Wikipedia Leader: I Want to Be Deleted

In a provocative commentary for The Guardian, Seth Finkelstein argues that having a biography in Wikipedia is a magnet for libel:

For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an "attractive nuisance". It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: "Here's an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be made prominent about the person, and reputation-laundered with the institutional status of an encyclopedia."

As someone who contributed several biographies to the encyclopedia, I've held to the belief that as a person's entry becomes more well-read, it will attract conscientious editors at a greater rate than harmful ones. I still have all of the entries I've created on my watch list, and none has experienced the kind of abuse Finkelstein describes.

Like me, Finkelstein hovers close to being too obscure for Wikipedia. His biography only had been edited 53 times in two years before this Guardian piece ran.

When an entry's not well-read, the potential for abuse is greater because an edit by someone with an axe to grind is less likely to be reviewed by others.

The press should follow up on something Finkelstein reveals in his commentary -- Angela Beesley, the Wikipedia Board of Trustees member who recently quit, has been fighting to have her own biography deleted:

I'm sick of this article being trolled. It's full of lies and nonsense. My justification for making a third nomination is that my circumstances have changed significantly since the last AfDs -- I have resigned from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Given that this was previously kept on the grounds I was on that Board, there is no longer any reason for this page to be kept. This has already been deleted on the French and German Wikipedias.

Beesley's clearly too well-known to justify deletion from Wikipedia, considering her position as one of the site's leaders for three years. But as Finkelstein notes, this is a huge no-confidence vote in the Wikipedia concept. If she can't get fair treatment on Wikipedia, and founder Jimbo Wales has resorted to protectively editing his own bio on numerous occasions, what confidence should other living subjects have in their own treatment?

Wikipedia · Journalism · 2006/09/29 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

USPTO Rejected 'Podcast' Trademark Registration

I submitted a proposal today urging the RSS Advisory Board to support the common usage of "podcast" and "podcasting" as generic terms that cannot serve as trademarks for Apple Computer or any other entity.

Since its coinage in 2004, the word "podcast" has referred to all audio files delivered as RSS enclosures. This usage became so popular that "podcasting" was declared the 2005 word of the year by the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary, who gave it the following definition:

A digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.

I found something in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Database that bolsters my claim: On Aug. 29, a USPTO trademark examiner rejected an attempt to register "podcast" as a trademark.

Paul Fowlie of Common Mode Inc. attempted to trademark "podcast" on March 8 for the following class of goods and services:

SOUND RECORDING FEATURING AUDIO INFORMATION FOR DOWNLOAD-SPOKEN WORD AND MUSIC

To see the registration, search the trademark database for the registration with serial number 78831795. On the registration page, click the "TDR" link to see USPTO trademark attorney Monique C. Miller's refusal of the registration.

Miller writes that "podcast" is "merely descriptive," meaning that it describes an entire class of goods and thus cannot function as a trademark:

The term PODCAST may be defined as:

"A free, downloadable audio file that can be listened to on your computer -- where you can burn it to a compact disc -- or on an MP3 player or iPod to enjoy on planes, trains and automobiles. Podcasts were originally thought of as amateurish audio versions of blogs, but no longer; ESPN, NPR, the BBC, Newsweek, news commentators and other highly respected people have podcasts readily available." (See attached definition from www.netlingo.com)

Or

"An audio programme in a compressed digital format, delivered via an RSS feed over the Internet to a subscriber and designed for playback on computers or portable digital audio players, such as the iPod." (See attached definition from http://en.wiktionary.org)

The mark immediately describes and names the characteristics and features of the goods. Accordingly, the mark is refused registration on the Principal Register under Section 2(e)(1) of Trademark Act.

Additionally, the examining attorney submits that the term PODCAST may be unregistrable because it is generic or informational for applicant's services. Generic terms are terms that the relevant purchasing public understands primarily as the common or class name for the goods or services. In re Dial-A-Mattress Operating Corp., 240 F.3d 1341, 57 USPQ2d 1807 (Fed. Cir. 2001); In re American Fertility Society, 188 F.3d 1341, 51 USPQ2d 1832 (Fed. Cir. 1999); In re Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 828 F.2d 1567, 4 USPQ2d 1141 (Fed. Cir. 1987); H. Marvin Ginn Corp. v. Int'l Ass'n of Fire Chiefs, Inc., 782 F.2d 987, 228 USPQ 528 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Generic terms are by definition incapable of indicating a particular source of the goods or services, and cannot be registered as trademarks; doing so "would grant the owner of the mark a monopoly, since a competitor could not describe his goods as what they are." In re Merrill Lynch, 828 F.2d at 1569, 4 USPQ2d at 1142. Applicant's mark is so common in the field that it appears to be unregistrable. (See attached evidence from a search of the Internet). The attached sample of the Internet evidence submitted is evidence of the public's perception of the term.

As evidence, Miller attached the Wiktionary and NetLingo definitions of podcast, a Google search for podcast and audio and recording and trademark registration attempts for "Emergency Podcast System," "Cherry-Picked Podcasts That Don't Suck," "What I Want Podcasting," "Podcast Realty," "VarBusiness Podcast" and "EPodcast."

Rss · Podcasting · 2006/09/27 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Adopting a Common OPML Icon

Liquid Orb Media and Chris Pirillo are trying to popularize a common OPML icon to identify OPML subscription lists.

I'm no fan of OPML, but this icon's such an improvement over the alternatives I wanted to promote it. The similarity to the common icon for RSS should help spur adoption, since the formats complement each other.

I've added an OPML link to the sidebar on Workbench that shows an example of how it could be used. The link opens an OPML file that lists feeds I'm reading with Bloglines.

Rss · Opml · 2006/09/26 · Comment · Link

You Stay Classy, Indianapolis Colts

Indianapolis Colts punter Hunter Smith took a weird shot at the Jacksonville Jaguars after their game Sunday:

Jacksonville is like a stand-up comic who can only use vulgarity and curse words because he lacks intelligence and lacks class. He really doesn't have anything to say. Our intangible is our class and our intelligence. A team that gets personal fouls the way they do, the roughing penalties, they just don't have any material.

That may be the most haughty insult I've ever heard from an NFL player. Even better, two of the Jags' personal fouls involved soccer-style fakery by the Colts. Jaguars Coach Jack Del Rio called them "Bill Laimbeer flops" after the game.

On one play, Colts linebacker Cato June pretended to be kicked by receiver Reggie Williams, falling to the ground as if he were shot to draw the personal foul flag. On another, June pretended to lose his balance after a pileup and threw his body into offensive lineman Vince Manuwai, who pushed him off in a tame "get out of my face" gesture and drew an unnecessary roughness penalty.

Jacksonville · Sports · 2006/09/26 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

War Widow Brought Bush to Tears

In a personal visit with President Bush, the widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan claims she brought him to tears and admonished him, "It's time to put our pride behind us and stop the bleeding, for all of us."

The anecdote appears in a Washington Post front-page story this morning about the president's private feelings regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Hildi] Halley, 41, lost her husband, National Guard Capt. Patrick Damon, also 41, in June in Afghanistan to what officially was ruled a heart attack. When Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) called to offer condolences and asked if she could do anything, Halley requested a telephone call from the president. Instead, when he came to Maine to visit his parents in Kennebunkport, the White House invited her to meet him at a school.

When Bush walked in, Halley told him about Patrick, how they had met at American University, moved to Maine and had a family. "After I spoke about my husband for quite some time, I said, 'And now he's dead. For what? Why? I've lost my soul mate.' " She asked her children, Mikayla, 14, and Jan-Christian, 12, to leave the room, then wept as she told Bush how hard life had become for them. "He started crying. I said, 'These two children do not like you and they have good reason for that. And I hold you responsible for the death of my husband.' "

Bush seemed surprised that she opposes even the war in Afghanistan, and he cited the Taliban. "And I said, 'Who put them in power?' And he got a little defensive and said, 'I'm really not here to discuss public policy with you.' And I said, 'That's probably wise, and I'm not here to talk about public policy, either.' "

Bush said he hoped their meeting helped her healing. "You know what would help my healing?" she recalled responding. "If you change your policies in the Mideast." Bush smiled, she said, but did not reply.

Halley said the meeting did not change either of their minds. She would still vote against him. But she said she appreciated that he opened himself up to her. "I don't think he's a heartless man," she said. "I think he's pulled in a lot of different directions by very intelligent people. . . . I don't think it's going to change his policies, but I hope it does make him think about it. I hope I'm in his dreams."

Politics · 2006/09/25 · 27 COMMENTS · Link

Women in Tech: Spring Forward or Fall Back?

One of my friends had a baby girl this week, which naturally raises the question of what kind of world she can expect to inhabit. I didn't know this until I had my first son, but parenting is the strongest act of optimism you can ever commit. You're placing a bet on the state of the world for the next century and taking the over on peace and prosperity. I'm a practicing pessimist, so that realization gave me the heebie-jeebies.

If my friend's newborn develops an interest in computer science, engineering or another technical profession, I'm afraid she'll find a world that actively discourages her from those pursuits because of her gender.

I've been a comp-sci geek since I stole my dad's Timex Sinclair ZX81 the minute I first laid eyes on it in 1980. From that day on, every step I took in that direction was encouraged and reinforced by my parents and peers. My father worked as an engineer and everyone I knew with an interest in coding and BBSes was male. (Correction: One girl wandered into the Dallas BBS community when I was 16. She was immediately subjected to a merciless barrage of awkward, mumbled pick-up lines directed at our own shoes.)

Some will say that the gender imbalance in tech is a natural consequence of males being more inclined to these pursuits. But looking back, I wonder whether I would have stuck with programming if it had been a female-dominated field in which family, friends and teachers all treated my interest as unusual.

A quarter-century later, the tech world is overwhelmingly -- sometimes even exclusively -- male.

Shelley Powers recently called out the Office 2.0 conference for its original 53-speaker roster, which included only one woman.

A conference I'd like to attend, the Spring Experience on Dec. 7-10 in Hollywood, Fl., has 38 scheduled speakers and describes them in this manner:

Presenters at The Spring Experience are recognized subject matter experts. They are published authors and/or committers on the Spring Project. No marketecture, no hype, just quality technically focused sessions to help you get the most out of Spring.

All 38 are men.

There are women involved in the Java Spring framework and related areas of programming, but the lack of a single one in the event's roster shows that organizers placed no priority on finding them. I spent an hour looking into the companies, projects and technologies mentioned in the bios of the 38 speakers and found 10 women well-qualified to speak at the event:

• Portia Tung is a committer on the Spring Framework project team and an instructor at Core Spring bootcamps.
• Dr. Helen Hawkins is a committer on the AspectJ Development Tools project and a member of IBM's aspect-oriented software development team.
• Julie Waterhouse, another committer on AspectJ Development Tools, spoke at the Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference last year.
• Deborah Hartmann is the agile community editor for the enterprise IT portal InfoQ and a speaker at Agile2006.
• Dr. Rebecca Parsons, a speaker at several NoFluffJustStuff events, is a ThoughtWorks executive and comp-sci professor specializing in enterprise architecture.
• Kathy Sierra is the author of Head First EJB and Head First Java and a former master trainer at Sun.
• Fabiane Bizinella Nardon, a health care company's CTO and a member of Java Champions, gives frequent speeches on enterprise Java development.
• C++ and Java instructor Angelika Langer is the "Effective Java" columnist for Java Spektrum and a speaker at numerous Java-related conferences.
• Wendy Smoak is a committer on the Apache Struts, Shale and MyFaces projects and a member of the Apache Software Foundation.
• Heather VanCura, a speaker at Europe's JavaPolis conference in 2005, is the marketing manager of the Java Community Process

I think it's time to expect technology conference organizers and invited speakers to care about the glaring lack of female leaders at their events. Spring's a Java 2 Enterprise Edition framework for hardcore professional development, yet I quickly found 10 female experts worthy of consideration. If each of this event's speakers had been asked a simple question, the embarrassment of the all-male roster could have been avoided: "Do you know any women in this field who ought to speak at the conference?"

Three weeks after Shelley Powers challenged Office 2.0 participants to ask themselves that question, the roster includes 12 more women.

Programming · 2006/09/23 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

The Blogger To Be Named Later

A few years ago, outspoken tech blogger Russell Beattie got a phone call at home after he angered someone with one of the entries on his site. They asked to speak with his young son.

Beattie didn't want the incident to feed anyone's fear, but I think it's worth recalling in the discussion of whether it's OK to reveal a blogger's identity, as Michael Arrington appears to believe.

Arrington's put the chill on the unnamed author of Dead 2.0, a blogger critical of the web 2.0 bubble that has become Arrington's reason for being.

High-traffic bloggers should know as well as anybody that there's a damn good reason to remain nameless: Publishing on the web makes you a target for a considerable amount of abuse. We live in an angry world, and when you attach your name and face to a strong opinion on any subject, you're only one click away from being the focus of somebody's rage.

When I popesquatted last year and did interviews in which I jokingly asked for a papal mitre, a man named Roger Cadenhead in another part of Florida had the misfortune of being publicly listed in the phone book. He received so many hate calls that his wife called sheriff's deputies to their house.

I take anonymous and pseudonymous critics less seriously than people who identify themselves, but the idea that it's OK to out them as a matter of principle is reprehensible. There's nothing the author of Dead 2.0 could say about Arrington that he couldn't refute in a forum that draws 100 times as much traffic.

Florida · Domains · 2006/09/22 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

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