machine-envy

Last week’s column for the New Statesman was a pithy little number entitled “When world leaders blog…”, which for some reason I didn’t point to at the time. This week’s is on the DEFRA wiki. Coincidentally, the day after my piece was published (that’ll be last Thursday), Guido Fawkes and his gang of merry co-conspirators quietly and totally sabotaged it. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

As Bill Thompson reminded me over dinner last week, wikis work in one of two circumstances. Where a close-knit group of people who share a specific goal are the editors (eg organisational wikis), or where a very, very large group of people with differing views but a more general shared goal are the editors (eg Wikipedia). Anything in between is going to be subject to atrophy or sabotage.

So although I’d never style myself a co-conspirator, I’m not going to join the ranks of liberals wringing their hands at the horrid things that nasty Guido and his gang of big buwy fwiends do.

Anyway, those two columns are below. Choose wisely, my friends, the NS will only let you read one for free today. But don’t worry too much, as oD will be publishing my column for them later today, which is all about freedom, and, correspondingly, free.

The DEFRA column:

“A wiki is where ideas go to die. This may sound strong, especially given the success of Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopaedia. I’ve been at several grass-roots meetings which ended with the fatal words: “OK, let’s continue this discussion on the wiki.” Months later, said wiki has been left to wallow in its own incompleteness, its participants presumably left cold by the open questions ossifying on its pages. I can only conclude that ideas are among the class of things that cannot be collaboratively edited.

“So it’s interesting to note the launch of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s (Defra) wiki last month…”

Read the rest here. And I don’t think even Senor Fawkes can muster up the 44m signatories needed to fulfil the associated pledge “I will contribute to the DEFRA environmental contract wiki but only if 44,000,000 other UK electors will too“.

When world leaders blog:

“A friend and I used to share a joke about Iranian bloggers. Well, the joke was really on UK magazine editors. Their interest in the vast array of bloggers scrutinising the Tehran establishment came around about once a year, and each time they treated the discovery that Persian is the second most blogged-in language on the web as if they had come across Lord Lucan convalescing in a retirement village in Bournemouth. “What’s hot on the net right now?” the joke used to go. “I know - Iranian bloggers!”

“But early this month a new Iranian voice joined the fray…”

Read the rest here.