April 1, 2008
Wikipedia for Non-'Notables'
Give them your tired, your poor, your unknown masses yearning to be famous. Biographicon, a new start-up based out of San Jose, is a sort of Wikipedia for unknown people, mixed in with a splash of Facebook.
While some scholars and other critics have pooh-poohed Wikipedia’s low standards for article content—anyone can add or edit an entry, leading to some wrong and potentially defamatory information—it does have at least one stringent community-enforced standard. That is the “notability” guideline, which mandates that subjects must be “worthy of notice” whose factoids can be cross-checked against independent secondary sources. Many an article about a self-aggrandizing but unknown Wikipedian has been pulled for failing to meet this requirement.
Enter Biographicon, “Everyone’s biography.” This site allows visitors to post biographies (or autobiographies) about the little people. To get its start a few weeks ago, co-founder and CEO Ethan Herdrick said the company copied about 100,000 Wikipedia bios of “notables.” But the site is slowly but surely building up a base of users who are filling in biographical bits about themselves and their friends, family, and neighbors. Right now some portion of its 9,391 unique users have created an additional 1,653 profiles. Visitors to the site can also add social-networking-like connections between entries. These open-ended connections may be genealogical, professional, or just wishful. A user can connect himself to Elvis, for example, as a bandmate or just an admirer.
One reason why many Wikipedians support the “notability” requirement is that well-known subjects will attract eyeballs and edits from enough disinterested (or oppositely interested) parties to theoretically inch articles toward the truth. So how can Biographicon control for the fact that few knowledgeable visitors can make sure information is accurate?
Mr. Hedrick says the company is working on creating an algorithm that recognizes patterns in false or defamatory content, and that the site has started listing the IP addresses of anonymous posters. He also hopes the site will be self-policing, like Wikipedia. Perhaps wary of sites like Juicy Campus, Biographicon’s user guidelines humbly ask visitors to “Be good.” The site’s guidelines instruct visitors to “stick with neutral or positive information.” (Juicy Campus prohibits “defamatory” content in its terms and conditions.)
Of course, one man’s “neutral” is another man’s “negative,” especially when it comes to controversial issues like sexual orientation. What do you think? Do you think the usefulness of a crowd-sourced site for non-notables outweighs the downsides?—Catherine Rampell
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April Fools Everywhere You Look
It has become a cliché observation at The Wikipedia Review that if these BioData sites ended with “.gov” instead of “.com”, “.net”, or “.org” that we’d all be up in arms and out in the streets to shut them down.
Do you really think a little ole thing like a 3-byte suffix will make all that much difference in the end?
— Jon Awbrey Apr 1, 01:26 PM #
It’s hard to believe that anyone would write an article like this in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It may be useful for the editorial staff of CoHE to review the following:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=17094
The only wiki site that ensures vandal-free biographies is a site that allows full article protection and control by the subject of the biography. One such site is MyWikiBiz.com.
— Gregory Kohs Apr 1, 02:19 PM #
We just have a press release about the wikipedia “non-notable” issue..
http://tinyurl.com/2b6mnv
— Subhankar Ray Apr 1, 02:23 PM #
Nice try, Subhankar, but we cornered the press release market on the “non-notable” issue THREE WEEKS AGO.
Wiki sites aim to be more inclusive than Wikipedia
I’m still horrified that the Chronicle of Higher Education would devote space to a site that allows a biography that looks like this !
Poor Catherine Rampell, but shame on her editor. To answer her closing question…
No, I do NOT think the usefulness of a crowd-sourced site for non-notables outweighs the downsides. There will likely be a lawsuit filed against Biographicon in the next 3 months, which will put it out of business.
— Gregory Kohs Apr 1, 02:48 PM #
On Wired Campus, we write about many Web sites that people find objectionable, such as JuicyCampus. Another example is Wikipedia, which many scholars find objectionable. We will continue to cover such sites, because the sites and their uses are of interest to people in academe. —Josh Fischman, Senior editor
— Josh Fischman Apr 1, 06:23 PM #
There is nothing impressive about this site, those numbers are meaningless. Is the author a friend of the people behind this site?
— Harold Apr 1, 11:50 PM #
Not responsible for anyone’s emotional debts but my own.
— marci Apr 2, 12:00 PM #
Gregory,
Our problem is that editors of wikipedia do not disclose their identities [as proposed for Google Knol]
The earlier link did not work, hence it is here again
Unwittingly Wikipedia: Editors Strikethroughs may Squelch Open Market Competition, Reports AAfter
[Pl. someone remove my earlier post]
— Subhankar Ray Apr 2, 06:06 PM #