovered someday?

          Are you one of them?

      • It's interesting that you bring up "Bush's Brain". Isn't James Moore good buddies with Bill Burkett? Oh yeah, and didn't Burkett have a run-in with Karl Rove during the Texas governor race? You'd think they'd be wise to Karl Rove's shenanigans, so how would Karl Rove channel documents through Bill Burkett?
      • Let's suppose your theory is true. That Karl Rove is the forger. If CBS had made ANY attempt at fact checking, displayed ANY skepticism about a deeply partisan and embittered source, had even displayed some simple common sense... the evil scheme would not have worked.

        These documents are NOT forgeries... they simply aren't good enough to merit that term. The "forger" didn't even try. It was done in MS word, using the default settings. The only "forging" done was to run it through the copier a few times to
      • right, and CBS news could not spot that itw printed in MS word.. dont forget that bit. Oh and CBS news refused to accept that they were fake for 2 weeks! that was Rove too... Come on. You make yourself look like a fool with such theories. Its like that moveon.org email they sent out today blaming bush for hurricanes! I nkow you dont like bush, but he does not control the weather.
    • and why the hell aren't we doing anything about the Sudan, Iran, or North Korea?

      Now THAT is a damn good question...

      • Ran out of troops- and too cheap to hire more. Very simple answer. Last time this question came up I tried a joke answer- and got burned on the fact that Sudan recently joined OPEC.
      • Read the news. We're trying to get the Sudanese to do something on their own, and trying to get the UN involved.

        Iran is going to be a mess, similar to North Korea, because of the UN. We're trying to do it "The Right Way" and go through UN channels, but I guarantee we will get nothing accomplished. The UN is a broken organization, too much distributed power. No single country should be able to stop resolutions with a veto.

        --trb
        • We're trying to do it "The Right Way" and go through UN channels

          That's a nice change considering that te US are founders of the UN.

          The UN is a broken organization, too much distributed power

          Thats an odd thing to say for a country that has veto power

          No single country should be able to stop resolutions with a veto.

          I agree

        • Read the news. We're trying to get the Sudanese to do something on their own, and trying to get the UN involved.

          The UN is already involved, Koffi Anan was talking about Sudan before we were.

          Iran is going to be a mess, similar to North Korea, because of the UN

          UN's fault? Evidence please?

          As I understand it, NK is a mess because they might already have nukes, never mind their 4 million man army. Iran is a mess because they might have nukes within a year, they are not the pushover Iraq was, UN support

    • Trouble is that when you ask this president a tough question, the White House will shun not only you, but your entire network. They aren't worried about losing all media coverage, because Bush will always have FNC.

      [question for Dubayou] You call yourself conservative, well so tell us what "Fiscally Conservative" means to you?

      I for one would like to see Bush answer under oath that he never did coke at Camp David. Perhaps that's one reason he is always there, still looking for the baggy he lost!

      • Trouble is that when you ask this president a tough question, the White House will shun not only you, but your entire network.

        Actually, they've never met a question that they couldn't brush aside. Typically it goes like this...

        Day 1
        Reporter: Did you pull rank to get out of the National Guard?
        Bush: We destroyed the evi....um... there's not been any proof of that.

        Day 2
        Reporter: Did you pull rank to get out of the National Guard?
        Bush: We've already answered that. Next question.
        • I think that their pat answer for the National Guard is "He served honorably, and thus he recieved the prestegious recognition of being Honorably Discharged. We can't find* most of his service records. *(We burnt most of his service records)
        • Actually, they've never met a question that they couldn't brush aside. Typically it goes like this...

          By "they" I take it you mean "politicians" and not just Bush?

          Seriously, watch any politician answer any question nowadays. Pretend that you are an English teacher, and grade the response to the question. At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question. I don't know about the politicians but I've never ha
          • The problem with the mainstream "news" organizations is that they have to sell a product.

            That product is entertainment packaged as "news".

            But they only have one real supplier: The Government.

            So, if they don't fall into line, they will find that they aren't given the choice contacts. They will end up depending upon the "news" that other, more government friendly "news" people have already broadcast.

            So, we get soft questions with no follow up and "news" that is almost totally devoid of critique.

            But the "
          • At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question.

            I've seen why this is from the other side. The saying in campaigns is "if you don't say it they can't print it". Reporters usually go out with a predetermined storyline. They don't ask questions to get answers, they ask questions to get quotes that will fit in the story they have already decided to write. Or have in fact already written aside from the bla
    • Now that Dan Rather went out on a limb and got burned, nobody else is going to go out on a limb.

      And that is a Good Thing(tm)! Of course, I may not be talking about the same "limb" as you. I don't want the news media presenting fiction as fact. It doesn't matter if they're the ones lying or not, I just don't want the the label of "fact" on fiction. If this means that the media will have to check their information more carefully in the future, then that sound you hear is me standing and cheering!
      • You won't see that. In fact, what got CBS into trouble is that they went through the trouble of trying to fact-check in the first place.

        They could have just went on and just covered it in the same "he-said she-said" manner that practically every other news source uses. This way, they don't need to be worry about being fact-checked themselves because they're not presenting facts...just opinion.

        In this way, they actually present more lies than truth. This Rather thing is a very small drop in the bucket.
      • No, it's not a good thing. In the old days, an incorrect fact or overzealous reporter was dealt with properly. An apology was printed, and the reporter was disciplined or fired.

        But this event is not only threatening CBS news, it's threatening the entire coverage of the memos from every source, and it's going to let GW Bush get away with his lousy service record. There should be such a thing as proportionality in punishment.

        And one more thing: Dan Rather should not escape deserved criticism here. A reporte
        • nd it's going to let GW Bush get away with his lousy service record.

          The only objective evidence that he did not have a lousy record was soundly trounced as being a forgery. There is no other evidence, only accusation.

          His service record is wide open for display. It has been approved for full release under the FOIA (even though Kerry's hasn't). So why hasn't any hard evidence appeared over the past three and a half years? Please show me the real documentation proving this. Please show me the objective evid
          • The only objective evidence that he did not have a lousy record was soundly trounced as being a forgery. There is no other evidence, only accusation.

            Oh, [cis.net] really [cis.net]?

            The White House has never denied that GWB was banned from flying for failing to take a physical. The Rather documents purpotedly proved that he disobeyed a direct order to do so (a felony), but "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit" [cis.net] when his biography said he was in Texas hasn't been in the news because it isn't news.
          • The only objective evidence that he did not have a lousy record was soundly trounced as being a forgery.

            That's true [usatoday.com]... but did you mean to say so?

            So why hasn't any hard evidence appeared over the past three and a half years?

            The standard of evidence required by the NSA to demonstrate your place of residence at certain time is an interview with someone who knew you then. Cancelled rent checks won't cover it. They consider it inconcievable that someone could live/work somewhere for 6+ months without in

            • So few voters care about issues that the three most effective paths for a campaign are to push the opposition as either stupid, dishonest, or just unpleasant. Think back a bit- Reagan won on pleasant, Dukasis lost on unpleasant (tank-riding) and stupid (furlough), Bush lost on stupid (economy down) and dishonest ("Read my lips"), then Dole lost on unpleasant (he's a zombie), and finally Gore lost with unpleasant (he's a robot). So the trend is that looks & charm is the dominant "issue". All indications

    • Now that Dan Rather went out on a limb and got burned, nobody else is going to go out on a limb. That means that nobody is ever going to ask Mr. Bush where the WMD are, where Osama is, how many have to die, did you really do coke at Camp David, and why the hell aren't we doing anything about the Sudan, Iran, or North Korea?

      As far as I'm concerned, all that's going to come from the Dan Rather incident is people are going to double-check their sources before running something as a news item. Not playing
    • That means that nobody is ever going to ask Mr. Bush where the WMD are, where Osama is, how many have to die, did you really do coke at Camp David, and why the hell aren't we doing anything about the Sudan, Iran, or North Korea?

      Or even "Are you still beating your wife?"

  • Not Just Fact Checking (Score:3, Informative)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:11PM (#10322254) Homepage Journal

    which factcheck.org [factcheck.org] has been doing, too. FAIR [fair.org] is worth looking at, too.

    The other important function of blogs is to show the pulse of public opinion in areas that are not necessarily driven by large media outlets.

    Go to any of the three letter network TV news sites and you'll see a lot of similarity. Consensus? Of what kind?

    One of the most important sources of bias in news reporting is deciding what even qualifies as a news story.

    Bloggers get to decide for themselves.

    • "Go to any of the three letter network TV news sites and you'll see a lot of similarity. Consensus? Of what kind?"

      Or, more to the point, on the one hand the media keep repeating this platitude about the country being more evenly divided then ever. On the other hand, all major media outlets, (yes, including NPR, which a recent study showed to have 60% republican guest speakers vs 40% democrats) are saying very, very slight variations on the same theme. I mean, the collusion is to the point where the new
      • Do you get PBS? Washington Week, BBC News and Newshour with Jim Lehrer are all excellent sources of news. Plus, no commercials!!!! My .02.
        • dude, PBS just gave Tucker Carlson, the man who called John Edwards a "Jacuzzi lawyer" for having the infernal gall to sue the manufacturer of a product that sucked a child's intestines out for making an unsafe product, his own show. Then, just to make sure they're "fair and balanced", they gave the Wall Street Journal *editorial board* it's own show. Not the news organization, which deserves its own show, but their knee-jerk fascist editorial board.

          There goes my pledge.

          • Heck, when you're this far left, Stalin looks like a right wing reactionary. You probably think Che is an agrarian reformer and Mugabe a civil rights pioneer.
            • Are you just gonna make insulting implications about me (untrue BTW) or are you gonna deal with the issue of PBS taking a hard right turn? I'm waiting.
              • That was the response to the issue of PBS taking a hard right turn. Because you didn't get it, I'll spell it out plainer.

                The only reason you think PBS is making a hard right turn is because you're so far left you think Stalin is a hero. Calling corporate types fascists is evidence of your hard-core communist ideology.
                • I'm a communist, and I think that Stalin was a fascis disguised as a communist. For instance,on several issues, like human rights, there isn't a clear difference between Stalin and Hitler. If you read a little about the communist ideology you will see that the individual freedom and democracy aren't opposed. The communism is just a way to distribute the work and the profits. Such as there is not private property of the production media (factories for instance). But you still have personal property on things
                • the Italian Dictionary from 1938, the people who prettymuch invented modern fascism, deinfed it as a government by corporations. So take it from them, not me.
      • Don't forget the heart warming human interest stories and witty anchor banter! And how did that guy know I sit around in my underwear typing this stuff?
    • factcheck.org is a great nonpartisan site. FAIR slants, but occasionally deigns to cover distortions with which they happen to agree.

  • Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by CamMac ( 140401 ) <PvtCam.yahoo@com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:14PM (#10322275)
    Of Course this works, just look at the massive wealth of accurate, unbiased information that is Slashdot.

    --Cam
  • More like a beowulf cluster of (truth + lies + trolls + bias + opinions + misinformation + etc) with no accountability.

    • Re:Signal to noise (Score:2, Insightful)

      by d3ik ( 798966 )
      And that's really why I like reading through sites like Slashdot and Fark. With resources like these you don't just get the 'left' or the 'right' side of the story. True, you get the crazy liberals and the diehard conservatives. You even get the middle of the road people like me that chime in every once in a while... but somewhere in there is the truth. Somewhere, mixed in with the flames and the "what about the children" there is a happy medium that we can draw from.

      I look through and say "Wow, this
      • For instance if someone here on Slashdot has something that may be viewed as flamebait they'll post anonymously to avoid the karma backlash.

        Oddly enough- I stopped doing this when my Karma turned Excellent- it hasn't been less than "Good" since, despite ocasional flamebait mods.
        • I've never posted anonymous, even when it means getting modded down. Ever since I got Excellent karma, it's stayed there. I wonder if that's a function of meta-mods keeping the mods in check.

  • How do you defeat bad free speech? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:36PM (#10322579) Homepage Journal
    How do you defeat bad free speech? For instance, let's say someone tells an outright lie, or takes a fact an twists it and misrepresents it until they say something opposite of the fact. (This never ever happens, right?) How do you fix that?

    I am reminded of a story, but I can't recall the details. The idea is that someone spread a false rumor about someone else in the community. When they saw the damage, they went to apologize. In response, the guy took a down pillow and ripped it open, and tiny feathers flew all over the yard and the street and the wind carried it quite a distance. He said, "Your rumor is like those the down from this pillow. See how it has spread? Now, in order to apologize, you're going to have to go collect ever single one of those feathers and put it back in this pillowcase." That's the kind of damage that bad speech does.

    So how do you combat that and how do you fix it?

    With more free speech.

    Bloggers are the other part of the free speech world. They can produce more information faster than any other source. They have hundreds and hundreds of independent researchers, each specializing in one side or the other of each story.

    So when Dan Rather came out misrepresenting the documents, he was held in check by more free speech.

    Kind of like the question "How do you stop someone on a rampage with a gun?" The answer: "Get more and bigger guns."
    • How then do you explain this [tinyurl.com]:

      Again, my opponent and I have different approaches. I proposed, and the Congress overwhelmingly passed, 87 billion dollars in funding needed by our troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets, and fuel, and vehicles, and body armor. When asked to explain his vote, the Senator said, "I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it." Then he said he was "proud" of that vote. Then, whe

  • I also think it's important to have front ends to this information. Sites such as daypop.com [daypop.com] keep track of what's big in the blog-o-sphere. Their Top 40 list shows the most linked-to articles on the net that day. There's also an archive so you can watch how news stories have spread across the blog-o-sphere over time.

  • The Internet and barn-raising (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @04:03PM (#10322915) Journal

    It's going to be very interesting to see the long-term effect of the Internet on our society. This is yet another example of the phenomenal power of on-line collaboration by interested, unpaid volunteers. Software developers were perhaps the first to begin really using this global distributed medium to build complex, sophisticated tools that people would previously have thought could not be built by an ad-hoc collection of random volunteers. Groklaw is a shining example of what happens when the "many eyes" principle is applied to worlds that are traditionally somewhat opaque -- in this case the world of corporate intellectual property litigation. Wikipedia has used the same principles to construct the world's largest, and maybe most comprehensive, encyclopedia, producing volumes of high-quality factual articles that are nearly unthinkable under traditional approaches. Long-time readers of on-line fora such as USENET and slashdot long ago realized that when you get a sufficiently large and diverse membership, random posts become trustworthy sources of information, because of the simple fact that if the post contains an error *someone* will see it and jump down the poster's throat. Odds are, a fact that stands undisputed is correct.

    The common thread running throughout all of these examples is that random volunteers are able to accomplish things that would challenge large staffs of well-paid experts. Why does it work? I mean, it's obviously *so* inefficient to have so many people looking at the same thing, not to mention all of the inefficiencies created by delays in communications, mismatched skill sets, etc. It works because the aggregate manpower available by tapping a few minutes or hours of time from a sufficiently large group of interested volunteers vastly exceeds what any corporation, or even any government, could dedicate to a task. And by "vastly exceeds" I mean "is several orders of magnitude more".

    In terms of developer-hours applied per line of code released, I'll bet Linux is the most expensive operating system ever developed. In fact, I'll bet it's hundreds or thousands of times more expensive than the next most wasteful competitor. Consider the issue of code reviews. Most development shops don't do much code reviewing because it's a lot of boring, tedious work that sometimes doesn't seem to provide much benefit. The attitude is that those review hours are better spent writing more code. But every line of code that goes into the core of the Linux kernel gets thoroughly reviewed by multiple people. How wasteful! Linus is a self-proclaimed asshole who is perfectly happy to reject working code just because he doesn't like it, or because he thinks it could be simpler, or clearer, or fewer lines, or less invasive, or whatever strikes his fancy today. Instead, he'll flame the author, provide a long list of things that suck about the code and tell the author to come back after the code has been fixed *and* vetted by at least a half-dozen people Linus trusts. And that's only if he likes the code enough to care, otherwise he'll just silently discard it. How can such an obviously inefficient development process actually make progress?!? It can progress because the manpower devoted to Linux development is simply enormous.

    Using a Wiki to build an encyclopedia is just stupid, from an efficiency standpoint. How much effort is wasted on edit wars and on fixing up vandalism? How much time is wasted by people writing erroneous articles that have to be fixed by others? How much time is wasted in discussions about whether or not the use of a particular word violates the Neutral Point of View principle? It doesn't matter, because a few hours a week from every volunteer Wikipedian is enough to cover all the inefficiency and still push the project forward at a phenomenal pace.

    Publishing facts to tens of thousands of ordinary people to see who just happens to notice something wrong has to be the most insanely wasteful way of checking facts ever devised. Wouldn't

    • You're arguing that an aspect of a process (efficiency, or lack thereof) is more important than the outcome of the process. Sometimes having the most efficient process sabotages the goal(s) of the process. If the goal of linux is to have more (or a specific set) of features, but Linus Torvalds rejects inefficient code (code with too many lines), then linux has to wait longer to get those features, or not have them at all.

      In the case of linux, I would argue that Linus' goals include both features & co

      • You're arguing that an aspect of a process (efficiency, or lack thereof) is more important than the outcome of the process.

        I thought I was arguing that the collaborative community of volunteer laborers turns efficiency into an irrelevant aspect of a process.

        In the case of linux, I would argue that Linus' goals include both features & code efficiency and quality; perhaps that's the balance he's trying to struggle with.

        And maintainability. In fact, that's the one he harps on the most.

        Perhaps e

        • Whoops - my bad - I, er, read most of your post, but somehow missed that the complaining about efficiency was sarcastic, and missed the parts where you argued that efficiency didn't matter... Geez what a loony I am. Sorry...
  • How long until someone packages all these blogs slickly enough to compete with TV news for their huge audiences? Like Red Hat packaging Linux, with an organization and salespeople behind the "enhanced quality".

    • How long until someone packages all these blogs slickly enough to compete with TV news for their huge audiences?

      All it would take would be a slick looking RSS reader with prepackaged content. For that to happen, though, more bloggers will need to open up their feeds to more than just headlines and a short blurb, which means more/cheaper bandwidth.

      • I think a RSS client with "character" will do the trick. Combined with a search/association engine, RSS feeds into the network, with comments by users. A meta-/moderation system like Slashdot's (but higher resolution), filtering only the highest-rated commentaries, with large weighting of individual commentors selected by the consumer. P2P news! When combined with GPS data for correlating multiple images of the same event, the medium will have arrived.

  • ...when this site [freerepublic.com] becomes crucial to our democracy.

  • President Announces Controversial New Educational Initiative [transterrestrial.com]

    LOS ANGELES (APUPI) June 20, 2004

    Standing in front of the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street and surrounded by aides, President Bush put forth a new and long-overdue proposal today, to the cheers of thousands of long-suffering readers [thatliberalmedia.com] of that paper, to start to repair the tragic situation with the American journalism system. He called it "No Reporter Left Behind."

    "For too many years have we seen the sad evidence accumulating that ou

  • From my perspective, part of the problem that the American electorate finds itself in currently is that most journalists are pressed by time and deadlines - in addition to being lazy, intellectually dishonest, and unoriginal. Lies are repeated ad nauseum until they attain the polish of fact; lies, evasions or misrepresentations aren't confronted.

    Bloggers aren't much better in this regard. Indeed, some myths or misunderstandings ("Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet") circulate longer on the Web than t

  • a Beowulf cluster of.....

    /me reads headline again

    Damn, never mind.

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