Aboutus.org - What Do You Think?
I’ve just noticed the “aboutus.org” wiki. It looks as though they are trying to put together information on every domain.
AboutUs is a fully editable wiki, a type of Web site, that has been prepopulated with information about several million websites. Enter a domain name in the search box (for example: “Yahoo.com” or “AboutUs.org”) and see what comes up!
I discovered I was already listed, so I did fix a couple of things on the virushead page.
http://www.aboutus.org/VirusHead.net
However, it’s competely open and anyone could add whatever they want. It could become a destination spot for spammers, trolls, and stalkers. They do log the IP of the person who changes an entry, but no registration or login is required.
What do you think? Free advertising or soft surveillance? Information being free or future source of manipulation? Comments, criticisms?
Techorati Tags: about us | aboutus.org | advertising | information gathering | prepopulated | privacy | spammers | stalkers | surveillance | trolls | Viral | wiki
Internal Tags: about us | aboutus.org | advertising | information gathering | prepopulated | privacy | spammers | stalkers | surveillance | trolls | Viral | wiki
Simon Says:
Alexa.com does the same thing.
Posted on September 5th, 2006 at 1:57 am
VirusHead Says:
Well, Alexa collects information, and allows the owner to update it, but I don’t think that they allow others to change the information they have. This is also different from the various sites that allow reviews, like Amazon, or blog ranking tools.
It is the wiki aspect that I think could be problematic in terms of spammers, trolls, etc. Or maybe not. Just wondered what others thought.
Posted on September 5th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Ray King Says:
You’re right that wiki is more vulnerable to spammers, and other bad actors, but we do review all changes that go through the site to remove vandalism and the like; happily, most edits are constructive. We feel that encouraging collaboration brings benefits that outweigh the cost of patrolling edits.
Posted on September 22nd, 2006 at 3:33 am
VirusHead Says:
Thanks for commenting Ray.
If the changes are reviewed as you say, that makes a huge difference. I agree with you about the value of collaboration. Do you have guidelines and procedures for the reviewers to follow, or is it up to individual judgment? Spammers are fairly easy to detect, but how would you judge between a legitimate criticism and personal/ideological grudges and bias (not to mention the trolls, stalkers, etc)? From the other side, at what point do such judgments constitute censorship? Is there a mediation process, an “alternate view” section? How would you handle borderline cases?
Posted on September 22nd, 2006 at 8:51 am
Ray King Says:
Currently there are only a few reviewers and oftentimes we review changes together. I.e. we are on IM/IRC while going through the list so we can discuss questionable edits. Blatent vandalism and/or spam and link spam are easy to spot and revert. We try to leave legit criticism because the site should be as neutral as possible and true dialog is comprised of positive and negative commentary.
Sometimes, however, people who are upset with a given site end up vandalising the page in a way that we are forced to revert. For example, I just saw someone delete an entire page and replace it with the word FRAUD multiple times. They might be right, but the edit isn’t helping.
The overarching theme is to keep edits as constructive as possible. Non-productive rants should be taken somewhere else. I want the site to serve website owners who realize that engaging their audience is the best way to improve.
Posted on September 23rd, 2006 at 3:06 am
VirusHead Says:
Thanks for the comments and clarifications, Ray. Much appreciated.
Posted on September 27th, 2006 at 7:43 pm