[Developers] Freebase and the Politics of Groups

[Rich Morin]

While re-reading a couple of Clay Shirky's essays, I
started wondering how well Freebase's current policies
will handle unintentional and/or malicious degradations
of the data.

Clearly, the Metaweb developers have thought about the
matter; the permissions structure (patterned after Unix)
gives them a powerful tool for controlling access.  I
haven't seen any mention of an explicit "rollback", but
I assume that something of this nature exists.

However, this leaves Metaweb (and/or the user community)
with the problem of administering permissions, etc.  The
experience of Wikipedia indicates that this is possible,
but that it can involve a significant amount of effort.

Moreover, I'd contend that Freebase differs quite a bit
from Wikipedia in the ways in which it will be used.  If
I'm reading a Wikipedia article, I may be able to guess
that some misinformation has been inserted.  However, if
I'm doing data mining on Freebase, the misinformation may
be obscured by the processing.

I'd be pleased to see responses, but be sure to read these
two essays before weighing in...

  A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
  http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

  Social Software and the Politics of Groups
  http://shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html

-r
-- 
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

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