Wikiscanner, Mahalo and avisen.dk: the web strikes back

The web 2.0-medicin taken by sites like Wikipedia and Google might have been to strong, and spurs new websites and intiatives enhancing editorial control.

Wikiscanner, launched earlier this week, exposes the weakness of Wikipedia – that not all users have purely althruistic motives for contributing to the worldwide encyclopedia. On the contrary the Wikisearch site tells you how employees at Pepsi deleted mentioning of Pepsis detrimental health effects. And that Vatican surfers removed links to newspaper stories linking the catholic leader to a 1971 double murder.
Do not automatically and uncritically put to much faith in the answers provided by Wikipedia, Wikiscanner warns you. Allthough other users, who are more balanced (or even counterbalanced), might quickly correct biased edits, the mechanism is inherently fragile. Take care.

Mahalo.com, also just starting up, warns you as well. “Don’t blindly believe Google” thay say, hinting that companies with enough money, can tune their webpages to better Google-rankings than they earn. The aim of Mahalo is simple and retro-ish: to provide handwritten search result pages, with manually selected high-quality links and carefully selected information, for the top 10.000 most popular searches. Mahalo also takes measures to safeguard themselves from the lures of user generated content, displayed by Wikiscanner. They welcome links send by users, but only publish the links found worthy of so by the editorial staff. They invite users to write search result pages that does not exits yet – but only in their “greenhouse” governed by the editorial staff, and only for users, who have proved track records of good user generation skills. (Interesting discussion at Skretablog with Jason Calacanis joining in)

From the Danish media scene: A qualified blogging environment needs the protection of non-anonymiity (!). This seems to be the learinings of news-site Avisen.dk, which was launched a year ago, highlighting from the very start that the active participation of users was vital to their concept, and that they wanted to lay as few obstacles in the way for users wanting to contribute. Now it seems avisen.dk has found that writing at avisen.dk might have been a little to easy: in the future you’ll have to state your real name if you want to blog at avisen.dk, after several incidences of extremist user-behaviour. (iht.com: “Online ‘hooligans’ casting a dark cloud over the blogosphere”, Ole Wejse Svarrer, editor at Avisen.dk: “Slut med anonyme blogs på Avisen.dk”)

The immense networking effects of millions of users and multi-terra-hertz of processor power surely is an immensly powerfull cocktail. Used wisely, rightly controlled, you’re limitted by nothing but the sky. But used without caution it could turn out a nightmare. That’s the message from Wikiscanner, Mahalo and avisen.dk.