Since March the 3rd of this year, @NZGovtFeeds has been republishing various New Zealand Government RSS feeds as a Twitterstream on Twitter and on a FriendFeed account.
This is a simple but powerful example of a third party outside of Government adding value to information that Government is providing. I am uncertain which Government departments could have considered it their responsibility to create an aggregated RSS feed for all-of-government and then convert it into a Twitter feed, but the moral of the story is in this day and age, no government department should be doing this if this will be done by a third party.
And this can only be done if the content is in a format which is open enough to enable reuses.
On this point, NZGovtFeeds keeps a list of “invalid” RSS feeds coming out of government, a list of agencies without RSS feeds (sadly the list contains 80 organisations), and publicly laments:
“There are a lot of NZ Government RSS feeds that have useless titles such as “Latest News” and “Updates”.
We suspect this is due to an inward view on the information and the feeds are designed by people that only work in the one place and to them it is obvious - not thinking of the reader”
“If I Don’t Know Who You Are, I Don’t Care What You Say”
In January, Adriel Hampton wrote a post titled If I Don’t Know Who You Are, I Don’t Care What You Say* proposing exactly that: anonymous content carries no currency (or maybe shouldn’t carry currency?). I disagree with Adriel: Wikipedia has a lot of anonymous content, and while sometimes incorrect, it is not something to be ignored.
If information is provided anonymously, there is simply a greater obligation on the consumer of that information to verify its sources and processes (even if these sources and processes are transparent). Once content is attributed to a person, and you know and trust the person, that simply means you can take it on their word that there is no silliness going on (or you can still verify).
For this reason, I was delighted when the the curtain was pulled back on Sunday.
The wizard behind this curtain
I would like to thank and congratulate Mike Riversdale on acting as a role model for all of us.
I’m hoping there will be plenty more wizards and curtains to come.
* Edit: I originally accidentally linked Adriel’s later post If I Don’t Know Who You Are, I Can’t Evaluate What You Say
4 Comments
*blush*
Thank you.
Once we (it’s mainly but not only me) have the complete list of available feeds we’ll then start mashing them up in interesting ways but only after we’ve chopped up the feeds into “sector” - um, what are “sectors” that people want, Health, Justice, Defence … anything else?
AND, we’d love to know how else people would like to see the feeds: http://nzgovtfeeds.blogspot.com/2009/03/nzgovtfeeds-output-what-should-we.html#comments
(note: we’re into giving examples, showing how we did it and then letting everyone have at it
Ah, Matt, you poke holes in my point then validate it. I’m pretty much OK with Wikipedia because it has established standards - but as we both known, anon users get in and muck with stuff all the time. An offline world full of smart folks DOES NOT TRUST anonymous activity or online news. Now, everybody is willing to make some exceptions, but as a rule you have to have context to evaluate something. If the context is that someone is well know and valuable even though they use a pseudonym, that too is “I know who you are” context. It’s a sticky wicket, and the public does not have time for sorting it all out and evaluating. We don’t need gatekeepers, we need honesty and accountability.
Mike,
Once again, thanks. I really look forward to what you (or the next wizard) can do next.
Adriel,
I agree that honesty and accountability are good things. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.
I have just realised I have confused myself. I had originally accidentally linked your later post If I Don’t Know Who You Are, I Can’t Evaluate What You Say. I am more sympathetic to that position. However, I still think in the case of Wikipedia or @NZGovtFeeds, a consumer can evaluate what is being said, it is just slightly harder work. In both cases, we cannot afford to not care about/ignore them.
“As we both known, anon users get in [to Wikipedia] and muck with stuff all the time”. Anonymous users also provide a huge amount of productive content. If you speak to almost any Wikipedian they will confirm this. If it was not the case, they would presumably agree to limit contributions to registered editors. The evaluation there is the same as everywhere: What are they saying? Where did their information come from? Outside of Wikipedia, if there is an additional proposition being made, is it proposed fact, speculation or simply opinion? If it is proposed fact, does it correlate to reality?
I think if you wrote a third post on this, it could be titled “I really just wish I knew who you are, and so do others”.
There are still some cases where anonymity can even be helpful (WikiLeaks comes to mind).
The use of anonymous posts has interested me for some time.
Surely the argument should stand without the endorsement of the brand!
There is also the difficulty of determining with a “branding” as to whether it is the company line or the thoughts of the individual.
And with the individual, was it a glib remark or the product of an excruciatingly detailed and pedantic analysis.
So my inclination is that the author picks their signature to give the reader a guide on how a posting should be consumed. Anonymous? then consumer beware! (ie engage brain - be cautious)
not Jim ~8-)