eLocal Listing Blog » abuse http://www.elocaldevblog.com Your Local Search Partner Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:20:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Something Wiki This Way Comes… http://www.elocaldevblog.com/something-wiki-this-way-comes/ http://www.elocaldevblog.com/something-wiki-this-way-comes/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:07:14 +0000 Tim Judd http://www.elocaldevblog.com/?p=380 As guys go I think I’m reasonably calm, doing my job it’s pretty much essential. I have been known to yell on occasion but I’m in severe danger of blowing my stack about the cool new feature from our good friends at Google called SideWiki. It’s almost entirely brand new but I imagine it has already set off alarm bells all over the world. Just in case this hasn’t crossed your metaphorical desk yet let me fill you in on the details.

If you download the new Google tool bar (or update your existing one) you will acquire the new Google SideWiki tool. It lets you go to pretty much any page on the web and leave your comments on that page in a side pane on the left. You can see other peoples comments and they can see yours. The site owner has no control over what people have written and they can’t remove it. Short of hate speech and obscenity anything goes…anything. If I knew your Face Book page I could zip over there and leave public remarks about anything I feel about you and you can do nothing about it…Nothing.

Here’s a neat scenario. How about I hack into a bank and steal a bunch of credit card numbers and post them on CNN. It’s not legal and no doubt they would be taken down, but not until CNN had discovered the problem and protested, and who should they call at Google?)

Online reputation management has developed into a significant industry. There are many online review sites where you can say all sorts of things about anyone including businesses. Most of these are mediated in some way and you have to know where to go to find the content. Of course some of them are designed to perform very well in search results but it’s been a manageable problem. This tool opens up a whole new world of pain for websites of all shapes and sizes. On the Internet famously nobody can tell you are a dog, all that is needed is a Google account (it takes about 15 seconds to get one and it can be effectively anonymous)  and you are all set to defame and abuse anyone you think worthy of it.

You can also spam to your hearts content. I just checked BBC.co.uk and did you know that

“yootravel is a good travel budget site - Go www.yootravel.co.uk and check for everyday possible holiday voucher codes”

You didn’t…well you should do because it’s on the second page of the SideWiki on the BBCs web site…one of the most powerful and authoritative sites in the world. Is it just me or is this complete madness? There is a vote up and vote down button and you can report abuse. So far nobody seems to know what determines which Wiki ranks where in the side pane and it’s also unclear what impact (if any) this will have on the way pages rank over all in the search results, it’s too early to tell.
Lord knows I love Google, I had a meeting with some of them only this week. They are smarter than God and have more money than him so no doubt much greater minds than mine have deemed this a great and cool thing. The problem with the web is that apart from being a huge force for good it’s also a huge force for evil where the weird, spiteful, criminal and plain crazy are continuously on the look out for new ways to make like more difficult…and in my humble opinion Google has handed it to them wrapped up in a bow. To quote David Letterman to Hugh Grant  “What where you thinking?”
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