Solving the Wikipedia problem

Today I was reading an AMA discussion on reddit from a Wikipedia admin. Much of the conversation centered around either delitionism (editors and admins on Wikipedia who want to delete lots of pages that they don't consider important) or the creeping vandalism of special interests. I've long thought that both problems could be solved by creating a new service to replace Wikipedia, so let me put my thoughts down in writing.

Wikileaks, Assange and Stross

Charles Stross has a great bit on his blog about Julian Assange. He is trending toward irrational exuberance, here, but I have to agree on the core point: anyone willing to publish these documents (Google for "Wikileaks" if you're not aware of the situation) is a kind of hero. It used to be that you went to the papers, but the papers are gasping for air and can't jeopardize their relationship with the government. Is there anything all that awful in the leaks? Not really, but it does make it harder, as Stross points out, for any group larger than 5-10 people to do anything they're going to be shocked or embarrassed by when it hits the Interwebs. This, to my thinking, is a good thing.

The counter-claim I've heard is that this makes it harder for foreign governments to trust us with their secrets (one example being given relates to Yemen cooperating over Al Qaeda raids, a reasonable concern). However, this is a reason to keep such secrets ... well, secret. Keeping them on file in a massive government bureaucracy isn't that, and the fact that someone then leaks that information is on the head of the person who does so, IMHO. Interestingly, we're not even talking about that person. We're just talking about the guy who did the actual publishing, which seems odd. He's just one guy with a Web site and no access to internal U.S. government information. Why not just prevent him from getting the information in the first place?

On a less wholesome note, I'll point out that Stross is a bit off on his analysis of the rape charge. While this definitely looks like a case of politically-motivated and kind of whacked-out revenge rather than a real rape claim, the charge being leveled against Assange isn't that he slept with another woman after the claimant, but that he had unprotected sex. This, apparently, under Swedish law can constitute rape even if the sex is consensual. I'm a bit shocked by this, but none the less, this is the claim I read on Wikipedia which is citing a Sydney Morning Herald piece about the rape charges. The part of the case that seems weird, however, is that the Sweedish authorities responded to Assange's willingness to meet with them at the Sweedish embassy or Scotland Yard with a request to Interpol and the EU for extradition. That's going way over the top, it would seem, given that their request was for interrogation, not trial.

Anyway, the wonderful thing about the Internet is: someone's going to pop up and offer the same service, even if Assange is buried for his role in this. It's awful to see him go through what even the women in question admit are rape charges over consensual sex, but in the end, I think his fears that he'll be handed over to the U.S. and harmed are unfounded... at least, I hope that will be the case. I want to think we haven't sunk that far...

Google's WEBP image format and World of Warcraft

I got my hands on Google's new image file format today and started testing it on some images I had lying around. I specifically wanted to see how it did with bad JPEGs of rendered sceenes. Hard edges and re-processed artifacts are something that JPEG traditionally handles very poorly, so there's some real, practical benefit to having a new format that can do these things well.

I took 9.5MB of input screenshots from my library and got 3.9MB of images out at 75% quality. Now, 75% in JPEG is pretty poor, but these don't look all that bad at all. At least not worse overall than the input (WoW compresses its screenshots pretty heavily).

More interestingly, however, here are some visual comparisons. All of these images are PNG format, converted either from the original JPEG input or from the converted WEBP at the given resolution.

Original screenshot (cropped region saved as PNG from original JPEG). Full file size: 541KB.
This is the 75% quality version of the same image as WEBP. Full file size: 257KB.
And this is the same WEBP conversion again, this time at 85%. Full file size: 347KB.
A second original image, again cropped and saved as PNG from a JPEG original screenshot. Full file size: 189KB. (re-compressed at 75% quality as JPEG, it was 132KB).
A 75% quality WEBP conversion. Full file size: 72KB.
An 85% quality WEBP conversion. Full file size: 109KB.

The lessons I learned from this are:

• WEBP does have some visual loss, even at 85% when it comes to highly saturated color, especially red.
• The file size drop is quite dramatic, even over a re-compressed JPEG at a lower quality.
• Overall, the look of the WEBP files is impressively smooth.
• I noticed (not in the samples, above) that splotchy regions of similar color, but varying value were sometimes flattened to the point that information was clearly being thrown away. At 75% quality this was a substantial change, but at 85% quality, it was hardly noticeable.

I really look forward to this format being available in the majority of browsers, so I can safely start using it!

Icons from Wikimedia Commons

I'm often lacking for exactly the right Icon for Web work, and then I remember Wikimedia Commons. For a number of open-licensed UIs I've used the Wikimedia images to help create a look that implies I spent an awful lot of time and energy. These icons vary in quality because they were uploaded from different sources, but you can get some of the best icons available from this site (along with, of course, the best freely licensed photographs and other media). Commons is a gem, and if you don't use it, you're probably missing out.

The Crystal Icons from KDE were uploaded as PNG, but the original SVG icons can be acquired from their original site. These are very clean and plastic-feeling icons for everything from the power button you see on the left to various arrows to hands to gears. Because they were uploaded in fairly high resolution, using the PNG versions isn't all bad, but you'll still get a better final result if you work from the SVG.

There are also many icons for specific applications. You can use these when writing reviews or otherwise mentioning the applications in quesiton. Many of the application icons come from the Crystal set as above, but some are directly lifted from open source projects, such as the Gaim (now pidgin) icon you see to the left.

Other icons include arrows, globes, hands and many other cateogries. You can browse all of the categories from Wikimedia's "icons by subject" page.

To use these icons, I recommend always selecting SVG format images and then using Inkscape . Load an SVG icon up in Inkscape and select File, Export Bitmap... to save it as a PNG file, setting the height and width to exactly what you want. For now, PNG is the way Web browsers deal with icons the best, though in the future, SVG will be taking over that role as older browsers fade away.

Enforced bad passwords

Long ago, I got sick of sites that restrict me to bad passwords, but today I came across another and it has pushed me to yet again explain why it is that you should never restrict passwords without deeply compelling cause.

Today's offender was Boston Coach, the luxury livery service in that was founded by Boston's Fidelity Investments (the legend states that one day, Fidelity's owner, Ned Johnson wanted a cab and couldn't get one; the next day he had his own fleet of black sedans with smartly dressed drivers, trained to treat their passengers like royalty). Anyway, so I wanted to hire a Coach to take my mother and I to a concert for her birthday (I won't say what birthday; you're welcome, Mom). I had to sign up for an account on their Web site. They committed a few sins in the process:

1. Unless you really need a pseudonym, don't ask the user to create one. Instead, use the email address for logins.
2. Never restrict passwords unless you are technologically constrained to do so, and if you are, file a security bug with whatever braindead software it was that forced you to (or consider just dumping it).
3. Test your UI with and without JavaScript support. This sounds silly, but there are plenty of environments where people aren't allowed to enable unsafe browser features.
4. Never give the user an error without explaining what it is that they did to get it. Two examples came up, here: the password security policy and the number of occupants per car.

To get back to the heart of my concern: the password. I use PasswordSafe, a program originally written by renowned security expert, Bruce Schneier. It can happily generate a very random, long password. For example:

 K1/}"jUCF/byp6( : $1$0ZV5xOu3$iTgccli1bBSykSJxcOrfi.

Notice that this password would be nearly impossible to memorize, but because PasswordSafe stores it in an encrypted file, I just have to remember one, easier to remember password to access all of them. I tried to enter this very password for my account, but don't bother trying to use it... it was rejected. The confusing bit was that the UI informed me that I had not met "minimum password requirements." Wow, if that password doesn't measure up to Boston Coach's minimum requirements, they must spend all day, every day servicing lost password requests!

In reality, what they'd done is refused to accept any password with punctuation (resulting in 31 possible characters being removed from all possible passwords on a typical US keyboard). This is a tragic thing to do to your password security, and a company founded by Fidelity Investments should know better.

Anyway, they should fix their broken software and anyone else that uses such terrible requirements for passwords should get on it ASAP.

Twitter / Buzz: the new news?

Today's XKCD discusses the math behind a tweet out-distancing an earthquake (oddly, I read the comic before I heard about the quake). Later in the day, I found myself using Google's Buzz to post pictures of a fire in Boston. It's now getting to the point that I look to the Buzz map on my Droid before I consult Boston.com for local news. It's not that it's more rational or more considered. It's just a matter wanting to know what's going on now rather than a half hour ago. Sure, I can visit a regular news site and find more detail later on, but there's just nothing like having a few thousand potential "reporters" on the scene.

I suppose the future written by some science fiction authors is coming: we'll all be the on-the-scene "reporters" with actual journalists being the people who surf Twitter, Buzz, YouTube and so forth, the way they used to listen to police-band radio for a story. Once a journalist can tap into your head-mounted cam for a live feed hire you on the spot as a freelance photographer, there will be no story too fast to be fed into the hungry maw of the Internet.

Hardest Trivia Questions, Ever

Update: There is now a second article: The Hardest Trivia Questions Ever, Part Two.
 
Wikipedia is a font of really useful information, but it can also be the source of some of the most obscure information to have graced the Web. Specifically, their "Did you know" section on the front page tends to have some of the most obscure trivia you'll come across. I've turned some of it into a set of trivia questions. See how many you can get by using your scroll bar to hide the next question's answer just off the bottom while you guess (questions after the jump)...

My Photos On the Web

I've always put my photography up on the Web under the Creative Commons licensing that allows others to use and distribute them as long as they give credit and allow others to do the same (the CC-By-SA license). Over time, I've seen my pictures used for more and more things that I'd never have dreamed. One church has used a panorama of mine for their banner and I've seen my images used for several news articles, such as the story of tequila being used to make diamonds.

For those who might want to use some of my images in the future, the best place to look is on my Picasa folders. One of these, Misc Photos, contains what I consider to be some of my best general work, though I have other sections for nature photography; specific events like the Tall Ships and Fireworks; and so on. You need only credit me and provide some way for people to find the original in order to use these images.

Wikipedia Needs More Trivia

The "... in popular culture" sections and articles on Wikipedia used to be called "Trivia," but were so overwhelmingly lists of pop-culture references that the convention was altered. These days there are articles like Zombies in popular culture which typically start off well, but quickly descend into cobbled-together lists of movies, books, comics and video games that may or may not relate to, or represent the state of the genre being discussed. At one time, I worked on the  Lovecraftian horror article, and while I tried to make it an article about the genre and its evolution over time, it was continuously inundated by well-meaning editors who would add lists of genre works to the article.

To combat this, Wikipedia really should embrace both styles, and integrate them more deeply. I'd love to see the template mechanism enhanced so that trivia could be encapsulated as template-like objects. (more...)

Conservapedia Claims Jesus Home-Schooled John

Conservapedia, as you may know, was created as an alternative to the "liberal bias" of Wikipedia, at least originally. These day's it's a Christian revisionism site which is attempting to rally the conservative Christian base in America to literally re-write the Bible to better reflect their political message. One of the more interesting articles on the site that reflects this trend is "Mystery: Was John a Child?" The article was written by the site's founder, Andy Schlafly, a proponent of conservative families home-schooling their children, and questions whether John was a young teen, home-schooled by Jesus (ignoring the fact that only wealthy families in the Roman Empire had centralized schooling).

As I said, this is a piece of a larger effort to, as the site says, enable "a thought-for-thought translation," of the Christian Bible, "without corruption by liberal bias." Among other changes this means favoring masculine wording in an attempt to revert the, "emasculation of Christianity"; using "powerful new conservative terms"; "explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning," which I quote in full because I can't actually imagine how that pertains to a re-translation; and removing references to the name, "Jehovah" (an example of "liberal wordiness").

What's particularly shocking is that the project aims to re-translate the King James Version of the Bible rather than returning to original sources, thus maintaining any inaccuracies both in that translation, and that have arisen as a consequence of the change in English since that time. Presumably this is being done in order to open the effort up to those who haven't spent years studying dead languages, but of course, it makes the end-result highly suspect, even given a scholarly goal, rather than a political one.

Google Reader vs. Twitter

I've been using both Google Reader and Twitter for a long time now. I use them both very differently, but these days, I'd have to say that I prefer Reader for most things. I'll go into more detail below, but here's the short of it: Reader is free-form, but just as social as Twitter. In fact, because of the tie-in to Google Talk and Gmail, I'd argue that Reader is fundamentally a better social networking platform than Twitter. The problem is that it doesn't have the user-base, so I still use Twitter when I want to contact the largest number of people or to follow what my non-Reader friends are up to. (more...)

Disclosure: Endorsements and the FTC

AJS.COM has two primary sources of revenue (neither of which is substantial, at this time): Google Ads and Amazon Associate links. In theory, either of these could generate substantial revenue, but they don't, due to a limited audience. I don't get samples or any other consideration from the companies whose products I review from time to time (such as my review of Dollhouse Season 1 on DVD), and the only kickback I get is from Amazon if someone buys these items through the image link. As for the Google Ads, I see around $10/mo. which isn't enough to pay for my home Internet connection.

So, while I understand where the FTC is going with these new guidelines, they don't really affect this site (or its AJS.COM sister sites) at all.

Why Harmil stopped editing Wikipedia

Harmil was my alter ego on Wikipedia for years. I created dozens of pages and uploaded many of my photographs of wildlife and New England landmarks for articles. But then I stopped. I would still be contributing today if the site hadn't turned into the sprawling bureaucracy that it is today. At first, Wikipedia was a meritocracy like the open source movement from which it derived its initial ethos. The idea was simple: be useful and your work will be respected. Annoy people and you'll be ignored. Get in the way and you'll be moved.

Over time, that changed. Copyright law is a hot issue, and everyone wants to have their say. That lead to some strange policies and a schism between the main site and their image hosting site, Commons that still has strange ramifications to this day (images are routinely moved to Commons from Wikipedia because they are free, but Commons has a stricter definition of "free", so they're then deleted). (more...)

Whedon and Lynch Videos on WGBH's Forum Network

Joss Whedon

Update: See my Google+ thread about this speech with a link to the YouTube version of the video.

Back in April of this year, I posted about Joss Whedon's appearance at Harvard to accept an award from the Humanist Chaplaincy. At the time, I knew that it was recorded, but not when or if it would show up where people could get at it. Well, now it's here. If you go to WGBH's Forum Network, you'll find "Joss Whedon: Cultural Humanist." (note: that seems to be down...  not sure if it will come back. see the relevant bits on YouTube) Watch and enjoy. It was a really great event, and well worth listening to his views on the interaction between the religious and non-religious world and the nature of charity and justice towards others.

In perusing this site, I've noticed some really interesting videos. It's sad that these aren't widely publicized, since they're so much more valuable than the typical piano-playing cat that you'll find when searching for videos on the Web. Right now, I'm listening to David Lynch, Fred Travis (spelled "Tavis" incorrectly in the credits) and John Hagelin speaking about Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain.

Moving to Blogger

Aaron's Essays used to be at www.3d6.net/aarons_essays/ which was my own server running MovableType, but I just got too frustrated with MT, and finally decided that maintaining so many different services on my home server was no longer workable. So... welcome to Aaron's Essays. essays.ajs.com will continue to point to this blog as always. I'll continue to drone on about whatever it is that I find interesting, though there may be more posts here than there were on my old blog, since it's a bit faster and easier to use.