The Office + Wikipedia = Social Networking Awesomeness

In the NBC series “The Office,” the boss Michael Scott turned toWikipedia for tips on fending off an employee’s request for a pay raise. Viewers quickly flocked to the online encyclopedia and added their take to its entry on negotiations.
Administrators at Wikipedia had to limit editing of the entry, most recently late Tuesday, placing it in “semi-protection” mode. That meant users couldn’t make changes anonymously or from accounts fewer than four days old — to discourage those drawn to the site specifically because of the broadcast.
The site imposed similar restrictions on the entry twice before, only to see vandalism continue after they were lifted.
Wikipedia is a collaborative reference site where anyone can add, change or even delete entries, regardless of expertise. The thinking is that the collective wisdom results in a better product overall, and members of the community can watch for any vandalism and reverse it.
In the case of the “negotiation” entry, viewers quickly added phony tips in response to clueless advice from Scott, played by Steve Carell, in last week’s episode.
One edit simply replaced the entry with a statement praising the television program. That was followed by the insertion of Scott’s tips for getting the upper hand, including “suddenly changing the location” and “refusing to talk first.”
Users made more than 100 changes, including those to reverse the vandalism, before the site imposed the latest restrictions on revisions.
Wikipedia does face vandalism from time to time as a result of high-profile mentions.
Fans of Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report” flocked to Wikipedia to alter articles on elephants after he said on the program, “all we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true — for instance, that Africa has more elephants today than it did 10 years ago.“

‘Office’ fans flock to edit Wikipedia - Yahoo! News

Personally… I think this is hilarious.  I feel for the zealots of the Wiki-nation (because there are people who spend their days trolling for mistakes they can jump on– whatever floats your boat), but seriously?  This is giggle-worthy.

You take the good, you take the bad, and if you’re lucky you’ll get some funny too… that is the way of community-run projects. 

technorati tags:The, Office, Wikinpedia, TheOffice, NBC

Social Responsibility: Calling Out "Tagged”

Opinion: Web 2.0 means a lot of fuzzy things, and they’re opportunities for the bad guys too. One new social networking site is a poster child for the abuse of social networking.
Business is business, but some things are dishonest, and dishonest usually gets away scot-free on the Internet. You can learn a lot about what legitimate looking sites are capable of, and what ordinary users are willing to do when asked, from the example of Tagged.
Tagged is one in a flood of new social networking sites targeting teenagers. They’re all MySpace wannabees, and perhaps some of them are harmless, but I’m going to focus on Tagged. It first got my attention several weeks ago when I got about six e-mails in rapid succession from her. They were obviously auto-generated invites to join a site and said “[my friend's name] has added you as a friend on Tagged,” and “Please respond or [my friend's name] may think you said no :(”. I could tell right off something phony was going on, but I still had better things to do, so I passed, and my friend was apologetic about it. I wasn’t the only one who got the e-mails.
Then I read this blog entry from Symantec and it explained how my friend might have gotten hit: “…when a user signs up for Tagged, they’re practically forced to put in their Webmail credentials. Tagged then logs into your Webmail account as you, accesses your address book and prompts you to e-mail your contacts using your Webmail address as the reply-to.”
Before I actually signed up I decided to read their TOS (terms of service), something I’m sure none of the teenagers they target have done. It’s long and a genuine Nightmare on Elm Street for the abusive and, while we’re at it, misleading rules for privacy.

Nothing in the TOS says that they will be harvesting addresses from your address book, nor what they are entitled to do with those addresses. Perhaps they consider these addresses as being provided for
invitations to Tagged, but that’s clearly not true. They have no contact link on their page, and the closest link they have to one, with company information, is to http://corp.tagged.com/, a dead
link. Why am I not surprised?
I have seen the future of teenage exploitation, and it’s on social networking sites. Even the “legit” ones like MySpace creep me out some, and I’m sure Tagged isn’t the only one that’s scams and abuses its users. When users are willing to provide their e-mail login to a Web site, you know we have a long way to go to make the Internet safe.

Harvesting Teenagers

I’m not a big tagged fan– not just for these reasons, but also because it’s a creepy teen-stalking-hot-teen place. I signed up for research a year ago. My co-worker and I checked it out, and before we both knew it, we were getting hit on by teens in very suggestive and aggressive manners.

I got out quickly.

However, now some of our EE fans have their emails being used in the exact manner this article states. Every day we’re (as a collective company under the info@ email address) getting tagged by 5 - 6 kids. At first I thought It was an innocent thing. Clearly not.

The Educational Coolness of Various Kid Virtual Worlds

From Club Penguin, Disney’s Toon Town, There, Nicktropolis, WebKinz, and many others, children (ages 8 to 14) are exploring multi-user worlds and environments while learning on— and offline life lessons. They’re quickly evolving into a web–savvy user base that will form and shape the next generation of Web user and—eventually—your future customer.

Learning From Our Kids

Chad Stoller, author of the article, goes to on talk about what kids are learning from these virtual worlds.  I’m only going to list them, but I encourage you to take a look at the article– Stoller explains the whys/hows of each bulleted point.

• Economy and value.
• Saving versus spending.
• Security and password sharing.
• Leveling up.
• Customization.
• Offline to online

All in all– a lot of what these virtual worlds (like neopets) remind me of is a project I had to do when student teaching.  If I remember correctly, it was a Four-H project, teaching kids the responsibility while masking it in a fun game of pretend.  There was a roll-out map of a town, and we handed out occupational positions like roles in a play.  Everyone learned the importance of each others position, while we allowed them to dress up and actually OWN their own role– empowerment.

They loved it.  Kids have big eyes and they look up to adults.  Emulation and appreciation.  It’s not very often we allow ourselves to remember how cool adults were– jobs somehow = freedom.  Responsibility = popularity.  A grown up’s life = an oyster’s pearl.

As long as it is play, and you’re not pressuring kids… they’re always up for learning about life.  And virtual worlds like neopets & whyville & club penguin are perfect ways of reaching out to kids and teaching them elements of responsibility & understanding. 

A few Points about Tween Social Networking

Is it that news media instinctively know that tweens need social-networking options of their own? That there’s a reason MySpace and other social-networking sites target users 14+? I’m seeing more and more reports around the country about a growing number of options for elementary- and middle-school-age children. For example, the Baltimore Sun zoomed in on Webkinz, where kids can create a virtual pet (maybe from a favorite real or stuffed furry friend), outfit and re-outfit, and create a virtual home for it. I just hope it isn’t encouraging consumerism too much – the Sun points out that the site “points out that ‘Everyone enjoys a little retail therapy’.” The Contra Costa Times profiles British Columbia-based ClubPenguin, where one California mom’s kids “aren’t allowed to become buddies with anyone they don’t know.” Here’s how this site and the family’s rule is good “training wheels” for social-networking sites: This mom’s kids “were mystified by the rule … [and] fretted they might hurt someone’s feelings by saying ‘no’.” Whatever the rule or negotiation a family has, it prompts an important conversation about how people can try to manipulate others (see “How social influencing works”).

BlogSafety Community: Growing interest in tween sites …

Interesting…