Wikis - Powerless in the Face of Spam?

I am beginning to wonder whether wikis as a form of communal projects are doomed in the long run apart from a small number of specific applications. Sure, Wikipedia will continue to exist, as will a number of other specific projects. But large wiki farms, which maintain the majority of wikis out there, are under continued and increasing assault by spammers.

You are all familiar with email spammers which clutter up your inbox and your spam folder. But they are not the only form of spammers out there. Email spammers just send massive amounts of emails to other people in the hopes that one of the recipients will actually answer or click on the embedded links and do something foolish. But other spammers are out there to increase the prominence of other web sites in search engines - and the algorithms search engines such as Google use determine how important a particular website is (and thus, how soon it comes up in the search results) by calculating how many other websites link to it. While they have added lots of refinements to their search algorithms over the years, this still remains true - so if someone wants to promote a third-rate website of some third-rate company, they need to make sure that this website gets as many external links as possible.

Enter wiki spammers.

Large wikifarms - such as Wikidot.com, which is the platform I am using for my own projects have lots of active wikis. But they have an even higher number of half-abandoned projects which haven't been worked on for years. And many of these wikis allow anyone to edit their pages, whether they are ordinary registered users or even anonymous editors - after all, the whole point of wikis is to make editing them as easy as possible for everyone. Thus, it also becomes easy for wikis to add spam links to them - that is to say, links to the websites they want to promote, whether those links are appropriate to the wiki in question or not - and they are almost never appropriate.

I first became aware of one new spammer on May 23rd when he vandalized one of my wikis. Naturally, I reversed the changes and banned that user, and he was also banned from Wikidot.com. But a few days later he was back with a new user account and reverted my changes so that the spam links would appear again.

Then he did something that really angered me: He deleted the start page and the navigation toolbars on another one of my wikis, presumably so that it would be harder to reverse his edits. But this only made it personal, as after I restored these pages from Archive.org, created backups for all my wikis and implemented admin blocks for the most vital pages I vowed to stop him not only on my wikis, but on all wikis where I found his spam. I researched his activities, observed his user profiles, reported his new accounts, and reverted his new changes, many of which were only reversing my edits to get his spam edits. In the last few days, this had reached a fever pitch - he made hundreds of edits (almost all reversals of my earlier edits) every day, and as soon as I managed to get his current account banned he started a new one. So far, the tally of his user accounts which I positively identified is:

• Ayna: 8 edits
• baraaa: 29 edits
• baraaas: 135 edits
• Borneos: 32 edits
• Ellias: 43 edits
• gerrardo: 98 edits
• jajaaa: 123 edits
• jikons:28 edits
• jiks: 67 edits
• jikunsss: 67 edits
• jikunz: 13 edits

And with the assistance of several other Wikdot folks, I set out to revert them all. He had become my own personal White Whale, with each striving to undo what the other had wrought. At times the editing history of certain pages looked like this:






 

Fortunately, yesterday the Wikidot.com team implemented some new filters which largely seem to be doing the trick - the flood of spam had become a trickle by this morning, and now Wikidot.com is largely empty of his spam apart from a few pages on wikis for which I don't have the necessary permissions to edit them.

Still, I have no doubt that he will be back some day, with new tricks or on a different wiki farm. And if he won't come back, others will. As a wiki farm expands and the number of fallow wikis increases, wiki spammers will come in greater and greater numbers and become more and more aggressive, with better and better scripts. Will anti-spam measures improve in equal measure, or are they doomed to fail before the onslaught just as ordinary emails are drowned out 2:1 by spam emails?

Time will tell. But to my eye it isn't looking good.

The Google Business Strategy, Explained

Google says it right in their mission statement:

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

But few people really stop to think what this really means, and thus misunderstand some of Google's more recent moves. When they say:  "the world's information", they mean all the world's information - including all information about you.

Consider Google+, the newish social media platform pushed so heavily by Google. It's real purpose wasn't just to create a serious competition for Facebook (though that certainly was a bonus). And while the ultimate reason for the Google-Facebook enmity is that Facebook hides large amounts of information inside a walled garden that Google can't access, collecting the same kind of information on Google+ that Facebook hides is only a useful bonus. Google+ would still be almost as useful to Google if Facebook didn't exist.

No, the real reason for Google+ is that using it encourages users to be logged in to their Google accounts all the time. And as long as you do that, Google can associate all your Google searches with you, personally, and also can adjust all their Google AdSense ads to reflect your specific interests - and AdSense ads can be found on almost any site on the Internet.

This is the real reason why Google+ will never be overrun with ads like Facebook is. It doesn't need to - as long as you remain logged in to Google+, most the rest of the Web will serve as a giant ad platform targeted to you.

Now consider their newest shiny thing: Google Glass. Lots of people focus on the camera, and its potential applications and possibilities for privacy abuse. But if I am correct, the camera is far from the purpose of the glasses - they, and the Augmented Reality function, are the hook. Google hasn't simply switched course merely to compete with Apple in the fancy high-end gadget market. Again, while diverting some of Apple's revenue is a nice bonus, it is not the ultimate goal.

No, what Google wants is for everyone to be logged in to their Google account not merely when they are in front of a computer or actively using a smart phone - but all the time, and sending their position data to Google while they are logged in. This is merely the next step in their quest to record everything there is to know about your entire life. Wherever you are, whatever you do - Google will log it and store it in their databases. And the more they know about you, the better will they be able to tailor ads to you - which is by far their biggest source of revenue.

Whether you are willing to accept this for the sake of the apps and features is for you to decide. But my guess is that the number of the willing will continue to increase.

How much Tolerance for Intolerance?

You may have heard of the decision by DC to hire Orson Scott Card as a writer for their "Adventures of Superman" series, which was protested by gay rights activists because of his public statements against gay marriage and board membership at the National Organization for Marriage. These activists started a petition to get DC to drop Card as a writer, a petition which seems to have achieved its goal.

When I posted the last link, it triggered a lengthy discussion on my Google+ stream. Was the drive to drop Card in the name of fighting intolerance itself an act of intolerance?

First, let us examine the legal question - whether the decision to drop Card was a case of workplace discrimination. Technically, this does not seem to be the case - the artist dropped out after the unfavorable media attention, and while DC claims that they will hire a new artist... eventually, they are probably not in a great hurry to do so and will likely find some pretense for dropping the project sooner or later - compensating Card as per their contract if necessary. DC has a stable of very good lawyers, so actual workplace discrimination will probably not be proven, though it's understandable that this leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many people worried about workplace discrimination in general.

That leaves the moral question: Is it morally right to be intolerant to those with intolerant views? Or should their publicly professed views, no matter how obnoxious, be tolerated in the name of tolerance?

Speaking from a German perspective, Germany once enshrined tolerance of even intolerance in its constitution - that is, the constitution of the Weimar Republic. And while this was far from the only reason for its ignoble end, its constitution made it hard for the government authority for those who wanted to tear the Weimar democracy down. After WWII, the authors of the new German constitution tried to learn from the mistakes of the past - and thus, Article 18 of the German constitution states:

"Whoever abuses the freedom of expression, in particular the freedom of the press (paragraph (1) of Article 5), the freedom of teaching (paragraph (3) of Article 5), the freedom of assembly (Article 8), the freedom of association (Article 9), the privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications (Article 10), the rights of property (Article 14), or the right of asylum (Article 16a) in order to combat the free democratic basic order shall forfeit these basic rights. This forfeiture and its extent shall be declared by the Federal Constitutional Court."

This paragraph has been used in the past to outlaw extremist groups (both right wing and left wing) of all kinds because they did advocate the overthrow of the free democratic order. But would Orson Scott Card qualify as such an advocate? Well, he once wrote this:

"Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary."

[...]

"How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn."

If this attitude is representative of the National Organization for Marriage - that any means are permissible to change the government to something more to their liking - then in Germany it would certainly be sufficient grounds to keep them under watch, not as an enemy of the government, but as an enemy of democracy itself.

Of course, the USA is not Germany. They haven't had a trauma similar to the Third Reich where all democratic principles were abandoned, and I hope they will never have to. And so far, despite some dark times in their history, it seems to work out.

But that doesn't mean citizens should look away when others promote intolerance. Discrimination against gays still runs strong in many areas, and groups like Orson Scott Card's National Organization for Marriage do their best to maintain that state of discrimination. His homophobic stance is not just his private, personal views - he uses his fame and influence to promote them in a prominent manner.

Thus, I really cannot find any moral problem with the petition to get DC to drop him as a writer.

The GEZ Is Watching You - On the Dismal German Media Landscape

I like Germany, and I like living here. I think my country is an awesome place. That being said, there are some definite downsides to living here, and a major issue is how various powerful organizations run the German media landscape - and in general they hate and fear change, especially anything that forces them to change their way of operations (such as the rise of the Internet).

Let's start with public radio and television. I think they serve a useful purpose, and I enjoy listening to some comedy shows on my local public radio stations. However, for some obscure legal reason German public radio and television stations may not be funded via taxes, but by fees which are mandatory for everyone who owns a radio or a television capable of receiving them. To collect them, the public broadcasters (and the states of Germany which run them) created a bureaucratic monstrosity called the "Gebühreneinzugszentrale der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland" or GEZ for short to collect their fees - which are almost universally called "GEZ fees" even though the GEZ has filed numerous lawsuits so that they are referred to as "broadcasting fees" instead.

This organization wrote stern letters to every household in Germany telling them to register their radios and televisions, or else. I did register my radio and thus had to pay a fee of €5.76 per month, since I had one and made use of it, but I've never owned a television so I didn't register one. This did not keep the stern letters at bay - instead, they sent me one every three months telling me that I Must! Register! Any Television Sets! IMMEDIATELY! and pay the associated fee of €17.98 per month. The number of trees which died for those letters must be truly staggering. And the GEZ hired numerous people to spy after citizens who didn't register all their devices, which often involved getting into their houses or apartments under false pretenses - they were not police, so people weren't obligated to let them in - but if they were dumb enough to do that anyway and the informants saw evidence of a television or radio that weren't registered, they were sure to be sued over this.

And a few years back the public broadcasters also started using the Internet to broadcast their shows... so the GEZ claimed that having Internet access alone was sufficient grounds for having to pay both radio and television fees. It didn't matter whether anyone actually used the Internet for that - all that mattered was that they could.

At the start of the year, the GEZ was organized into the "ARD ZDF Deutschlandradio Beitragsservice" and they now assume that everyone has Internet - so every apartment or household has to pay €17.98 per month. Organizations (including public ones, such as local governments) and companies now have to pay fees based on the numbers of branch offices and the number of people working at each of the branch offices - which has caused the costs for city governments to soar, leading to a number of lawsuits and even city governments refusing to pay them at all. This year is certainly going to be interesting...

The sensible thing - i.e. the cheapest way of financing the public broadcasters - would be to just pay them via taxes. But the federal government is in charge of setting the levels for most taxes while the states of Germany are in charge of public broadcasting, so this uneasy situation will likely continue...

The next major obstacle to consuming media like in the rest of the Western World is the "Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte" or GEMA for short. This organization has had its origin at the start of the 20th century when artists, writers and other creative folks wanted some financial compensation whenever one of their works was used in public productions (and later broadcasting) - not an unreasonable demand. However, during the Weimar Republic there were two competing organizations each claiming to represent artists until in late 1933 the Nazis merged them into the Staatlich genehmigten Gesellschaft zur Verwertung musikalischer Aufführungsrechte (STAGMA) to represent all German artists (excluding Jews, of course, since "non-Arians should not be seen as suitable guardians and producers of German culture").

In 1947 the organization was renamed into GEMA, but its mission continues - they collect fees from all public broadcasts involving artists or companies which have rights to the content in Germany and distribute them among performers and artists according to some complex and dubious formulas. This worked badly enough for several decades - until the Internet arrived and provided a whole new platform to public broadcasts. The attitude of GEMA towards the Internet was shaped by a conservative politician named Reinhold Kreile who ran the organization from 1990 until 2005 and who called it a "lighthouse of culture" and a "rock withstanding the wave of digitalization" which prevented "unnecessary competition". And to him, the Internet was "nothing more than a virtual department store" which needed to be controlled "with a hostile takeover".

In other words, their attitude was that since the Internet was public, any media consumed via the Internet counted as a "public broadcast" - and the website that offered this media had to pay them fees, often resulting in lawsuits if the owner of the website refused to comply. The most famous target of their ire was YouTube, which not only had numerous clips with specific musical tracks or shows but remixes of those - including fan creations where music created by various artists were used for fan-created clips.

The GEMA is constantly firing cease-and-desist demands to YouTube to take down those videos until they come to an agreement over the fees - and various German courts have supported GEMA so far. YouTube has offered a percentage of their ad revenues from relevant videos... but GEMA refuses to accept anything other than a flat payment, similar to how they handle other public broadcasts. Their conflict goes on, and until a solution is found when someone in Germany wants to watch a video with a contested song - such as PSY's "Gangnam Style", the top-rated YouTube video of them all - YouTube simply displays the following:

This affects more than 60% of YouTube's 1000 most popular videos. And just recently, GEMA has filed a cease-and-desist order against YouTube for displaying this, as they believe that this will make people think that this is all GEMA's fault.

These two are hardly isolated incidents - other large German media organizations hold similar attitudes. For example, German news corporations are lobbying our politicians to make Google pay them for displaying links to their news websites, which is sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face. And German media companies who own the rights to movies and television shows are hardly better. The United States have Hulu, Netflix, Amazon's video-on-demand and much more - but their German equivalents are terrified of any change and thus no equivalent services exist. I would love to be able to pay for and legally download all my favorite English-language shows, but the best I can do is to wait until the DVDs are released (if ever) - which take up yet more space in my apartment and make a mockery of the digital revolution. The same goes for digital books - while the number of English-language ebooks available in Germany is slowly increasing, too many German companies who own the rights for these books in Germany refuse to make them available.

To sum it up, while living in Germany has a lot of things going for it, it's not the best place for passionate media consumers.

The war on women

The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of men ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For women, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern men want to get married. Trouble is, women don’t.

The so-called dearth of good women (read: marriageable women) has been a hot subject in the media as of late. Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, men have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between women and men.
 
As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I’ve spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of women and men. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of women who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

Men aren’t men anymore.

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way women and men interact. Women haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but men have changed dramatically.
In a nutshell, men are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of women as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, men pushed women off their pedestal (men had their own pedestal, but masculists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the women have nowhere to go.

It is precisely this dynamic – men good/women bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, women are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, women have been to blame since masculists first took to the streets in the 1970s.

But what if the dearth of good women, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – men’s fault?

You’ll never hear that in the media. All the articles and books (and television programs, for that matter) put men front and center, while women and children sit in the back seat. But after decades of browbeating the American female, women are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if men aren’t happy, it’s women’s fault.

Contrary to what masculists like Johannes Rosin, author of The End of Women, say, the so-called rise of men has not threatened women. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Women want to love men, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern men won’t let them.

It’s all so unfortunate – for men, not women. Masculism serves women very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their boyfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.

It’s the men who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing female nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, men need women’s linear career goals – they need women to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.

So if women today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, men should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.

Fortunately, there is good news: men have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their masculinity – and let women surrender to theirs.

If they do, marriageable women will come out of the woodwork.

Note: This post is based on this article.