Stephen Colbert did a humorous segment on truthiness last night, this time on the topic of historical revisionism. You can view the clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHm0rGns4I.

What made this segment particularly famous (or infamous) were Stephen's (Mr. Colbert's?) comments regarding the illustrious Wikipedia: After indicating that he was revising some entries to alter history, pretending to do it on a laptop during taping (a supposed Stephencolbert user pretty much simultaneously -- to the airing, not the taping -- made a couple of edits correlating with the show. These edits were on the topic of George Washington and  The Colbert Report recurring elements, exactly as indicated on the show. This user could just as easily have been a third party following along, but the effect is the same, and is just as humorous), he then coined the new word Wikiality.

What really raised the ire of the Wikipedia defenders, however, was Mr. Colbert's humorous petition for users to support him in his quest for historical revisionism, altering the Wikipedia entry for elephants to support a fictional 3x increase in the total population over the past 6 months ("Explain that Al Gore!"). Many played along, until eventually the page in question (and virtually all other pages related to elephants) was locked to avoid this jovial vandalism.

Personally I think Stephen made a brilliant point, even if there was a bit of collateral damage. Some of the reaction to it has simply been ridiculous.

• This isn't really an indictment of Wikipedia (and in fact further solidifies its place in mainstream culture).
  
  
• It isn't a "validation of Wikipedia" that these vandalisms were caught and reverted, or that protections were put in place (basically undermining the core principals of Wikipedia, albeit temporarily). 
  
  The people and groups truly dedicated to revisionism generally don't advertise their actions nationwide (which brings up the scary fact that a remarkable number of people viewing the Colbert Report don't realize that it's satire).
  
  If a completely independent enthusiast of sugar-and-sugar-producers decides to alter sections of the sucralose entry to highlight (exaggerate?) possible health risks, would the Wikipedia editors (who themselves aren't immune from suspicion) know that it's misinformation? Would a sucralose defender be just as motivated to monitor the site to ensure that the representation remains fair and balanced, or would they be skewing things the opposite way? Is it misinformation if it's using the ambiguity of the English language to accentuate some points that support one's interests, while undermining those that counter it?
  
  
• Such a user-contributed system will invariably have submarined biases depending upon who is the most motivated to contribute and to police. The perspective of widespread internet-enabled countries, for instance, will be magnified and dominant (have you ever notice how widespread the Canadian perspective is on the English internet? We have quite a few people with high-speed cluttering the English language sites. It's often cold with nothing to do, so we spend a lot of time online). The perspective of special interests and motivated minorities will be magnified.
  
  I don't mean to single this particular group out, but I recently heard about a group of Israel supporters that have taken to swarming sites and online polls to skew it towards the Israeli perspective. They've even gone and built a system tray application to make sure supporters are alerted when distributed vote stuffing is called for.
  
  
• Stephen Colbert didn't suddenly make nefarious agents aware of something they previously had no idea about -- there have been professional groups, with offices and everything, working to subvert information to favour certain interests for decades, and they've certainly used their techniques on the net as well. Thinking that it was safe until Stephen Colbert mentioned it is as logical as saying the water supply is safe until someone postulated that it could be poisoned by terrorists.

Of course these, err, truths hold for more than just Wikipedia: Virtually any user-contributed site faces the same problems.

Reddit, for instance -- an up and coming meme site -- lets users "vote" which links and comments are most, well, in line with one's own view (while the links get rated on a what is occasionally a meritocracy, the voting on comments is usually extremely one sided, having very little to do with presenting a valid, well-spoken argument, and more to do with saying something that correlates with every fly-by voters opinion. It is actually embarrassing seeing your own comment scored up because you happen to share the majority view, while the well-written and convincing posts of your adversary sink into underflow territory).

Using an apparently basic votes-over-time algorithms, the app determines which links to put on the front page -- Getting on the front page is obviously a desirable place to be for someone try to push a perspective or an agenda (remember that the majority of users on most of these sites are lurkers - while many people are set in their position, and are valiant, tireless crusaders for the cause, there are a lot of people who are on the fence, absorbing whatever information on a topic is presented to them, willing to change their position based upon new inputs). My personal experience here has been that a Reddit front page isn't anything like a Digg front page in the volume of traffic it sends to you, but it still brings in a considerable number of users ready and waiting to be stuffed with one's perspective.

So how does one get on the front page? Well aside from pandering to the natural bias of the Reddit crowd (a crowd that leans towards libertarianism/anti-authority/extreme liberalism/Lispism, a demographic that is heavily reflected in the vote patterns), getting on the front page can be accomplished with little more than a dozen votes over a short period of time (one vote per IP, folks). Staying on the front page for a work day can be accomplished with just a couple hundred up votes.

Topping the all time record books in the Reddit universe takes less than 900 up votes after the negations have been subtracted out.

How hard is it for a special interest to manipulate a site like this? The Israeli support site up above is fairly open and inclusive in their advocacy, but surely all such groups aren't so forthright -- Microsoft has some 60,000 employees, and while they have a limited number of work IPs, there are certainly 10s of thousands of home IPs that can be used to push an agenda. The same goes for oil companies, and virtually any other large organization.

While I hardly think an organization like Microsoft is going to enlist employees in a concerted astroturfing drive, is it difficult to imagine that there are similar groups doing something similar right now? I've already pointed out the Israel support orchestration above (and for those who would argue that their votes are legitimate, the problem is that it's completely disproportionate. It's why user-initiated poll submissions and feedback comments are usually absurdly skewed and not-correlating with reality - the people voting often have a vested interest motivating their actions), and every bit of common sense says that they aren't alone.

Once this approach has been mastered at Reddit, move on the larger meme sites like Digg - a couple of thousand votes on Digg is all it takes. Hire some botnet authors if need be.

(Note: This isn't intended to be a "how to", but this issue has bothered me for a while. Before hearing about the Giyus site mentioned above, I had already considered making an opinion swarming coordination web app, allowing groups to administer and privately coordinate opinion bombing runs. My goal was to highlight a potential problem, rather than enabling this sort of activity)

On English Assignments

The grade 9 English assignment demanded that each of us to write a 2- or 3-page essay describing how we would improve society: What would we do to improve the quality of life for all Canadians?

This was 1986, just after pro-"wrestling" and break-dancing fads started thankfully fading from mass appeal. This was an era when global nuclear warfare (would you like to play a game?) still seemed not only possible, but probable - though Gorbechev's glasnost policies were definitely reducing tensions from the paranoid levels a few years earlier - so the concepts of freedom, democracy, and bomb-shelters appeared in quite a few of the submissions.

For my submission - a creation of pure literary genius, or so I thought - I combined the fundamentals of democracy with my recent discovery of local BBSs. I hypothesized that soon we'd be in a nationally connected world that would allow citizens from coast to coast to communicate with each other and access common resources on their home computer (be it Vic-20, or ultra-high end Commodore-64). Basically I was just describing the existing packet-switched commercial services, and the burgeoning Internet (I later created a multi-"channel", packet-oriented modem protocol on my Atari ST - basically a really primitive, foolish version of TCP), but envisioned it as a government built, publicly owned system, supplying every Canadian with this basic piece of infrastructure.

With this data communications network, I argued, we could finally build a system where government could be implemented as a pure democracy.

No longer would we have to elect local officials to carry our agenda to parliament, but now we could simply put every policy question to the people, allowing the populace to directly decide how the country will be governed.

I was certain that my idea was brilliant, and was a little disappointed when it was returned to me after marking (I was sure it would be passed on to important people for implementation. Perhaps they photocopied it?). Aside from a mark, the teacher - whose name I don't recall, though I do remember that her and her husband owned a car dealership - wrote a rather cryptic line about it being idealist and unworkable, which stung a bit, hence why this story sticks with me still today.

If for some reason I were required to rewrite that paper today, I'd probably concede the teacher's point. I would thank her for giving me a bit of cynicism and insight that perhaps I didn't have before.

The Problem With A Pure Democracy

After years of watching public opinion ebb and flow, I'm now of the opinion that a pure democracy would be an absolute disaster.

Apart from the fact that it would likely lead to a tyranny of the majority (where 50%+1 = someone else's agenda forced down your throat. This is of course how our system generally currently works, but in a more time-limited, detached manner), the core problem is that many voters simply don't take the responsibility required even for once-every-4-year trips to the ballot box, much less flippantly deciding each and every issue facing the government.

I certainly don't believe in an illuminati running government, and a democracy is empirically the ultimate form of government, but the small disconnect between the public and the government (the interface being elected representatives who are accountable for the government and its decisions) allows government to do what is necessary and right.

In essence it allows government to take actions that might temporarily anger the public in a short-sighted manner, but which we'll come to appreciate as time goes on. There have been countless times where polls indicated that the public was signfiicantly against of behind X, but to follow such an agenda would be disastrous. The government largely ignores such polls, not falling to populism and pandering to every shift in perception, and it blows over and the public sees the big picture.

Imagine if, instead, every night when you came home (or perhaps only once a week) there were several policy issues requiring your input.

"Should the bridge to the island airport be built?"

"Should the department of departments be privatized?"

Consider how little thought and attention people give to their several-times-a-decade visit to the ballot box. Now imagine how much worse it would be if everyone were questioned on every single government initiative.

"Well then making voting optional! Let the people who know about the topic vote!"

Such an opt-in arrangement is how "special interests" are born, and it's how they have much more sway than they perhaps should.